The Old Blog in the Desert

There are easier ways to spend a three-day holiday than wandering around the backcountry in winter, but at the time, that did not occur to me. The trip had been my idea—mine and Chris’s—and when a man helps plan a thing, he generally believes it will turn out well.

Seven of us from the Air Force hospital in Cheyenne had driven nearly four hundred miles into the mountains. Most of the group worked together in one way or another. Chris and I had organized the outing because we both liked cold weather and the outdoors, which in hindsight might have been the first warning sign.

The others were an assortment of medical staff who had decided a little mountain air would do them good.

Linda was from Texas and had something to say about nearly everything she saw. Alan came from Ohio and had never been anywhere quite this isolated. Blair and Steve worked together in the doctor’s office and insisted they were not a couple, though nobody believed that for a second. Edward had previously served at a remote post in Alaska and seemed entirely comfortable with the wilderness. Jocelyn had grown up in the Cascades of Washington State and handled the mountains better than most of us.

We reached the park late the first afternoon after stopping every few miles to admire the scenery. By the time we arrived at the cabin, the sun was already lowering behind the peaks.

The place was a steep-roofed A-frame built so snow wouldn’t pile up on it. According to the brochure, it slept ten people comfortably, which meant seven of us and a mountain of gear fit just fine.

That first evening, Alan produced a tiny television and tried to tune in a station from Denver. The screen flickered weakly while the rest of us gathered around it like cavemen discovering electricity.

“I thought this place had electricity,” Alan said.

I shook my head. “Rustic,” I told him. “That means no electricity and no running water.”

The room went quiet.

Blair planted both hands on her hips. “What do you mean no running water?”

Chris pointed toward the back door. “Bathroom’s out there.”

Blair opened the door to inspect the outhouse and immediately got buried under a small avalanche of powder snow that fell in on her. She stood there blinking while the rest of us laughed ourselves silly.

The next morning, we set out to explore.

Chris took the lead because he knew the area better than the rest of us. I brought up the rear, keeping an eye on the group. We stayed about ten feet apart as we crossed a broad field of crusted snow beneath a glacier.

It was one of those clear mountain days when the sky looks like polished glass and every sound carries for miles.

“Never realized how quiet it could be,” someone said.

“Or how cold,” someone else answered.

Everyone laughed.

Linda glanced back at me. “Sure is pretty up here,” she said. “Ain’t got nothing like this in Texas.”

From the front, Chris shouted back, “Hey now—don’t be putting Texas down like that. We’ve got other things. Like the most beautiful women.”

That earned another round of laughter.

We continued up the slope, stopping now and then to rest and take pictures. The air grew thinner as we climbed, and the snow under our shoes made that steady crunching sound that follows a person through winter mountains.

Then something bothered me.

At first, I couldn’t say what it was. Maybe the wind had shifted. Maybe the mountain sounded wrong.

I stopped and listened harder.

“Quiet!” I called.

Everyone turned to look at me.

I was staring up toward the summit. The hair on the back of my neck had started to rise, and that is a feeling a man learns not to ignore.

Chris looked back at me. He knew that look.

“Avalanche,” I said.

Then louder: “Run, Chris! Run!”

Everyone bolted.

We were crossing a wide snow bowl, and the only safety was the far side, where the slope flattened out. Behind us, the mountain came alive.

Stephen tripped and fell. Alan hauled him up again. Jocelyn slipped next but managed to scramble back to her feet.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the white wall racing toward us. First came the wind and loose powder blasting ahead of it like smoke before a train.

We were almost to safety when Linda suddenly slipped. She slid down the slope nearly twenty feet.

Without thinking, I changed direction and ran toward her.

I grabbed her arm, hauled her upright, and dragged her toward the edge where Chris was already reaching down.

He grabbed her and pulled her up.

Then I jumped for the edge myself.

I almost made it.

The edge of my snowshoe caught the avalanche just as it slammed into us. The noise was unbelievable—louder than a jet preparing for takeoff.

I saw Chris shout something, but I couldn’t hear him.

Then the mountain swallowed me.

I tumbled violently through snow and ice. Up and down stopped meaning anything. I remembered my avalanche training and began swimming on my back, trying to stay near the surface.

One thought kept running through my head.

What if I’m upside down?

I kept swimming anyway.

After what felt like forever, everything began to slow. The snow packed tighter around me. I clenched my fists and shoved them in front of my face, trying to create a pocket of air before it all hardened.

Then everything stopped.

I was buried solid.

My chest felt squeezed by the weight of the snow. One leg twisted painfully behind me, and I suspected it might be broken or dislocated. It was pitch dark, and I couldn’t even tell whether I was right side up.

The silence was worse than the avalanche.

Eventually, the panic drained away. I figured that was probably the end of the story.

Then I heard something.

Crunch.

Another crunch.

Footsteps.

I pushed harder against the snow around my face until a small burst of light broke through.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Over here!”

A moment later, I felt hands brushing snow from my face. Chris was lying flat on the surface, clearing the ice from my eyelids.

“Tom!” he yelled. “Talk to me!”

I blinked, though it hurt.

“Hiya, Chris,” I croaked. “Get me out of here. I think an ice age is starting.”

Chris started laughing right then and there.

And the rest of the crew began digging me out.