Snow Humps (continued)

"Come on, Dianne! This is fucking serious. Where's my Arctic Cat?"

Nothing. I smashed the button on my radio and tried calling, "Copy, Rescue Hut #1. Dianne? Location? Over."

Not even static returned my call. Keeping the trail marker for Windhill West in sight, I slid forward slowly on my skis, searching for signs of Dianne and my snowmobile. Having completed an agonizing circle with the wind pushing me around like a pinball and the snow pelting me in the face and covering my goggles, I could see nothing but white snow and pine trees dotting the surreal landscape.

Snowmobiles don't just disappear. Then, again, neither do healthy adult men and now a woman. There was nothing more I could do to help those whom this monstrous blizzard had swallowed up. The best thing I could do for them would be to return to base and get reinforcements with equipment and snowmobiles. I didn't even have a basic first aid kit now that my Cat was missing.

Another rumble tore through the mountaintop, knocking me off my skis and completely swallowing up the trail marker sign. The sound of trees crashing in the distance urged me to move faster for help. No telling where these missing people were stranded, while all around them, tall, spindly pine trees were falling like daggers.

I reattached my skis and tried to remember which way was down. Believe it or not, it was hard to assess up and down when snow clouds whirled in your face, and wind created artificial snowdrifts. I set off in the direction that made the most sense, which really didn't. But it was what it was.

Eventually, my skis picked up speed, making me realize I had chosen the correct direction. Staying away from the tree line to avoid falling pines, I kept up the speed, hoping not to smash face-first into a marker sign, a ski lift tower, or an errant tree stuck in the middle of the run.

The trip down the hill seemed to take forever as rumble after rumble shook the ground beneath the snowpack, opening up fissures the size of cars alongside me. As fast as the fissures gaped open, they were over-filled with loose snow, creating a series of snow humps all the way down the mountain. No telling how many holes were in my path on the way back to Base. I had no choice but to keep going and pray for the best, avoiding lumps of snow that may or may not be disguising a crack in the earth.

As I passed the first ski lift tower, an enormous rumble once again shook me out of my bindings, and I landed on my ass, watching my skis tumble down a fissure that was instantly covered over with snow shaken from the ground around it. My skin prickled with fear, and a sick, sour taste gurgled up from my throat, causing me to lose the lunch I had enjoyed long before this nightmare began.

It was just as well my skis were lost, as I was too dizzy to continue my forward trajectory at that speed. I hobbled over to the lift tower and aimed for the next and the next one after that, hanging onto them for dear life through the worst of the tremors. My hand had begun bleeding through the glove, and I needed to get to a first aid post soon, as the cold and the nausea were doing a number on my system.

Counting was how I kept my mind focused when I was upset, so I had begun to count the towers: one, two, three, four, five.....where was six? Where is six? My mind began spinning into a panic. Six comes after five. Six comes after five, I repeated internally, groping for the next steel girder and just missing the fissure covered by snow, which had swallowed my half of the enormous, two-ton, forty-foot tower, leaving a tangle of shredded, razor-sharp cable wire in its wake.

The only blessing was that there were no chair lifts this far up the mountain now. What a mess that would have been, I thought in relief as I skirted around the cables and, hopefully, the fissure on my way to tower number seven, which was tilting but sturdy despite the cables from six pulling on it. Damn, I kept forgetting to protect my bleeding hand and got it stuck on the frozen steel tower. Great.

I finally broke down and radioed Base, "Copy, Rescue Hut #1, Johnson. Wounded, stuck at a lift tower up the mountain going toward the advanced slopes. Send help. Over."

Nothing. Shit. I wouldn't make it down the mountain at this rate before the howling wind swept away my body heat. The Sun was setting, making a bad situation even worse. My legs buckled under me, and I blacked out. When the stars finally cleared from my eyes, I found myself lying flat on my back, shivering in three feet of freshly fallen snow. My heart fluttered and I couldn't keep my eyes open. Hypothermia was slowly marching through my body as I breathed out small puffs of frozen vapor from my tortured lungs.

The last thing I remember...