Tough Cookie

That’s why the Valley is out-of-bounds, Killdeer officials had solemnly intoned, ever wary of their liability insurance. Avalanches in the high country happen without warning. Of course, this had not prevented Killdeer Corporation from recently deciding to expand the resort onto the slope adjacent to the Valley. Next season, a new lift would take skiers and snowboarders right over the area where Nate had died. Poor Rorry, I thought again, with guilt. Would she be at the fund-raiser? Would she want to talk to me, when all I’d done was write her a sympathy note? Why hadn’t I been more persistent in checking up on her after Nate’s death?

I finished the cookie and downed the cocoa. Late at night, problems loom large. I had to crawl to bed and get some beauty sleep. Or, as I checked my pudgy, curly-blond-haired reflection in the frosted window, just some sleep, period.

Early the next morning, in an impenetrable, windy, predawn darkness, I loaded the historic skis into my van. It was still snowing hard. A torrent of flakes iced my face as I stamped inside. I left a note for Tom, whose large, warm body had finally snuggled in next to mine around two A.M. I packed up my boots and skis, traipsed out to check the tread on my radial tires—barely adequate—and set out for Killdeer.

As my van negotiated the snow-crusted expanse of Main Street, the wind lashed fresh snow across my windshield. When I pulled over to scrape it off, I was hit in the face with a swag of holiday evergreen and a strand of white lights. Convulsing in the wind, the decorations had torn loose from a storefront. I climbed back into the van, shivered, and started the slow trek to the highway.

Once the van was headed west on Interstate 70, I cranked the wipers as high as they would go to sweep off the relentlessly falling snow. Traffic was light. Beside the road, a herd of bighorn sheep clustered below a neon sign warning of icy roads on both sides of the Eisenhower Tunnel. When I passed Idaho Springs, a radio announcement brayed the news that an avalanche had come down late the previous afternoon at the Loveland Ski Area. Cars slowing down to watch the cleanup were clogging the road, the announcer solemnly declared.

“Perfect,” I muttered.

Twenty minutes later, I braked behind a long line of cars. Through the snowfall, I could just make out dump trucks laboring in the Loveland parking lot as they scooped away a three-story-high heap of snow, rocks, and broken trees. Under the pile was a maintenance building. The radio announcer passionately recited a rumor of a scofflaw skier who’d ducked a boundary rope and precipitated the slide. The avalanche had raced down the hillside, snapped a stand of pines like match-sticks, and buried the vacant building. Passengers riding up the high-speed quad lift had seen the skier schuss to safety—and away from being caught.

Concentrate on your driving, I warned myself, as I entered the neon-lit purgatory of the tunnel, that deep, dark passageway bored beneath the Continental Divide. After a few minutes, the snowpacked descent from the tunnel loomed ahead in the early morning grayness. When I emerged, a sudden wind whipped the van, rocking it violently. Another thick shower of snow blanketed my windshield.

I thought: What would it be like to die in an avalanche?

CHAPTER 2

At six-twenty, my van crunched into the snowpacked parking lot of the Killdeer resort. To the east, the sky was edged with pewter. My fingers ached from gripping the steering wheel. When I turned off the engine, flakes instantly obscured the windshield. I hopped out onto the snowpack. A frigid breeze bit through my ski jacket and I stumbled to get my footing. Righting myself, I tugged up my hood, cinched it tight, and donned padded mittens.

I struggled to get my bearings. Through the swirling drapery of flakes, the parking lot’s digital display flashed the happy announcement that the temperature stood at 19°. Windchill –16°. Welcome to ski country!

Lights from the ski area cast a pall across the imposing face of Killdeer Mountain. Columns of snow spiraled around the lampposts. A lead-colored cloud shrouded the runs. The digital sign went on to proclaim that the mountain now boasted an Eighty-five-inch base topped with Thirty-three inches of new!!!—ski-talk for how much snow we’ve got.