Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  As I crested the pass, the wind hit with the type of blast that sucks the air out of your lungs. You can tell wind speed by the way you have to stand in it. Thirty miles an hour just feels unpleasant. At fifty, the word you'll use is “buffeted.” This was the type of thing that makes you lean forward just to stay put. It caught me by surprise and damn near knocked me over backward. I don't think I even looked at whatever was on the other side. Okay, I thought, that wasn't worth it. I was just starting to turn back when I heard the voice.

  There was a trail junction at the pass. One fork headed on down the other side—the next leg of the loop I'd originally planned. The other stayed high, and the voice was coming from somewhere up there. Not far up, or I'd never have heard it.

  I waited a moment for it to repeat, but it didn't. I wasn't really sure I'd heard anything at all, but I had to find out.

  I was using a walking stick, or I'm not sure I could have stayed on my feet for the first few yards. Then the trail moved away from the crest and I no longer had to lean at such an absurd angle.

  I found her within a hundred yards, which is good because I'm not sure how much farther I'd have gone. She was young—maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, though once you get over fifty, they all look like kids—with long, blonde hair curling around her face. She had no pack and was wearing a cotton sweatshirt and sweatpants, with “Cougar” emblazoned across her chest. She was sitting in the lee of a tree, hunched forward, whimpering, and at first I wasn't even sure she realized I was there. Then she looked at me with these big eyes and I knew there was still at least some intelligence behind them. But she didn't seem all that with-it, because all she said was something that sounded like “ick,” which seemed like a huge understatement. Though with the wind roaring in the trees, it could have been anything.

  Getting her to her feet was difficult, and when she hit that wind she nearly rebelled. But all of my gear was down by the lake and I figured it was better to get her down to it, more or less out of the wind, than to bring it up to her. I gave her my windbreaker, then found that seconds later, I was shivering. She herself was trembling like a leaf—which is a lot better than not shivering at all.

  I coaxed, cajoled, yelled, and eventually got her, first, into the wind, then at long last, out of the worst of it and down the trail toward the lake. At the first semi-flat spot, I left her leaning against another tree, ran for my pack and dashed back up—to the extent you can dash at that elevation. Even in that short time, she'd quit shivering.

  I don't think I've ever pitched a tent faster: two minutes, tops. I maneuvered her inside, then grabbed my sleeping bag. I was about to stuff her into it when I realized that somehow, possibly from being up in the fog, possibly by panicking and working up a sweat, she'd gotten all of that cotton damp. So I made her strip as far as she'd go—don't look at me that way: wet cotton is useless, and besides, I couldn't afford to have her bring all of that moisture into our only sleeping bag.

  Then I kind of swaddled her in all the spare clothing I had—she was way past being able to put her arms and legs into the right holes—and zipped her into the bag. All told it took a damn sight longer than pitching the tent. Then I fired up the stove and poured about three cups of warm tea into her and, when she wouldn't drink any more, filled a couple of water bottles with hot water and slid them into the bag next to her.

  I'd never saved anyone's life before, and you know, it's only gratifying after the fact. At the time, it's scary—and frustrating because you want to be two people, especially if you're trying to get an uncoordinated person into clothes about six sizes too large for her.

  Ten or fifteen minutes went by in which the weather got steadily worse and I wondered whether I'd done the right things quickly enough. Then I realized there was something else I could do, so I climbed in the sleeping bag with her. You'd laughed earlier, but my own I'm-not-going-to-be-a-dirty-old-man-phobia nearly deprived her of a source of warmth a lot better than a couple of water bottles.

  Meanwhile, I was beginning to wonder how she'd gotten up here, and the answers didn't look good. There'd been no other cars in the parking lot when I'd started, and there was no way she could have hiked past my camp, afterward, without my hearing. That meant she'd come from the opposite direction, and that was a long way away. And there weren't many twenty-one-year-old girls who'd backpack alone, even if it wasn't October.

  When she finally went from not shivering back to shivering and then to only intermittent shivering, I slipped out of the sleeping bag and out of the tent. Maybe she'd camped near here and was trying to get back when I found her. Maybe her friends would be there, safe and sound. Unlikely, but I might also find some spare clothing and an extra sleeping bag. But there weren't many campable spots near the lake, and all were vacant. So much for that idea.

  When I got back, I checked the pockets of her sweatpants, but there was nothing but a granola wrapper and a weather-palm much like mine. Too bad she'd not been more skeptical of what she'd read on the palm. Out of curiosity, I powered it up, queried a new ‘cast, and found it was still fixed on partly cloudy, which I suppose was accurate because I could see breaks over the low country, a few miles away. Up here, though, we were definitely in the wrong part.

  Back in the tent, I found that she was shivering less, though I wasn't sure she fully understood where she was. Still, when the draft hit her, her eyes fluttered, then focused on me.

  “Ick,” she said again.

  I shook my head, trying not to kneel on her as I zipped the tent shut behind me. It really was extremely tiny.

  She tried again, and this time I realized it was a name. Mick. Or maybe Nick. At the time, I couldn't tell. “Ju fine dim?"

  It was a struggle to understand her, but eventually, I learned that she and her boyfriend—definitely Mick—had camped at another lake called Emerald. Or maybe it was Topaz, or Ruby. Some jewel. I knew it then, but forget now.

  The lake was a couple of miles up the ridge, and they'd tried to hike down here, expecting the clouds to break as the forecast implied. Instead, it had been unbelievably cold, and they'd turned back. Mick was in a hurry, and some of the things he'd said hadn't made a lot of sense. She'd struggled to keep up—that's when she got sweaty—then she got colder and slower, and he'd disappeared into the fog. After a while she'd realized she was never going to get back up to their camp and that her only hope was to go down, even though she didn't know where the trail went. Then she'd gotten so, so tired and cold, and she'd sat down to rest a bit and wasn't sure how long she'd been there when I came along.

  I may be male, but there are times when I'm a traitor to my gender. I don't know what it is about guys that makes their reasoning so much more vulnerable to hypothermia, but I'd encountered this once before, up in the Washington Cascades when a group of us found a woman abandoned by her husband. She wasn't in anywhere nearly as bad shape and we had lots of extra clothing, but when we got her to the trailhead, the damn husband had taken the car and gone home. Maybe it's a body-fat thing. Women get cold easier, but they have that extra layer that may help them last longer. Maybe I should be more sympathetic, but I always hoped that she went home and divorced the jerk.

  Still, my job was simple. I'm not brave, but there are times when there are things you must do. Maybe Mick was back in camp, warm and dry. More likely, he was in trouble and I had to find him. If I could.

  I took back as much of my clothing as I could, and headed off, up the ridge. I had my pack, but I didn't have as much in it as I'd have liked because the girl was using the most important items: the tent and sleeping bag.

  The wind was worse than ever, and within minutes the visibility had clamped down to almost nothing. What little I could see was damp, gray, and going sideways, fast. According to the map, it was only a mile and a half to the other lake. In good conditions: forty minutes. Now, it must have taken twice that. Every few paces, I'd stop to shout, though it seemed hopeless. If Mick hadn't gotten back to his tent, he'd probably collapsed. If he'
d wandered off the trail, I'd never find him unless he had the energy to answer my calls.

  The lake came upon me by surprise. One moment, I was plodding along. The next, I was staring at gray water. Definitely not emerald. Or azure. Or whatever. It wasn't very big; even in the fog I could see tree-shapes on the far side. Shouting loudly enough that it hurt my throat, I started combing the area for a campsite. A couple of minutes later, I found it—or more precisely, heard it.

  The tent was a cheap discount-store model, snagged in a clump of bushes where it snapped in the wind like a flag in a gale. Its poles were smashed and there was nothing inside, but downwind I found a sleeping bag, impaled on a branch, leaking the last of its feathers. The other bag was nowhere to be seen, though I wasted several minutes looking.

  Upwind from the tent, I found where it must have been pitched. Some of the stakes were still in place, plus a backpack, stove, and a few other items too heavy to blow away. Only one pack, and rifling through it revealed the wrong type of clothes for Mick. Mostly cotton, mostly damp, mostly useless.

  I was colder than I'd ever been in my life, but I forced myself to think. Mick had come back here and picked up his pack. Maybe good, maybe not. If he was as poorly equipped as his girlfriend, there wouldn't be much of value in it, and he'd left the stove, which actually would have been useful. I forgave him a bit for leaving the girl. His judgment was obviously shot. What he should have done was retrieve what was left of the tent, find a big rock or other windbreak, use the stove fuel to light a fire, and hunker down. Instead, he was trying to walk out.

  Opening the map without having the wind rip it away was difficult, but eventually I learned that there were two ways to the trailhead where the girl had told me they'd started. One dropped into a valley that should be reasonably sheltered, but was long and roundabout. The other stayed high most of the way. If it were me, I'd have taken the long way, but most people would probably try the short one.

  I wanted nothing more than to turn back, but that wasn't an option I could live with. I'd brought my own stove, so I left Mick's where it was and went back to walking, faster than before because I wasn't bothering to shout since there was now so much wind I'd never hear him unless he was close enough that I'd see him, anyway.

  In a half-mile, I found the sleeping bag: a damp mess in a poorly waterproofed stuff sack, dropped, most likely, in an effort to lighten the load. I left it: wet down is worse than wet cotton and takes forever to dry. Thirty minutes later, I found the pack.

  Then, it started to snow: tiny, deadly flakes, hard-driven before the wind. I was getting pretty cold and my own judgment wasn't what it could have been, so I hurried on until suddenly I realized that the snow was starting to pile up. Not deeply, but inexorably.

  That's where my weather knowledge saved me. I didn't care what the ‘cast said. If there was one thing I was sure of about conditions like this, it was that once it started to snow, it wouldn't be a mere flurry.

  A few hours earlier, I'd saved a life. Now, I gave up on one. It was hard, because I kept hoping to find him around the next bend. But realistically, if I did, there wasn't much I could do. And the moment the snow piled up deeply enough that I couldn't follow the trail, we were both dead, whether I found him or not.

  As it was, I nearly waited too long. The snow was worse than the fog: a swirling nightmare in white, and the trail, typically Nevadan, was faint at best. Now, it was disappearing with amazing speed.

  There's all kinds of equipment today that would have made that hike more bearable. Some existed back then: thermal boots with pull-tabs that release a slow, chemical heat. Battery-warmed gloves. Etc., etc. A simple web-linked satphone would have been nice. Hell, your screamer would probably have been yelling for help, already.

  But I never take phones into the wilderness because you wind up trying to work. Or you spend all your time checking the stock market or your satmail. That's why I liked the weather-palm. It gave me what I wanted, and spared the rest. Of course, right then, I'd have gladly used all the tech I could get. Though I'm not sure how much good calling for help would have done, because it would have taken a long time for anyone to get there. Maybe that's another reason not to rely too much on such things.

  Instead, I trudged, staggered, and tried not to think of Mick. When I got back to his campsite, I wasn't in much better shape than he must have been when he left it, because I never even thought of holing up and building a fire or of rifling the girl's pack for the few useful items it might have contained. I was totally fixated on getting back to my tent, and wishing I'd not left any of my clothing with her. By the end, I was counting paces. Fifty steps, and then I could turn my back to the wind and count to fifty. Fifty/fifty. Probably about my odds of actually making it because the trail really was disappearing and I was in the fog the whole way. Partly cloudy, my ass. That means you're under the cloud, not in it.

  Earlier, I'd helped the girl. This time, it was her turn to help me. Maybe it was a good thing I'd left the clothing with her. She found me about where I'd found her, and while she was too petite to half-carry me the way I'd half-carried her, she could at least take the pack. I later learned that every few minutes she'd hiked up as far as she dared, then gone back to the tent to warm up. It must have taken unbelievable guts, but it sure made my last few minutes easier, because she'd tromped out a nice, easy-to-follow path, even though the snow was starting to fall pretty heavily by then. I suppose that if you die in the wilderness the details hardly matter, but somehow it would have been worse if it was by losing my way that close to shelter. I'd really hate for my last thought to be how ironic.

  Back at the tent, we again shared the sleeping bag, this time with the roles reversed. She didn't say much at first, and neither did I because there wasn't much to say. I'd tried, and failed. Not the stuff of heroes. I hadn't decided whether to let her know that if Mick had been just a little wiser, he might have saved himself.

  While I'd been gone, she'd folded her wet sweats and tidied up what little I'd left in the tent: make-work, most likely. Now she reached into a ditty bag and pulled out her palm. “Stupid thing,” she said. “Mick loved gadgets."

  I thought of the pull-tab boots I'd wished for, but it obviously wasn't the time to tell her that gadgets sometimes have their place. It's a matter of keeping your brain engaged—and I'd nearly failed that one myself. Though if I'd been smarter, I'd be back at my car and she'd be dead. Irony can work both ways.

  A couple of minutes later, she spoke again. “Is it wrong?” she asked, and at first I thought she was still thinking about the ‘cast. But she was off somewhere deeper. “I should have been worried about Mick,” she said, “and at first I was. Then, all I could think was that if you didn't come back, I had no idea how to get out of here.” Then she added, so quietly it was hard to hear over the storm, “Mick and I had only been together a couple of months.” And, even more quietly: “Why did he leave me?"

  What do you say to something like that? I was warming up enough that I could find her hand and give it a not-utterly-uncoordinated squeeze. Enough that my half-warmed fingers hurt like hell when she squeezed back, hard. Enough to tell her how hypothermia makes you stupid long before it makes you unable to act on that stupidity. Maybe Mick thought he was going for help. Maybe he'd lost track of whether she was behind or ahead. Most likely he'd just panicked, but my own brain was functioning well enough not to see any percentage in telling her that. Nor did I tell her that if he'd not left her, they might both be up on that ridge somewhere.

  As for the is-it-wrong question, I had no answer to that. I thought of her, with nothing but wet cotton and a few borrowed clothes. With a tent and sleeping bag but no way to carry them. Without a map. I'd been so busy, first trying to find Mick, then trying to save myself, that it had never crossed my mind that if I died, she probably would too. It made me feel a bit better about giving up on Mick.

  Let me tell you something: two people in a sleeping bag makes for one long night. Especially if so
meone has to get up every couple hours to knock snow off the tent. Then you're both cold for a while, afterward. Despite what you think, it's just not sexy, especially when you're trying not to worry about what's going to happen tomorrow. The moment there was enough light to see my hand in front of my face, I was out of there, digging my pack out of the snow and checking the weather: by eye, not by palm, because I'd checked that a dozen times already and it was still saying partly cloudy, though it was now talking about a high temp of 17°.

  For once, partly cloudy was right. The lenticulae were gone, leaving in their wake puffs of white against a background that would gradually lighten to a flawless eggshell. It was like being mocked by a perfect Christmas card when you don't feel anything like Christmas. The snow was shin deep, except in drifts, where it was a lot deeper.

  The girl was in as much hurry to get out of the tent as I was, and a moment later, she was standing beside me, arms wrapped across her chest, hands under her armpits. That's when I realized just how miserable the day was going to be. I only had one set of gloves.

  She didn't say anything, and I didn't either. Not about gloves. Not about the scenery. Particularly not about Mick. We'd talked quite a bit after some of those knock-the-snow-off-tent sessions, though not again about anything deep: it was too soon for that. Her name was Sanda—no, not Sandra. I don't know why. Why is anyone named anything? She was a recent college grad, with a major in something fun but economically useless, like history, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. I later learned that Mick was similar, only he'd not had time to learn the answer.

  Hiking out was awful. I can't tell you the number of times I wished I had another pair of gloves. Or a pair of those pull-tab boots, though I'd have pulled the tabs the day before and used up the magic chemicals, so that was a silly wish. Luckily, neither of us frostbit anything, though the first few hours were nip-and-tuck. The good thing was that we were going down and the route was dead simple: follow the creek until you reached the car. Impossible to get lost, if you knew basically where you were going.