Tahoe Avalanche

by Todd Borg

  “That’s ridiculous. He’s trying to take the coins for himself.”

  The clouds opened just for a moment, but without lights, I couldn’t see anything other than the vague white slope leading down and the rock wall to the side. I sensed movement to one side, but then the clouds were back.

  “It was a good setup,” I yelled, trying to keep Carmen engaged so that April could move farther away. “You put the note in Claude Sisuug’s cabin to make it look like he was the killer. Where’d you bury him? In some slide by his cabin?”

  “Don’t listen to him, April!” Carmen hissed in the dark. “The others died in avalanches!” Carmen shouted. “They were accidents! You can’t just kill people with avalanches.”

  “Carmen, we have remnants of the explosives used to start the slides as well as pieces of the bombs you and Paul set off at my cabin. In the spring we’ll have remnants of the detonators.”

  “You can’t honestly believe that.” Carmen’s voice was shrill. “Push a button on a remote or something and start an avalanche?”

  “I just talked to your father a few hours ago, Carmen. He said you’d just called. You told him you were in Redding and would be in Eureka in a few hours. You wouldn’t lie to him, Carmen, unless you were trying to misdirect me and the cops.”

  “April, tell him he’s wrong.” Carmen sounded sad and frustrated. It was good acting. There wasn’t any hint of calculation.

  April still hadn’t said anything.

  “April,” I called out through the dark. “Lori didn’t die in the avalanche. Paul smothered her with snow at Ada’s vineyard and brought her body up to Tahoe in the back of his truck.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Carmen said. “She died in the avalanche. It was in the paper.”

  “The dirt in the vineyard had unusual bugs in it. The coroner found one of those bugs in Lori’s lungs.”

  A light switched on down below, sending a glow up through the fog. A break came in the cloud. A small figure was holding the lantern. She was off to the side of the campsite, away from the compressed snow where they’d been working. She was waist-deep in soft snow, stranded, unable to go farther without skis or snowshoes. She held the lamp up as if trying to look around.

  Over at the rock wall stood a stockier figure. Carmen held her arms out in front of her. There were small dark objects in her hands. She was looking at them.

  A bright flash of light lit the clouds above like a camera flashbulb. I couldn’t tell where the flash came from. A fraction of a second later came another flash. Two deep muffled booms came from up the slope behind me. The time delay from flash to boom was about a second. Sound travels about one thousand feet per second, which meant the avalanche was beginning a quarter mile or less up the slope. We only had a few moments.

  “APRIL, RUN!” I shouted. “BAINS AND ROSTEN MOVE! CARMEN SET OFF A SLIDE!”

  I saw April try to move, lifting one boot out of the deep powder, struggling to take a small step forward.

  I turned back toward Spot. “Come, boy!”

  I skied forward across the slope as fast as I could, lifting my skis and stepping up, breaking trail through the deep powder. I tried to push back with my single pole, but it was like pushing at air. I angled down a little, thinking that I could develop a bit of forward momentum. But the snow was too deep and my skis would not slide forward. I turned so I was pointed more down the slope. Gravity started to help, but I still was barely moving forward.

  From up above me came a deep rumble. I turned to a 45-degree angle and high-stepped down through the deep stuff, doing a kind of run, trying not to lose my balance. I got up a little momentum. I tried to push it faster, but the soft snow provided too much resistance.

  I worried about Spot, but my thoughts went to the growing roar like rolling thunder and the heavy wind that pushed down the mountain from above. The wind seemed to explode and it lifted me into the air. I had a sudden thought about a town in Texas where the people saw black clouds coming and shouted ‘Muerte Cielo’...

  SIXTY-FIVE

  The snow hit me like it was a solid object. The surging white wave knocked me off my feet and onto my side. I remembered the mantra. Try to swim as it moves, try to stay afloat. If you are buried, try to make a space in front of your face for air before the slide comes to a stop.

  But swimming with my skis on, my left arm in a sling, and my right arm holding a ski pole, felt like trying to swim with no limbs at all. The snow flowed up around me, and I quickly sunk. Rushing snow closed in around my head. I tried to take a breath at the last moment, but I was too late and I inhaled a mouthful of snow that choked me.

  I coughed violently. But it felt like my mouth was filled with cement. In a mere second my brain was already suffering from oxygen deficit. I had a sudden understanding that I was going to die. In my last moment of consciousness, I had none of those final thoughts we hear about, no flashbacks about my life, no regrets, no tunnel of light. Only severe frustration that I hadn’t succeeded at what I came up on the mountain to do. I was mad as hell.

  Then a quirk of snow currents spit me sideways in the river of snow, and I popped up and out to the side of the flow. I came to a stop with my upper body projecting out of the snow as the rest of the slide blasted on down the mountain.

  I coughed out a mouthful of snow and bent over, right hand on the snow in front of me, gasping and choking, trying to get some air into my lungs. I spit and hacked, and snow still went into my lungs. My ears and eyes were caked with snow. My hat and head lamp were gone. I was okay, but my legs were buried.

  I wiped snow from my eyes and turned to look down through an opening in the fog.

  Bains was down below me, on the other side of the slide, out of the avalanche path. He held his flashlight out, pointing it toward Carmen, who was climbing the rock wall, flashlight in hand, safely above the avalanche that raged beneath her.

  Then Carmen slipped, her right boot scrabbling at the rock. She shifted her other hand, trying for better position. Her left boot shifted, then slipped, and her hands lost their purchase. She slid down the rock, flashlight jerking.

  The avalanche hit Carmen the way a racket hits a tennis ball. She was bounced down below the rock wall and buried in a couple of seconds.

  In a moment it was over. As the snow in the air began to settle, I saw Bains playing his light back and forth over the slide residue. There was nothing to see. No tent, no toboggan, no tarp, no women.

  If we got to them soon enough, we could still save them. I tried to move, but it was futile. I was buried at an angle up to my thighs.

  I looked across the slope, scanning for Spot.

  “Spot! Are you there?”

  He made a frustrated woof. I turned toward the sound. There was movement down below me. Spot was struggling. “Are you okay, boy?” I stared at him, trying to make a pattern in the darkness. He appeared to be on his side, his right front leg free and his left front leg partly trapped. His rear half was buried. He jerked and pulled, turned and bit at the snow.

  “Come on, Spot!” I yelled. “You can do it!” My hope was that because he didn’t have big feet like people and because his legs were tapered, he’d be able to pull himself out. But cement-like snow would hold a dog nearly as well as a person.

  “Spot, come!” I shouted.

  He twisted and turned, popped out his left front leg, then his right rear leg. He bucked and pulled and I worried that he would tear the ligaments and tendons of his left rear leg.

  From down below came the sweep of Bains’s flashlight beam.

  I yelled out. “ROSTEN! ARE YOU THERE?”

  “I’M HERE!” shouted Rosten.

  “The girls are buried,” Bains shouted up at me, unaware that I’d seen Carmen fall into the slide. “I saw April go down, too, but I have no clue where to dig. The slide could have carried them a long way. We’d need a full team with avalanche probes.”

  “If we can get Spot and me out, I can get him to search.”

  B
ains bent down and took off his skis. “I’ll help get you out,” he shouted and started running up the compressed slide residue.

  The clouds came back and I was surrounded by a gray mist.

  In a minute he appeared in the fog.

  “You okay?” he said when he saw me.

  “Yeah. Help me get out of here, then we’ll dig Spot out. Maybe he can find them.”

  Bains threw off his pack and unstrapped his shovel.

  He started digging in front of me.

  “My feet go back at an angle,” I said. “Move behind me. Yeah. A little farther. Good. I’d guess my feet are about three feet below you.”

  I saw a light in the cloud. Rosten came sidestepping up the compacted slide at a fast pace. He had his headlight on. He jerked off his pack, grabbed his shovel and joined Bains. They worked like machines.

  “Try not to chop off any of my body parts,” I said, dead serious.

  They got down to my skis, unhooked the bindings and, leaving the skis buried, had me free in a few minutes.

  I grabbed my own shovel and scrambled down to Spot who was still trying to free his left rear leg. I stepped the shovel in carefully. It would be easy to cut a dog’s leg. I levered snow out of the area, moving gently but as fast as possible.

  The snow must have loosened, for Spot jerked his leg out in a minute. He walked away, limping on his left rear leg.

  “Come here, boy,” I said. He came to me and I ran my hands over his leg, feeling for broken bones or bad swelling. Everything felt fine and he didn’t cry out, so I hoped that he was just sore, or that he had pinpricks from a pinched nerve. He moved around, walking better with each step.

  “Okay, Spot. Come with me.”

  I ran down the hard-packed surface of the avalanche path. The wind was coming down the mountain and I wanted to get Spot below where April and Carmen had been so that he would be downwind of any scent.

  “You think he can smell them?” Bains shouted, as he and Rosten ran next to me.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. The wind is so strong that any scent coming out of the snow is likely to be immediately dispersed.”

  We got to an area well below and downwind of where I’d last seen April and Carmen.

  Bains shined his flashlight on the mountainside. “April was to this side, so I’d guess that she is somewhere along a line below that point.” Bains turned and shined his light toward the far side of the slide. “And Carmen is likely under that area.”

  From the length of the slide residue it looked like the snow could have carried the women a long distance. I ran farther down the mountain, stopped and turned to Spot. I grabbed him on his chest and back. “Find the victim, Spot!”

  He looked at me, almost puzzled, as if he didn’t understand why this was something we were doing so frequently.

  I held him again and gave him a strong vibration. “Find the victim, Spot!”

  I gave him a little smack, and he loped up the slide, nose in the air. He went up at an angle to the left and turned around and came partway back down. He stopped and sniffed at the snow and walked over to the right a few feet. He seemed to look off to the side, and then started walking back up the slide.

  Bains and Rosten kept their lights on him as Spot faded into the storm, but I could sense where he was.

  When Spot had gone up farther than the women had originally been, I knew there was no chance they could be up there. He was upwind of them, so he couldn’t smell them, either.

  “Spot, come. Come on back down.” I called him back.

  He trotted down, his limp mostly gone.

  I went through the staging again, the hold, the vibration, the command.

  He did the same as before, trotting back and forth. It wasn’t the organized search of Honey G. It was haphazard and random. Then he alerted.

  He was under the area where Bains had predicted that Carmen would be buried. Spot sniffed at the air, turned and ran a short distance, then sniffed at the snow. He moved around in a lopsided circle. Then he stopped, pawed at the snow, stuck his nose on the snow and began digging.

  “That’s got to be Carmen,” Bains yelled.

  Bains yelled to Rosten. “Come help dig. Owen can get Spot to search again for April.”

  We ran toward Spot. I praised him, petted him, told him he was the best, then pulled him away as Rosten began digging furiously.

  I brought Spot a good distance down the slope, far enough to be downwind of any percolating scent, and again gave him the command to find the victim.

  Spot ran directly back up the slope to where Rosten was digging.

  I followed, frustrated, not knowing what to do. Any approach I could think of, positive or negative, would seem to give him the wrong message. If I told him he was good, he would keep going back to Carmen. If I told him he was doing it wrong, he might think he wasn’t supposed to find a person, but maybe something else.

  I took his collar. “Good boy, Spot. But there’s another victim. Over here.” I turned him to face down the mountain, toward the other side of the slide. I made a hand motion, pointing toward where I thought April might be buried. “Find the victim, Spot. Find!”

  He trotted a few steps down the slope, then stopped and looked back at me, his confusion clear in the furrows of his brow.

  “Go on, boy.” I gestured downslope. “There’s another victim. Find the victim.”

  It felt hopeless. I was trying to communicate as if he were human. I was pointing him away from Carmen, but he probably wasn’t downwind of April, so he couldn’t pick up her scent. But if I took him downwind again and sent him on a search back up the slope, he’d focus on Carmen’s scent.

  Spot went another few yards, sniffed at the air and stopped, his misunderstanding obvious.

  I trotted down the slide. Spot came with me. “Find the victim, Spot,” I said, over and over, trying to get him to consider the area where I was taking him.

  We got well down the slope and came to the bottom of the slide. Spot still showed no sign of any other scent. We were now downwind. I turned him around and pointed him back up the slope. I gave him the command again.

  He trotted up the slope, stopped, and gazed toward where Rosten and Bains were digging.

  “Not there, Spot. Another victim,” I said, thinking my attempt at communication was futile. “Find,” I shouted, trying, but failing, to put enthusiasm into my voice.

  I tried not to think about the minutes ticking away. But I couldn’t help realizing that if fifteen minutes was the average survival rate, then we were down to maybe five minutes before all hope of finding anyone alive was gone.

  I wanted to run up and grab Spot and demand that he be more efficient! Why couldn’t he do like Honey G and follow a grid? Why couldn’t he go left across the slide, move up just a little and go back to the right?! Honey G methodically searched the whole damn mountain, and my dog was ambling around as if he were at a picnic. It looked like he might still be sniffing the air, but he was so casual. It was infuriating to realize that if only I’d done a better job of preparing him, teaching him, he would do a better job of searching.

  I wondered if I should call him back down and start him over. I wondered if April and Carmen were already dead, their warm breaths having glazed the snow around their mouths, cutting off the oxygen and suffocating them.

  I turned a full circle in the snow, ready to explode at my inability to do anything. I dropped to my knees in the snow, wondering if I was missing something, wondering if I should just start digging where I guessed April had been carried by the slide. Anything was better than nothing. But it would be pointless. When you’re up on the mountain with a major storm coming, any activity you do just for the sake of making you feel like you’re doing something is stupid. It wears you out, makes you sweat, and ultimately puts you at greater risk for hypothermia when the sweat starts evaporating. The only thing worse than losing people to an avalanche, is to lose more people because of stupidity after the avalanche.

  The simple real
ity was that our only chance was my dog, and I hadn’t given him enough training.

  I looked up again, ready to call him back, when he alerted.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Spot stuck his nose in the air and spun around in a circle. He stopped, then ran straight up the mountain, into the wind. He somehow understood that the scent came out of the wind, not out of the snow at his feet.

  I started running up the slope, carrying my shovel in my good hand.

  Spot jerked to a stop, sniffed at the snow, moved several paces back down the mountain. His movements were frantic, almost as if he were panicked with fear.

  He swiped at the snow with his paw, then stuck his nose in the depression. He moved to another place, dug and sniffed.

  He made a barking cry and began digging. His foot-strokes were furious, his hind legs spread for stability, his front legs throwing the snow out between his rear legs.

  I heard Bains shout, and saw Rosten leave where they were digging for Carmen and run toward Spot. Rosten slipped and fell. He slid down the compacted snow. His shovel flew out of his hands, and it rocketed down like a sled.

  I angled sideways, tried to grab it and missed. It flew on by. I turned to watch it in the faint hope that it might hit a rock or snowy obstruction and stop. But there was nothing. I was turning back when I saw a movement below.

  Out of the shadows came Bill, leaping sideways like the football player he was thirty years ago. He plucked the shovel out of the air, hit the ground and slid to a stop.

  I started back up the mountain, aware that even though Bill had caught the shovel, he wouldn’t be able to hobble up the mountain fast enough to help us in time.

  I got to Spot. I held the end of the shovel with my left hand, which was still in the sling. With my wounded arm screaming, I shoveled like a backhoe, churning through the snow, hurling it off to the side.

  Spot was already down two feet, his long front legs perfectly suited to digging deep holes.

  When Rosten got to me, I handed him the shovel. When he’d made good progress in one direction, he shifted around to widen the hole in the other direction. I kneeled down and dug with my right hand. More movement caught my attention. I looked downslope.