They exited the lift, Farley racing ahead. Connor stopped to slip his ski pole straps over his wrists. Suddenly a loudwhump!shook the air.
“What was that?” the lift tech called out.
Connor’s heart hammered painfully, and he turned to look up the ridge as a curtain of snow broke away, a fifty-foot-wide white waterfall boiling down the slope. Snow flowed like water, a cascade of white silk. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so deadly.
Connor’s radio crackled, snapping him from his trance. “What’s going on up on the ridge?” Anders shouted into the radio.
“Did you hear that sound?” Connor asked.
“An explosion,” Anders said.
The exact sound Connor had heard hundreds of times as the cast boosters they deployed for avalanche mitigation detonated.“Get everyone and all the dogs up here now!” Connor shouted. Then he whistled for Farley and started toward the snowfield where the avalanche had run out.
Half a dozen skiers descended on Connor. “What happened?”
“Was that an explosion?”
“Is anyone hurt?”
Connor ignored the questions and raised his voice to be heard over the clamor. “Did anyone see anyone in the avalanche?”
“I saw at least one guy,” a woman said. “Maybe two.”
“Farley, find,” Connor ordered. The dog set out. Connor shucked off his pack, then pulled out and began assembling a collapsible avalanche probe. By the time he stepped onto the field, three other patrollers and dogs were searching. It was still snowing hard, and wind blew the snow around in a vertigo-inducing wall of white.
“I’ve got somebody!” Anders called from the edge of the field. He and another man dug at the snow with their hands. By the time Connor reached them, a man in a bright red ski helmet and a blue jacket was sitting up.
“I’m okay,” he said. Then he winced. “Except I think my leg might be broken.” He looked around. “What happened? One minute I was climbing up the ridge and the next…”
“You were caught in an avalanche,” Anders said.
“Was there anyone with you or near you when the slide happened?” Connor asked. “Anyone else we should be looking for?”
The man shook his head. “I was all by myself up there. I think I was the only one crazy enough to be out here in this weather.”
“We’ll have you out of here in just a minute,” Anders said. He raised his voice to shout, “Somebody get a toboggan over here! And a snowmobile!”
Farley and the other dogs continued to search, along with people with probes, but they turned up no one else. Most of theslide had been confined to a narrow ridge that fell away into a steep valley—not terrain favored by even the most adventurous skiers. The rest had quickly spent itself in a shallower area.
“I’ve talked to everybody I can find,” Raz reported when they had all gathered at the edge of the snowfield. “No one else reports anyone missing. And no one saw anyone else up here before the slide let loose.”
Connor stared out across the debris field. It was a relatively small area, and he was confident they had covered it all. And the sad truth was, anyone they hadn’t uncovered by now was most likely dead. “I’m calling the search,” he said.
Only ski patrol was left on this part of the mountain. The lift had closed as soon as the avalanche occurred and wouldn’t reopen until tomorrow. Overnight the grooming crew would clean up the inbounds area. By tomorrow no evidence would remain of the slide.
“That snow didn’t let loose like that by itself,” Brian said.
“I heard the explosion,” Nina said. “It sounded just like a cast booster.”
“It had to be one of the ones that was stolen,” Anders said.
“Did anyone see anyone up here acting suspiciously?” Brian asked.
Connor thought of the two snowboarders hurrying away from the area. But he had no idea who they were or if they had been doing anything other than rushing to meet friends.
“Was there just one explosion?” Lily asked.
“I only heard one,” Nina said, and the others nodded.
