Jessi Gates
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The boys could have been doing this. They could have gone high-marking on any of the surrounding mountains. Although from the ground the slopes looked smooth, Lars knew that there were countless mounds and crevasses that could conceal two snow machines and their riders.
By the time he and Annie had reached the staging area for the search, the rest of the team had parked their machines and were huddled together. Someone had brought a cord of pine, and the rusted burn barrel was churning out sweet-smelling warmth. The wood fire snapped in the dry air.
Lars walked over to the burn barrel with Annie. Arnold Palmer was there, sipping from a steaming paper cup.
“Last day, Mom,” Arnold said to them as they approached.
Annie took a deep breath and nodded.
This was the fifth morning of the search. Lars looked around the Bowl with a feeling of resignation. Ten men and an old woman could cover little ground in the face of such magnitude. He returned to study Arnold, who was just finishing his cup of coffee and wrapping a scarf around his red beard, tucking it under the bottom edge of his sunglasses. They were Arnold’s nephews, Craig and Danny – his sister’s sons.
It was ten in the morning, and the sun was just cresting the summit of Deer Mountain. It would skim across the peaks toward the west until slipping back down at two, leaving the Bowl in dusky twilight. These winter searches had to be efficient. Even the daylight was against them.
The search party stretched into the long, sparse line they had perfected over the past few days and began to walk, with Annie and Lars in the middle and Henry with the GPS, keeping the group on track. Overhead, Bob Clarke’s bright red Super Cub buzzed the airspace.
They trudged up the slopes of Deer Mountain. Lars scanned the glittering expanse, hoping as they climbed each small rise that the two snow machines would be revealed on the other side, and that the teenage boys would be found: shaken, frostbitten, but alive.
Deep snowdrifts covered the mountainside – the deepest they had encountered all week. The snow came up over his boots – at times all the way up to his knees – weighing down each step. He began to sweat under his layers. He could hear Annie’s breathing grow ragged. She fell behind and started to walk in Lars’s footprints, and he took smaller steps, slowing his pace so that she could catch her breath.
Arnold looked back, and Lars waved him forward.
“We’ll be all right!” he called, his voice absorbed by the wind.
The line moved on without them.
Lars and Annie continued to walk in silence, following the footprints broken into the snow by the rest of the party. Her breathing still came in croupy gasps. There was so much ground to cover. Too much.
He crested another hill, turned and offered his hand, helping Annie up the last few steps so that she too could see that there was nothing on the other side but snow. Lars unzipped his coat, allowing the cold air access to his overheated body. The sun was swinging to the west. The shadow of the mountain was creeping towards them.
He sat down, facing the valley below. Five peaks loomed around the field. The boys could be on any one of them. It was even possible they had pushed over one of the passes and triggered an avalanche on the back side of this range. If that had