Racing Storm Mountain, page 6
But at the top of hill, he hit the brakes. “Oh no.” The path ahead was completely gone. In the valley below was a mess of trees and branches, half buried in a deep and thick snow soup. His sled would be hopelessly stuck, buried in powder or snagged on a branch, within seconds.
It must have been an avalanche. They were so common, especially in backcountry snowmobiling, that the state of Idaho recommended and offered a free course about them. With all the snow they’d had through the last week, it wasn’t surprising that the trail ahead had been blocked. Kelton had prepared for this. Well, he’d watched a ton of videos to try to prepare for this.
He’d have to go around the mess at the bottom of the valley ahead by side-hilling along one of the two side slopes. He’d practiced the tricky body position needed for the technique as well as he could on his stationary sled in the garage. Driving a snowmobile across the side of a mountain like that, preventing the sled from rolling or ghost-sledding out of control down that steep slope, required a lot of technique and concentration. The trouble was, side-hilling wasn’t about speed. It was a slow, careful method.
The high whine of his two pursuers roared close as Swann and the other sledder slid up and stopped near him. Kelton pulled his helmet off. Swann did too.
Who else had followed him?
The other rider removed his helmet and Kelton wanted to punch him. “Hunter! Come on, man! What are you doing here?” Of course Richie Hunter Higgins, whose family had everything, including a zillion snowmobiles, was trying to steal the shortcut he, Kelton, had discovered.
“Yeah,” Hunter said. “Swann saw your map. If you’re going to cheat, you ought to be more careful about keeping your secrets.”
Kelton glared at Swann. Of course the Richie SuperPop was doing all she could to ruin this for him. That’s what Populars did. They thought it was fun to make Grits like him miserable.
“It’s not cheating, Higgins,” Kelton fired back. “There’s nothing in the race rules says we gotta stay on the course. You might know that if you had done the work of figuring all this out like I did.” He was wasting time. He could feel the race slipping away with every moment he delayed. “You two go back. The trail ahead isn’t really passable. It’s going to take some serious backcountry shredding to get over the pass.”
“Serious backcountry . . .” Hunter circled his finger in front of his chest in a blah-blah-blah gesture. “You’re acting like a snowmobile pro, when you just got that thing running like yesterday.”
“Yeah, because I had to actually do the work. I didn’t have it all handed to me by my daddy like you.” Kelton wanted to destroy Hunter, but he hated fighting, and anything like that would take too long. “I’m going to win this race. I jumped Stone Cold Gap, no problem. I can do the rest.” Hunter fidgeted and looked away for a moment. Kelton smiled. “You didn’t make the jump, did you?”
“Only because that’s stupid,” Hunter fired back. “I’m not going to kill myself and wreck my snowmobile on a dumb jump when I can just go downstream to this place where I can ford the creek.”
“Me and Swann made the jump,” Kelton said. He exchanged a smile with Swann. “It’s OK, dude. You just have to find some courage is all.”
“There’s courage, and there’s stupidity,” Hunter said.
“You guys!” Swann shouted. “There’s a race?”
“Right,” Kelton said. “Look, the trail ahead is blocked. I’m going to side-hill the right-hand slope to get around this, and then go back on the road where it rises up the next ascent. You two go back. Side-hilling is kind of tricky. If you try it and end up rolling down the mountain getting stuck, that’s on you. I ain’t your babysitter. Don’t care what happens to you. For real.”
Swann blipped her engine and then sang, “Whatever you can do, I can do it better.”
“Yeah?” Kelton said. “Eat snow, SuperPop.” He shoved on his helmet and hit his throttle, heading off to the right and giving the sled more power to scramble up the slope. Once again, he remembered the snowmobiling fundamentals video he’d watched at the library, and how the pro had reminded sledders to remember to breathe. It made a lot of sense now as he gritted his teeth and scurried up the steep side of the mountain.
When he was about two hundred feet up, he eased his sled to the left while hopping over his seat so that he stood with only his left foot canted forty degrees on the right running board. His heart slammed for a second as the snowmobile began to roll left down the mountain, but Kelton quickly counter-steered, just like he’d seen in the video. “Square your shoulders to direction of travel,” he said, talking himself through the steps. “Then just blip the throttle for a little speed. Brake. Blip it. Counter-steer.” There was no trail, but he had to keep the sled level, or else he and his machine were going rolling. So on he went, slow and steady, with just his sled’s track and the back of its right ski on the slope, the left ski mostly out of the snow. Kelton held the handlebars, stood with his left foot on the right running board, and kept most of his body out to the right of the sled, sort of walking it along with his right foot stepping in the snow after every blip. It wasn’t the quickest mode of travel, but it would be faster than fighting through the mess in the basin down below.
“Oh no, no, no!” The front of his sled’s right ski caught the snow, and threatened to slap the rest of his snowmobile flat on the steep slope. He’d roll in seconds. Kelton counter-steered and regained control. His hands ached with tension on the handlebars as he struggled along, blip-brake-step, blip-brake-step.
It was working. He was doing it. But it wasn’t easy. The whole way across the slope, he felt the pull of the sled as it wanted to lie flat on its track and both skis, and for the entire way he had to fight against that pull, counter-steering and giving the sled just enough speed to keep going.
Finally he’d cleared the cluttered low basin, steered back to the trail, and begun his ascent again. Ahead, the trail wound up to its highest elevation between the two peaks before it would start down the other side. There would be another sort of bowl on the other side with the valley descending to a small lake before winding back down to the main race trail.
Kelton checked on his unwanted company. They were three-quarters of the way across the basin behind and below him. Stuck. It looked like one of them had tried to side-hill it, but had ended up sliding and tumbling down the hill. It must have been Swann. She was the braver of the two. He felt a flash of guilt, but then reminded himself he’d tried to warn them both to go back. Plus neither looked hurt.
Hunter kicked at his sled and flapped his arms around before yanking on the handlebars. Kelton laughed. Finally Mr. Popular was getting what he deserved. And if he didn’t know how to get his sled unstuck, then he definitely shouldn’t have come out here in the first place. He’d have to fend for himself.
Swann had managed to rock her snowmobile free and was advancing through the basin almost to the bottom of the trail slope below Kelton. He couldn’t deny it. That girl was tough. “Yeah,” Kelton said out loud. “But she can’t beat me.”
Kelton put the throttle on and continued his ascent. The first part of it was relatively easy going, but the farther he went, the steeper the slope became. Tons of snow down around McCall meant even more snow at elevation. Now those first few flakes falling at the start of the race had been joined by more of their friends, the beginning of what might become a new storm. Higher elevation, more snow, steeper slope. These were all prime conditions for an avalanche.
Still, he was almost halfway up this final push to the top. Once he was over the divide, it would be a lot easier coming down. If he hurried, he could still make it, maybe still win this race, even if the delays caused by the other two had slowed him down. It would be a lot closer than he expected, but victory was still possible.
About three-quarters of the way up, the ground leveled out a little, the snow so deep he was shredding powder among the tops of small pine trees. Behind him, the view stretched on beyond the basin all the way to Stone Cold Gap, and the main trail a good run past that.
The snowfall had picked up, and the wind. And Kelton wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if the snow caked on his pathetic gear was starting to chill through to his body. He clapped his hands against the cold tingle in his fingers, and stomped his running boards, trying to warm his feet.
Swann was still pursuing, and Hunter, in distant third among them, had finally freed his sled and resumed the chase, at last reaching the slope out of the basin and starting to work his way up.
“Time to get going again,” Kelton said. The snow was falling in faster, bigger flakes, especially way up above the path he’d just taken up the eastern slope. Kelton took in a sharp breath and yanked off his helmet, blinking and watching the east mountain again. It wasn’t just a snowstorm! Above a massive outcropping of rock up there, snow plumes burst in all directions like the white-hot core of big fireworks in the sky on the Fourth of July. Then the rocks were gone, erased by a growing cascade of snow, like a bubbling, expanding mist.
“Avalanche!” Kelton screamed down to the others. “Get out of there!”
Swann must have seen the problem. She started veering to the left as she made the climb toward Kelton. Good. If she could reach a higher elevation she could get above the rushing snowslide. But Hunter? He was way down there, and the giant wave of snow was coming fast.
He’d told them to go back. Why hadn’t they just turned around and gone back? Kelton bit his lip and watched helplessly as, in seconds, both Swann and Hunter vanished in a rushing white cloud. Kelton looked down on an angry swirling blankness below him, down in the basin where two of his classmates used to be.
CHAPTER 6
SWANN SCREAMED AS SNOW SWIRLED ANGRILY IN THE AIR all around her, an instant blizzard-like whiteout. Despite the sheer whiteness of it all, the landscape around her grew dark, and she couldn’t see farther than a few feet. She had no idea where she was going, no way to know if she was about to strike a boulder or a tree. Desperate, she drove her snowmobile uphill. Or at least in the direction she thought was uphill. Instantly her whole body, arms, legs, chest, and her entire snowmobile were covered in a thick layer of snow.
Was she going to be buried? Was she going to die out here? Her body shook, and her snowmobile’s engine screamed in its high-pitched whine as she helplessly squeezed her handlebars, full throttle blindly ahead.
Her left hand slipped off the handle as her snowmobile hit something and rocked dangerously to one side, but she righted it and kept going.
The area around her began to brighten. She could see farther ahead, first a tree up the slope in the distance, then a blip of something red, and a person higher up the hill.
“Kelton!” she yelled. But of course he couldn’t hear her until she finally pulled up onto his plateau. There she stopped, killed her engine, and slid off her sled, slapping her arms and chest to find her own body inside the snowman. Then she took off her helmet, the biting cold wind a welcome reminder she was still alive.
“You OK?” Kelton asked. But he was preoccupied, staring back down into the chaos below, pacing. He looked up into the rapidly falling snow, pressing his hands over his face. “No. No, no, no. I told him to go back. I told him.”
Swann stepped closer to him, reaching out to touch his shoulder but stopping herself. “Kelton?”
“You’re OK?” he asked again, finally looking at her.
“Yeah,” she said, as much to assure herself as him. “I’m fine. It was just, like, snowing super-hard down there.” She looked down the mountain too. “Hunter?”
Kelton said nothing, but stood there, staring. Finally he shook his head. “We gotta get down there. Find him. If he’s buried, we won’t have long.”
He started back toward his snowmobile, but Swann grabbed his arm. Was it her imagination, or did she hear something besides the wind? Maybe she was just remembering the constant buzz-roar of her own snowmobile. But the sound was louder, changing pitch. “Kelton!”
Kelton rushed to her side. “No way!” He smiled, laughed a little. “Come on, man,” he said quietly.
Soon the noise was unmistakable. A snowmobile engine’s low roar punctuated by higher-pitched throttled-up whines.
At last Hunter materialized out of the cloud, and hurried to their position, like Swann had been, completely plastered in a layer of snow. He looked like a marble statue, or someone trapped within a statue, beginning to crack out, as the snow fell away from him.
Hunter took off his helmet. “Woo! Oh, that was close!”
Swann laughed. The situation had changed so fast, from dangerous and terrifying, to fearful and sad, to relieved and therefore kind of hilarious. “We thought you were buried.”
Hunter bent over with his hands on his knees, letting out a big breath. “No, I don’t think the snow actually shifted around me, just fallout from the tumbling snowpack up on the mountain. But it was like a snowstorm coming at me from every direction at the same time. I could barely see.”
Swann gave him a little punch in the shoulder. It would have been hard for her to explain it, but she felt like she and Hunter were closer, not in a boyfriend-girlfriend way, but as though they were in some kind of club, the almost-trapped-in-an-avalanche society of the Idaho backcountry. “Yeah, I know! That was intense. Like it turned into night in one second.” The more she talked about it, the more the fear and shakiness fell away.
Hunter slapped her high-five, their gloved hands clapping with a thick hollow sound. It was one of the first genuine celebrations she’d had with anyone from McCall. Plenty of people wanted to hang out with her to talk about Hollywood or to see if they could get a Snowtastrophe action figure autographed by her dad or something. Nobody ever seemed to want to know or connect with her. Not really. But this was something new. It was hard to be more real than this.
“It should be safe now,” Kelton said. “Safer, anyway. I mean, the mountain can’t have avalanches all day. Eventually the snow settles down. Let’s head back.”
“What?” Hunter shouted. “Who’s the chicken now, Fielding?”
Oh no. Swann rolled her eyes. Here they went, typical guys doing typical macho one-up bragging and put-downs.
“You two could have been killed,” Kelton said. “And there’s only going to be a greater risk of avalanche the higher we go, especially when it’s snowing heavy like this.”
“We got through that just fine,” Hunter said. “You talk so big and bad about being brave enough to jump Stone Cold Gap, but then you’re afraid of getting a little snow on you?”
“An avalanche can put more than a little snow on us, Hunter. I’m serious.”
“I’m serious,” Swann said. “Serious about winning this race, and all this arguing is seriously dumb. See you at the finish line, suckers!”
“Swann, the chances of winning the race now are so slim,” Kelton began.
Swann laughed, slipped her helmet back on, and ran as best she could in the deep snow. Then she was back on her snowmobile, yanking the cable to start the engine. They were through the worst of it. If she hurried up, she could make it over the pass and back down to the racecourse in time to be right there with the leaders. If she played it right, this avalanche thing could work out in her favor, allowing her to get ahead of both Kelton and Hunter.
Swann cranked the throttle hard to get her snowmobile moving in the deep snow, and then sped farther up the trail.
“SWANN, NO!” KELTON SHOUTED. HE EXCHANGED A worried look with Hunter. Well, he, Kelton, was worried. Hunter had this snide look on his face, the expression that so many of the Populars saved for him, that kind of sneer that was a mix between pity and hate, like Kelton wasn’t good enough for any of them. Hunter ran for his sled. Kelton ran faster, or basically hobbled in the deep snow, for his own. They were typical Pops, thinking they were always right, trying to hog all the credit for themselves. He’d started his snowmobile and was speeding off after Swann, only about four sled lengths behind her. Hunter soon pursued Kelton at about the same distance.
Kelton blipped the throttle as he bumped up over a big snow mound, jumping through the air for a moment, standing with his body centered in good position to easily stick the landing and continue after Swann. She slowed down for a moment in a deep powder trap and suddenly Kelton was right beside her.
If these two wanted to be cutthroat about this, they should have prepared better. This was stupid. They weren’t even halfway through his shortcut and already they’d been dangerously close to an avalanche. Where they were heading, they were bound to run into more problems. But even if it was next to impossible for him to win the whole race, he wasn’t going to let spoiled Hunter and rich SuperPop beat him. No way.
They didn’t ride well. Swann stayed in her seat most of the time, and Hunter was all over the place, leaning the wrong way. They both rode with their center of balance way off, inviting the chance to be thrown off or to dump their sleds over sideways. The way they rode, they could end up stuck out here all through the nasty cold night.
It took a while, but eventually Kelton passed Swann. Thing was, cool though she might have been, it felt good to pull ahead of her in an open race. He shredded powder all the way up to the summit of the pass. He would not stop. Those two clowns were on their own. He didn’t care what happened to them. For real.
The wind blew fiercely at the top of the pass. Kelton could feel it whipping at his coat, and he had to keep wiping the snow off his helmet’s visor. The cold was beginning to bite through his clothing now. Snow had worked its way between the gap in his sleeves and gloves, between his pants and coat. Worse than just cold, now he was wet. A terrible combination, and possibly dangerous. If he’d had a real snowmobile suit, decent boots, and the right kind of gloves, he’d probably be fine. But the world never did Kelton Fielding any favors. He’d have to push through with what he had.
“All downhill from here,” he said as he sped ahead, faster now, heading down the slope. He jumped his sled right off a four-foot drop, landing like a pro, remaining standing with his body square and his knees bent a little, so he could maintain control while absorbing the impact. Then he jumped another, slightly smaller drop.
