Jesse shoved the rest of his lunch back into the bag, retrieved his skis from the rack outside, and skied the short distance to the Ski Patrol chalet. He was in and out of the locker room in under two minutes.
“Hope you find him!” Matt’s words followed him out the door.
There wasn’t much chance of that, but Jesse didn’t have the heart to say it. He had responded to four avalanche calls in his time with the Team. Not once had they recovered a live person. When he’d asked Megs about this, she’d told him it was the norm in Colorado. Most avalanches happened in the backcountry, far from towns and cities. If the victim’s buddies couldn’t find him, there was almost no chance that he would still be alive by the time rescuers arrived on the scene.
“There is always hope, and so we try,” she’d said.
Driven by that hope, Jesse ran to his vehicle, stowed his skis and boots in the back, then climbed into the driver’s seat and set out for Ute Ridge Trail, a good ten minutes away. Knowing that every one of those ten minutes could make a difference between life and death, he pushed on the gas, driving as fast as he could.
Megs’ voice came over his police radio. “The missing skier is a male, aged twenty-two. The victim’s friends say he was wearing a beacon.”
That was good news.
“The sheriff’s department is loaning us its chopper. A K9 unit will arrive via helicopter.”
More good news. A well-trained avy dog could find a victim in a fraction of the time it took human rescuers.
Eight minutes later, Jesse reached the Ute Ridge parking area. As the first person on the scene, he now became Incident Command. He grabbed the radio from its charger and clipped the mic to his parka. “Sixteen-ninety-four, arrival on scene. I’m heading up to the slide area as Ute Ridge Command.”
Megs replied. “Copy, Ute Ridge Command.”
The passing seconds weighed on Jesse as he climbed out of his vehicle, strapped on his snowshoes, and took his avalanche beacon out of his backpack. Full of rescue gear that changed with the seasons, the pack stayed in his vehicle at all times.
In the distance, he could hear the thrum of an approaching chopper.
He turned on the beacon’s transceiver, then shouldered his pack and set out up the trail at a run—or as much of a run as he could manage in snowshoes. He’d gone about a hundred yards when the trees gave way to a broad expanse of snow. In the summertime, this was a meadow, but winter revealed what it truly was—the debris field of an avalanche track. Bits of trees and rocks lay jumbled in the snow, torn from the mountainside.
Higher on the slope, he saw two men moving in disorganized circles. They were shouting something—a name.
“Jason!”
Why the hell weren’t they using their damned transceivers?
One of them spotted him and waved his arms.
Jesse waved back to let them know he’d seen them.
The thrum of the chopper’s rotors grew louder as it buzzed overhead, the pilot surveying the scene, looking for a safe place to land.
Jesse worked his way uphill, pushing himself to go faster.
Beep.
He’d gotten a ping.
“Ute Ridge Command, I’ve got a signal. Following it to the source.”
He held up his transceiver, saw that it was directing him to a point about eighty yards uphill—about fifty yards lower on the mountainside than the victim’s two friends had been searching. He moved as quickly as he could, sucking in lungfuls of air, his heart thrumming, his gaze on the display.
Sixty yards. Fifty. Forty-five. Forty.
Thirty yards.
Jesse was winded now, his thighs aching, his lungs straining for breath, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
Twenty yards.
From somewhere behind him came the sound of slowing rotors. The chopper had landed. The others were here.