Sick with worry, there was nothing Bear could do but don his own jacket, check his cameras, and get into the other chopper.
Twenty-Three
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO feel calm while flying over the Chugach mountain range. Stella’s heart fluttered as the helicopter sped over the white vista. The mountain peaks seemed to stretch on forever. The only breaks in the whiteness were the black cliffs poking through the snow. It was all so beautiful and forbidding, set against a leaden sky.
The common wisdom about riding the Alaska back country was to remember: It’s much bigger than you could imagine. And it’s much steeper than you could imagine. Check and check. The steeps and cliffs were heart-stopping. The vastness of it was so impressive. Since the view was largely above the treeline, the whole span looked as inhospitable as it was wide.
Breathe, she told herself. It’s just like you’ve done before. Only better.
From the seat behind her, Duku whooped with joy at the scenery. Some riders liked to psych themselves up with loud encouragements, but Stella preferred to take it all in quietly.
Although the banked turns of the helicopter had initially disoriented her, when Devil’s Spine came into view, Stella recognized it right away. The slope was breathtaking. Nature wasn’t always so fond of symmetry, but Devil’s Spine was a perfect wedge of white, framed on either side by deep slices in the rock. If Stella rode it, the video footage would be amazing.
“Jesus fuck,” her brother said from the seat beside her. “That’s a beast, Stella.” He laughed. “You sure know how to pick ’em.”
Her heart rate kicked up another notch as the pilot brought their altitude up in order to summit the mountain, and the view became even more incredible for a few seconds. Stella’s life seemed to accelerate to two or three times the normal speed, when the pilot set the helicopter down on top of Devil’s Spine.
Stella unbuckled herself from the helicopter’s seat as Wickham hopped out and opened the rear door. She tried to keep her patience as Hank began to set her up with some gear.
“Lean forward,” he said. When she complied, he fitted a tiny video camera into the specially designed foot on her helmet. “It’s running, you don’t have to even think about it,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Hank handed Wickham a two-way radio. Then he turned to Stella, his brown eyes studying her. “Be smart, little sister.”
She felt her throat thicken. “I will.”
“Love you lots,” he said. That was it. No pressure. No fear. And even more amazingly, no jealousy, either. These were mountains that Hank would never ride.
Her throat got even tighter. “Love you, too,” she said. In fact, Stella had never loved him more than she did right here, right now.
He held up a fist, and she bumped it. “Now go perform all your stability checks.”
“I’m on it,” she promised. Without another word, Stella climbed over her brother’s seat, jumped down and — staying low — she moved toward the nose of the helicopter so the pilot could see that she was clear. Wickham had already dragged their gear out of the basket on the side of the helicopter’s body. A few seconds later, Hank’s door shut and the helicopter lifted off.
The rotor noise receded as the chopper flew into the distance, delivering Duku to a south-facing slope. From the helicopter, Hank would try to get some decent aerial footage of Duku’s run. Nobody had said so to her face, but Stella’s insistence on a solo first descent made filming Duku harder, too. Hank wasn’t maneuverable enough to get out of the copter.
She pushed those thoughts away. It was time to focus. With the copter noise gone, all she could hear was the wind whistling through her helmet. Stella turned slowly around, taking stock of the crazy, intimidating place in the world where she’d landed.
Wickham ruined her reverie by speaking. “We’re going to stay well in back of the cornice while we make our first checks.”
If Stella had not been so entranced by the crazy 360-degree views around her, she might have rolled her eyes. Wickham was a nice enough guy, she supposed. But even in extreme sports, there would always be men who would treat her like the Little Woman.
Of course they were going to stay well back of the cornice while they sampled the snow underfoot.
Stella took one pole and Wickham another, and they began testing the texture of the snow. Where Stella currently stood, it was heavy, but stable. The rain’s weight made the surface feel solid, but it could be a ruse. Heavy snow on top of lighter snow could be terribly unstable, and Stella was going to need more information before she decided whether the slope was safe.
Below them, another helicopter swung into view, landing on a plateau in the near distance. Though Stella was not close enough to the peak’s edge to see him alight, she knew the other helicopter was depositing Bear and a whole lot of camera equipment. Thousands of dollars were being spent right now to get this shot. There was the cost of copter fuel, the guide’s time, and their stay at the remote lodge.
If Stella didn’t get her descent done right now, her Alaskan adventure would be over. They couldn’t linger here. Tomorrow, the lodge had a new slate of guests arriving. And their expensive flight out of Anchorage had already been scheduled.
They couldn’t go on, playing at making a film. This was the last stop on the train, right here.
Stella poked at the snow, creeping closer to the peak’s edge. There wasn’t a noticeable difference in the snow pack. Yet. She lifted her head toward the opposite plateau, and saw an ant-sized Bear leaning over a speck of a tripod. His hands would be practically frozen by the time he’d set up both his big camera and his drone cam.
All this trouble to get Stella’s shot. By any measure, back-country riding was an egotistical discipline, and she’d always known it. No wonder Stella didn’t have a man in her life. She might be low maintenance in all the typical girly ways. But this lifestyle? It was as high-maintenance as they come.
A few yards away, Wickham was using a shovel to dig a block of snow out of the surface. He tilted the shovel thirty degrees or so then tapped the bottom of it. The snow stayed put. So he tapped harder. “Huh,” he said eventually. “That’s pretty solid. But how deep does it go, you know?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. Let’s try to push the cornice,” she suggested. She and Wickham could apply force to the snow near the lip, trying to tease out its potential for avalanching.
“All right.”
She moved closer to him, and together they used their feet like bulldozers, shoving the snow toward the edge. Wickham wore snowshoes, and could push more snow than she could.
Nothing budged.
Wickham picked up a pole and probed the cornice. “I don’t know what to think,” he said finally. “She feels steady. But the temperature is going up fast. Ten degrees in the past half hour.”
Stella felt it. She was already sweating, but she’d assumed it was because of nerves. The change in the weather added another layer of complexity to Stella’s calculations. “Is it warm enough to melt, you think?”
Before he could answer, Wickham’s radio crackled, and Bear’s voice came through. “I’m ready down here. But I don’t like this weather.”
Stella studied the sky. In front of them, the sun was trying its best to steam up the heavy layer of clouds, making the sky an odd gray-yellow color. But behind them, the sky was dark and angry. She took Wickham’s radio and pressed the transmit button. “Good light for shooting, though,” she said. There wouldn’t be any nasty shadows.
Bear didn’t dignify her comment with a response. “Wickham? What do you think of the conditions?”
Nice. Bear didn’t think enough of her opinion to ask it. That smarted.
Wickham took the radio. “We’re working through it. So far, we haven’t found any weakness. But it’s tricky weather, like you said. We’re worried about a heavy slab on top of less stable snow.”
“Should I take down my equipment?” Bear asked.
Stella g
rabbed the radio back. “No,” she said. “We’re going to try to cut a cornice.”
Wickham tucked the radio into his pocket and leaned on his shovel. “I’m not sure we can cut a cornice deeply enough for a good test. This is heavy stuff.”
She’d been afraid he might say that. “So we could spend an hour cutting, and still not know,” she said.
“Yeah. Meanwhile, you’d lose your weather.”
Stella eyed the sky once again. She had to make a decision based on the information they’d been able to gather thus far. “Okay. I’m going to board up and take a look. You get back off the cornice, and tell Bear to get ready.”
For a moment Wickham didn’t move. “Are you sure?”
“No, I’m thinking,” Stella snapped. “But I’m going to think on my snowboard.” She walked to where her board lay in the snow. The beautiful thing about snowboarding was that once you’d dragged yourself (at great expense) to the top of some sick peak, gear was no longer an issue. It was just you and the board.
She carried her board over to the very roof of the cornice. The snow felt solid under her feet. But if the cornice broke right now, she’d be buried faster than you can say “look out below.” A cubic meter of snow weighed in at six hundred and sixty pounds. And that was just an average. The snow she was standing on right now probably weighed more.
Stella set the board down and clipped in. She heard Wickham and Bear chatting over the radio, but did not listen to their words. Because this was the important moment right here. Stella took a deep breath of cool air in through her nose and finally looked down at the incredibly steep slope below her.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it was steep. Riding Devil’s Spine would feel like snowboarding down a two hundred story building.
Easy, she coached herself. She couldn’t afford to have a brain clouded by adrenaline right now. There were still important decisions to make. Her eyes traced the line of descent she’d chosen by studying maps and photographs. In this case, choosing a path down the face had not been all that difficult. There was really only one way down. And it was so steep that the top half of the descent would be over almost before it began.
But now Stella studied the twin crevasses at either side. They were even more forbidding in person than they’d been in pictures. Their edges were uneven, so Stella would not be able to ride very close to either side, for fear that the heavy snow disguised points of weakness.
And that was the whole problem. If the snow did prove unstable, there was no alternate route to safety.
For all the talk of avalanches, Stella had triggered them many times in her life. A boarder could ride moving snow as long as she kept her wits about her. Moving toward the edge of an avalanche slab would usually bring a rider out of danger.
But this? There were no edges. There was no Plan B. If the snow moved, she wasn’t going to get out of its way. And if it pushed her sideways?
She made herself picture that. Not pretty.
Stella had always loved risk. And if she turned back now, she’d never know what might have been. It would bother her for a long time. Perhaps forever.
She felt the minutes ticking by even as she considered her choices. She was going to have to make a choice and live with the consequences. Or not, if the worst came to pass.
Stella closed her eyes for a moment, and took stock. Her whole life, she’d listened to her gut, and her gut was absolutely churning over this one. That was unusual. Stella was usually rock steady. What was different?
Bear. His unhappy expression popped into her mind. He’d left her feeling unsettled. And the fight they’d had was clouding her thinking. Ugh. This was absolutely the wrong moment to think about him. If she made this run, it could not be out of spite.
She opened her eyes again, and the first thing she saw was the black outline of two crevasses.
Be smart, Hank had said.
Stella took a very deep breath from her diaphragm and blew it out again. This slope was not smart. It was ballsy and beautiful. But it was not smart. She might ride it and get lucky, though.
Lucky. But not smart.
“Damn,” Stella whispered. Then she bent over and unclipped her bindings. “Damn,” she whispered again, trudging back toward Wickham. She wouldn’t risk so much for her own vanity. But giving up was going to bother her for a long time.
“What’s the verdict?” he asked.
Miserable, Stella just shook her head.
When the helicopter returned to pick her up, her brother was not on it. But that was okay with Stella, because she did not feel like talking to anyone. Not even him.
The radio stayed silent, another blessing. After today’s fiasco, Bear was probably going to hang her picture up on the lodge dartboard and commence target practice. It was either that, or tally up the amount of money her afternoon of hubris had cost him. She should have let Wickham take them all to a more sheltered spot.
There were so, so many things she wished she’d done differently.
Stella’s unhappy reverie was interrupted by a flash of yellow out the window. Another helicopter passed them, heading in the other direction. She craned her neck to watch as it headed straight for Devil’s Spine. “You have got to be shitting me,” Stella said under her breath. She couldn’t see where it set down, but she had a bad feeling. An hour from now, another snowboarder might be able to call himself the first one to ever descend Devil’s Spine.
The amazing scenery out the window mocked her. She sunk back into her seat and closed her eyes.
Twenty-Four
WHEN THE PILOT SET her down on the landing pad, Stella removed her board from the basket and hurried inside the lodge. She stomped into her little room and shut the door. There was no lock on it, unfortunately. She needed what little solitude there was to be had. After a while, she heard what was probably Bear’s helicopter return. Luckily, there were no footsteps outside her door.
For the second time today, rain began to batter the window at the foot of her bunk. Alone in the lodge, Stella took off her snowpants and jacket. In long underwear and a sweater, she lay on her narrow little bed, feeling like the most useless person alive. She lay there a long while. It was easy to lose track of time while counting up all the ways you’d screwed up. If she’d only backed down when Bear argued for the more conservative peak, she could have gotten a run in. Maybe even two.
Instead? They got nothing. Except a bill from two helicopter pilots and a guide. And the lodge. And let’s not forget the airline tickets…
Damn. Good thing they’d gotten those meager shots earlier in the week. Stella wished she had access to the footage, just to see how much was there. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she feared.
Nope. It was probably worse.
Her phone rang, and the display showed that it was her mother calling. With a sigh, Stella took the call. “Hi Mom.” She tried to keep the misery out of her voice.
“Hi, sweetheart. I just spoke to Hank. He said that you were having a bad day.”
“I’ll live.” It was an odd choice of words. But it was true.
“I’m sorry your shoot didn’t go the way you’d planned.”
“Thank you,” Stella said, chewing on her lip. “I know you don’t think I should try these things, anyway.”
It was her mother’s turn to sigh. “That is not exactly true,” she said. “I never sowed my wild oats, Stella. And there were years when I regretted that.”
Stella propped herself up on an elbow. “Really? I didn’t know you had any wild oats.”
Her mother laughed. “I have always been a good girl, it’s true. So you scared the dickens out of me, little girl. You came out of the womb taking risks that I never could. Every day I’m proud of your spirit. But every day I worry.”
Stella felt her eyes fill. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I just hope you can understand why I don’t often turn up to watch you hurdle down the mountain. It scares me to watch. But I’m always thinking about you.”
&nbs
p; “You watched Hank, though,” she said. Then she wished she could take it back. She sounded like the jealous little sister.
“I did,” her mother said. “In my mind, he was tougher. Less likely to break. Maybe it’s because you were sick when you were little. Or maybe it’s just the sexist way I was brought up.” Stella heard her mother sniff. “And look how smart that was? My boy almost killed himself while I looked on.”
“Oh, Mom,” Stella sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. But it’s not your fault, okay? Hank told me you took good care of yourself today. I just wanted you to know I appreciate it.”
Stella smiled a bitter smile. At least there was one person who didn’t think she’d ruined the day. “Thanks, Mom.”
“I love you, sweetie.”
“I love you, too.”
They hung up a minute later, and Stella went back to brooding. She was about to become the only top snowboarder she knew who’d made it all the way to Alaska with almost nothing to show for it.
Eventually, she heard voices in the lofty main area of the lodge, and they were animated. Stella was curious about why, but not curious enough to show her face. In fact, she might never show it again. Heavy footsteps approached her room door, and Stella braced.
“Stella?” It was Bear’s voice. “Can I come in?”
“Not right now,” she said, feeling like an unreasonable teenager. But if Bear came in here to talk to her right now, Stella was afraid of what she might say.
“Stella. Open the fucking door or I will break it down. And then I’ll have to pay for it, too.”
“That would really be quite stupid,” she shot back. “Because there’s no lock on it anyway.”
The next second, Bear blew in like a gale force wind. He kicked the door shut. Then, crossing the room, he sat down on the bed. Stella sat up to meet her pissed-off friend on more equal terms. But before she even knew what was happening, she’d been scooped onto Bear’s lap. “We are going to have a talk,” he said, his voice rough.