Chapter 13

“This is Liberty base. The National Weather Service has issued a revised winter storm warning for our area. Forecasters are calling for up to thirty-six inches of snow starting tonight at five o’clock with blizzard conditions beginning at 6:30 PM. Snow will continue throughout the evening and into late tomorrow afternoon. Winds south by southwest twenty to thirty miles per hour with gusts up to one hundred and twenty miles per hour along exposed ridges. Return home immediately. Please acknowledge.”

“It’s too bad we can’t acknowledge a message we never received,” Alice said as she turned off the radio’s power.

I scanned the sky overhead. The wispy streaks of the morning had given way to a high hazy overcast. Tops of advancing clouds were beginning to appear on the western horizon. The minuscule amount of weather lore I still remembered from my days as a Tenderfoot Scout told me high, thin clouds and mare’s tails were telltale signs of approaching storm systems and usually signaled that a weather front was moving in.

We left base around 9:00 AM and had been on the trail for almost four hours. If we return now, we will make it home with barely thirty minutes to spare before the storm was upon us.

“We need to turn back if we’re going to beat the snow,” I urged Alice.

“No fucking way! I’m not getting this close without bringing back Bambi burgers,” she replied with a look of determination that could blister paint. “Besides, we can get down to the valley floor and back in less than thirty minutes. We should have time to spare. Not much, but enough. I didn’t come this far to go back empty-handed.”

I wasn’t going to win this argument.

The thirty-degree angle of the slope and the sheer granite face of nearly treeless stone made for a treacherous descent. We had almost made it to the base of the ridge when our rocky trail abruptly narrowed before ending in a dead end at the edge of a vertical cliff. It was fucking frustrating. We were within a hundred feet of our goal. As far as we were concerned, our destination could just as well been on the dark side of the moon.

“Shit! I missed the turn, we’re on the wrong trail,” Alice swore as she reached for the radio and turned on the power.

Haste makes waste, but I kept my thoughts to myself as I scanned the sky.

“Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in, please. Over.” Alice paused and repeated her call, “Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in, please. Over.”

It was useless. A granite slab a mile thick stood between our location and the base’s radio receiver, effectively blocking out our signal. The steady hiss of static ruled the airwaves. Alice handed me the radio’s microphone and instructed me to repeat the call to base every five minutes.

Backing up the steep slope was a royal pain in the ass. Reverse gears are slow, and the best speed our Mule could manage up the incline was not much faster than a slow walk. Our retreat finally paid off when we came to a wide spot on the trail after twenty minutes of travel. Alice executed a tight three-point-turn, and at last, the front of the ATV pointed in the right direction.

The trail up the side of the ridge was difficult to follow. The overcast changed the light. None of the landmarks we’d passed on the way down looked like the ones we passed on the way up the trail.

We blazed our own path and followed the contours of the slope in an ever upward journey. Slow and steady wins the race in fairy tales. In our case, we gained the ridge in an hour and thirty-six minutes and lost our race against the clock.

We used too much time backtracking, and there was no way in hell we would be able to make it home before the weather turned to shit. Unless we could find a sheltered place to hunker down and ride out the blizzard, we would both be dead before dawn.

“Do we have the time and tools we need to build a lean-to?” I asked.

“Good idea. We have the tools, but we don’t have the time. We’ve gotta find something almost ready-made, like a cave, rock overhang, or a cluster of fallen trees,” Alice said as she handed me a pair of binoculars.