Clear to Lift (10 page)

Try as I might, I can't explain the sinking feeling that weighs on me when I see that Will isn't here. But that's not the only thing I sense. This group is restless. Looking closer at Walt, I see that he shares the same worried expression as the rest.

Normally, no matter how dire the situation, the group maintains a certain levity, a lightness. But the room is thick with tension, no joking or smiles today.

“Boomer, Alison,” Walt says as we approach. No friendly banter or handshake.

Now that the men are moving to the side, I see they're standing around a center table, a map spread across it.

“The victim fell into a bergschrund right here,” Walt says, getting straight to the point, using his pencil to tap on the location.

Wait a second. If Will's not here … Something squirms inside. No …

“… at the base of V-Notch on Palisade Glacier. A hiking party—four of our team members—saw him fall. They called and—”

Walt looks up, and the rest of the SAR team members turn, as Will strides into the room.

A wave of relief washes over me as he pushes through the crowd, a mountaineering backpack slung over one shoulder. I could swear someone just turned the lights up a little higher, everything brighter, crisper.

“What do we have?” Will asks. His eyes dart from Walt's to ours to the others'. “Wait, what is it?”

“It's, uh,” Walt says, swallowing. “It's Jack.”

The restless room goes still, just as Will goes still. It's several long seconds before he speaks.

“What happened?” Will says.

“He fell into the 'schrund below V-Notch,” Walt says. “Thomas and Kevin are up there. They were camping at the foot of the glacier with Tawny and Kelly. Saw it happen. They're hiking up to it now, but they don't have the right gear.”

Will turns to Boomer. “Can you fly me up there?”

“That's the million-dollar question. I've got the guys taking the doors off now. The charts say no, but uh…” He turns to me. His eyes narrow, his face screwing up, as he thinks. “Yeah … it just might work.”

“What might work?” I ask.

“Do you have the charts with you?”

I nod, raising my hands to show him.

“Redo the calculations, this time with only three people in the aircraft.”

“Three?”

He nods.

“But that's you, me, and Beanie. What about Will? What about the victim? We'd need power for five, and we don't have enough for four. Even if we don't take Beanie, that still leaves four of us when we bring the victim in. We can't—”

“We go single-piloted,” Boomer says. “Will rides in front, Beanie in the back. Will can load the victim, but stay on the ground after. Sound good, Will?” Boomer asks, turning.

“Yeah, I'm good with that. Either I can hike out, or you can come back for me.”

Amazing he can sound so nonchalant about what Beanie said would be a half-day hike-out.

“Okay, let me run the numbers,” I say, plopping the charts on the table.

I lower my head, but look up just as fast. “Will you be bringing your gear?” I ask, motioning to the pack.

“Twenty pounds,” he says.

I plot the points on the graph carefully, double-checking the temperatures at the higher altitude, using a straightedge to ensure I'm reading the correct number. “Damn,” I say under my breath. Then, louder. “Still not light enough.”

A collective sigh resonates in the room, heads turning to me, to Boomer, to Will.

“What weight did you use for the pilot?” Boomer asks.

“Two-sixty, right, sir?”

“That'd be correct,” Boomer says, standing taller, his mid-section popping out just that bit further. “But let's try it with one-thirty.”

“One-thirty? But you're not—”

“No,
I'm
not. But
you
are.”

“What?” It takes a moment for the words to sink in. The meaning.

Oh, no. No way.

“But I'm not an aircraft commander yet. I can't even sign for this aircraft, let alone take it up and fly it by myself.”

“Who says? That's a paperwork drill, anyway. You're as qualified as you need to be.”

“But
you
signed for the aircraft, sir. We can't do this.”

“I signed for the aircraft, which means I'm responsible for the safety of it and its crew. There's nothing anywhere that says I need to be the one flying or even physically
in
the aircraft to ensure everyone's safe.”

“I think it's implied, sir. You know, that the pilot who signed for the aircraft would be
in
it.”

Boomer puts his hands on his hips. “Implied, but not specifically stated,” he says, triumphant.

“But … you can't…” I look around for help, but it's clear. I stand on my own.

The longer I hesitate, the worse it gets, the collective energy in this room now directed solely at me.

“Is it possible?” Will asks, looking directly at me. “I mean, weightwise. That's all I want to know.” He remains collected and calm, his voice steady and smooth, but his eyes communicate something else entirely.

“I … well … okay, let me run it with the new weight.”

I lower my head again, performing the calculations with me as the sole pilot. I bite my lip when I see that Boomer's hunch is right.

“It's possible,” I say, looking up.

“Will you do it?” Will asks.

Crystal-blue eyes and a steady gaze communicate an underlying plea as clearly as if he were speaking aloud:
Please. Please, help me.

I glance at Boomer. He remains unwavering. Permission granted.

Turning back to Will, I hold his gaze for a long moment … and nod.

 

11

Will moves past me toward the door, and as I pull the charts together, Boomer taps me on the arm. “You got this, Vanilla.”

I can only shake my head, to which Boomer responds by gripping my shoulder and giving it a good squeeze.

He follows me outside, barking directions at Hap and Beanie, who have just finished removing the doors. Beanie then moves to assist Will, who has climbed into the left seat, handing him a helmet and helping him plug in his internal radio cord.

“Your radio switch is there,” I say to Will, “at your feet. Just step on it to talk.”

I've got the bird turning in less than a minute, and just a short sixty seconds after that, we're airborne. Will points the way to an area he knows by heart, a transit that should take less than ten minutes.

I notice that Will fiddles with his chest harness. On it, he carries a utility knife, a Leatherman, a radio, and a flashlight, all attached in easy-to-access pockets. In addition, the strap houses his fluorescent orange transceiver unit, which he now removes. He turns dials, flips switches, and then I hear a solid tone—loud enough to be heard over the noise of the transmission and rotor blades.

“What's that tone?”

“A test signal, to see if the unit's working properly.”

“Are you looking for a signal from Jack?”

“Yeah, but I'm not getting anything.”

“But I thought the range was—”

“It's not a range problem.” He looks down at the screen again, then turns to meet my eyes. “He just has to be able to push the SOS button.”

The despondency in his expression is clear. Jack would have to be conscious or physically able to push the button to transmit the SOS signal. So if he hasn't pushed it …

Will searches my eyes for a moment, then moves back to planning. “Have you been here before?” Will asks, tucking the unit away in his chest strap.

“No.”

“The slope angle of V-Notch runs about fifty degrees toward the bottom of the couloir, so I don't know how close you'll be able to get to let me off.”

“What do you think, Beanie?” I ask.

“It'd be too steep to land, ma'am,” Beanie says. “This is one-skid all the way.”

“There it is,” Will says, pointing.

A grand, wide bowl of snow, circumscribed by towering black granite peaks, looms before us. Several tunnels of snow cut through the black, most of them half the length of the Death Couloir on Mount Morrison, but much, much higher in elevation. I spy the one that distinctly looks like a “V.”

As we close the distance, flying over the bottom of the cirque, which lies above the tree line, the edge of a turquoise glacial lake peeks from the snow. The terrain around it is relatively flat—rocky, but flat—and free of snow.

“I've got a person on the ground, three o'clock,” Beanie calls. “I think it's Kelly.”

A hiker wearing a fluorescent pink technical T-shirt and sporting a long red ponytail waves at us, two tents in place about twenty yards behind her.

“That must be Thomas, Tawny, and Kevin up the slope then,” Will says. I look forward and up the vast expanse of snow to the three tiny figures nearing the top.

“The couloir they're approaching, that one on the left, that's V-Notch,” Will says, confirming my earlier guess.

“At least you'll have help getting everything rigged,” Beanie says.

“Yeah, no doubt,” Will says.

“What will you do?” I ask.

“Once I'm on the ground, I'll have to climb up the side of the 'schrund. I have no idea how high or steep it's running now, so we'll have to see when I get there. When I get to the top, to the opening of the crevasse, I'll rappel down and get Jack secured. Then, I'll climb back up and rig a Z-pulley to haul him out. I can load him in the litter once he's out.”

“I'll get the litter rigged and ready in the back,” Beanie says.

“How long does it take to rig the pulley system?” I ask.

“Hard to say. Twenty minutes?”

I glance at the fuel gauge. “We might have to land and shut down to save fuel,” I say, not believing those words just came out of my mouth.

“I'll be quick.”

Our helicopter is now dwarfed by the surrounding summits, a tiny speck of orange against a colossal massif. As the group on the ground comes into clearer focus, I see that they're wearing technical T-shirts only, no jackets—another confirmation of the warm temperatures. The outside-air temperature gauge reads eighteen degrees Celsius, or sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit—a veritable scorcher at thirteen thousand feet.

And then, a fourth figure. Small, coated in cream-colored fur, he would have blended into his surroundings perfectly if not for his bright red vest. Mojo races back and forth animatedly in front of the group, urging them upward.

I see it then. The bergschrund. A gaping chasm running the length of the base of the couloir, and not just along V-Notch, but along U-Notch couloir next to it. The walls of the bergschrund that lead to the crevasse opening on top look almost vertical, covered in gray ice, even overhanging in places. “Formidable” would be an understatement.

“She's yawning, all right,” Will says.

“Yawning?”

“The 'schrund. As it gets warmer, the glacier recedes, pulling farther from the rock, widening the mouth of the crevasse. Like it's yawning.”

It would be easy to gawk at the crevasse, so broad and menacing, but I shift my focus to the gauges, performing an in-flight assessment, just as Boomer taught me. I note the power we're using now, all the while thinking about the power we'll need to hover, not knowing if we'll have enough. On paper, yes. But at the actual rescue site, with all the variables of wind and weather, you just never know. Although, I will say, the winds have been kind so far. Before we passed the tree line, the pines below remained still, and the glacial lake was straight as a mirror.

“I need to pull into a hover here, guys, just to check the power,” I say, approaching the bergschrund from the side, flying parallel to it, but still one hundred feet above it.

As I reduce speed, the controls feel mushy, like they did on Mount Morrison, only worse. I ever-so-gradually pull into a hover, swallowing hard as the rotors begin to slow. Not enough to trigger an audible alarm, but close. I dump the nose to gain airspeed.

“Based on the power we were pulling just now, we should be okay in a low hover. Right on the limit, but doable,” I say, accelerating and circling left, setting up my approach for a one-skid about fifty yards downslope of the bergschrund.

“See where it levels somewhat, Beanie?” I say.

“Got it, ma'am.”

Above us, Mojo darts about at the base of the bergschrund, no doubt sensing his owner, but unable to see or reach him.

“Will, could you help me out, please?” I ask. “See the gauge on the upper right corner of your instrument panel? If you could call out that number for me as we make our way down, it would be a huge help. It tells the amount of power we're using, basically.”

“You got it. Looks like it's reading forty-five percent.”

“Yep. And if you look on the gauge below it, there's a needle with an ‘r' on it. That's for rotor speed.”

“It reads one hundred percent,” he says.

“And hopefully it'll stay that way,” I say. “We've only got ninety-two percent power available, and the charts say we'll need eighty-nine to hover. Based on what it looked like in the high hover, it's gonna be close.”

“Easy forward forty,” Beanie calls as we move steadily forward on a shallow glide slope, adding power in the most minute amounts to control the rate of descent.

“Passing forty knots,” Wills says. “Sixty-four percent.”

“Easy forward thirty,” Beanie calls. “Easy forward twenty.”

“Seventy-eight percent,” Will says. “Eighty, eighty-two, eighty-four…”

My stomach tightens when we pass the go/no-go point, that place where if the aircraft doesn't have enough power to hover—a sudden downdraft would do it—we would drop to the ground, not high enough anymore to nose over and gain airspeed and without the power to stop our descent. In this case, because of the slope angle, there would be no landing, just an uncontrollable tipping and subsequent roll, actions that would prove catastrophic.