Page 38 of Run Wild Omega

“Wind is loading the leeward faces at a rate of two inches an hour,” Miles says, his voice clipped and efficient. He has his tablet out, protected by a waterproof case, his eyes scanning the telemetry he pulled from the station sensors. “The slab on the north face is unstable, Wyatt. If we trigger it, it’s a Class 4 slide. It’ll take us all the way to the valley floor.”

“I know the risk.”

“We can’t just walk up the trail,” Miles insists, stepping in front of me, blocking my path to the ridge access. “That’s a terrain trap. The wind has created cornices over the edge. If we walk the ridge, we step on a sugar crust over nothing, and we fall into the runout zone.”

I look up the mountain. I can’t see anything but white. Just a wall of snow and darkness.

“She’s in a crevice near the second pass,” I say through gritted teeth. “That’s three thousand vertical feet from here. How the hell do we get there without triggering the mountain?”

Miles taps his screen, his mind working faster than any machine. He’s not just a snow scientist; he’s the architect of our survival.

“We don’t go up the ridge,” he says, tracing a line on the topographic map glowing in the dark. “We cut through the timber here, stay below the crown line. We use the rock bands as anchors.” He points to a jagged scar on the map. “See this? The geological fault. It’s stable ground. Exposed rock, no snow accumulation.”

“That’s a climb, Miles. That’s Class 5 scrambling in a whiteout.”

“It’s the only way,” Miles says, looking me in the eye. “If you take the ridge, you die. If I take the ridge, I die. And Tess dies waiting for us to grow a brain.”

I stare at him. He’s right. I hate it, but he’s right.

“Show me the route,” I growl.

“Gear check,” Dylan says, slapping my back. “Beacons on. Shovels ready. Probes on the pack.”

We do it mechanically. Muscle memory.

I set my beacon to Search.

“Let’s move.”

We start hiking.

The wind hits us like a physical blow the moment we leave the shelter of the truck. It’s screaming, tearing at our clothes, trying to push us back down the slope. The snow is wet and heavy, soaking through my gaiters within minutes.

Miles leads. He moves with a strange, fluid grace, stopping every fifty yards to check his compass and the wind direction. He’s calculating the avalanche paths in real time, reading the snow like a musician reads sheet music.

He stops abruptly about an hour in, holding a hand up.

“Stop,” he yells over the wind.

“What?”

“Listen.”

We freeze.

The mountain growls. A deep, bass rumble that vibrates through the soles of my boots and into my bones.

“Slough,” Miles says, his eyes scanning the white void above us. “A small pocket released. It settled.”

“Is it coming toward us?”

“No. It ran out to the east.”

We wait another minute. Silence returns, save for the wind.

“Move,” I order.

We push on. My legs are burning, my lungs screaming for air in the thin atmosphere. But I don’t feel the pain. I just feel the pull of her signal.