The mountain was too quiet.
That was the first thing Jake noticed as he adjusted his skis and looked up toward the ridge. The early light cut through the mist, glinting off untouched snow that stretched like silk across the slope.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” called Leah, his climbing partner, a few paces ahead. Her breath came out in silver clouds.
Jake smiled faintly. “Yeah. Beautiful and dangerous.”
They’d been ski-mountaineering in Colorado for three days — filming footage for a new wilderness documentary. Leah was the face of the project: fearless, sharp-eyed, endlessly drawn to places most people only saw in postcards. Jake was the cameraman — quiet, deliberate, carrying more weight than he probably should.
He checked the snowpack once more, slicing a small pit with his shovel. Layers upon layers — soft powder, then a hard crust, then something granular beneath.
He frowned. “There’s a weak layer down here. Two inches deep.”
Leah glanced back, impatient. “We’ll stay on the ridge. Less exposure.”
“Less doesn’t mean none,” Jake muttered, but he followed.
They moved upward, skins gripping the snow, the world silent except for the faint hiss of skis. The air was sharp, so thin it felt like glass in their lungs.
Halfway to the summit, a sound broke the stillness — a low, muffled whumpf that every mountaineer dreads.
Leah froze. “Jake… was that—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Down! Now!”
But the mountain had already started to move.
It began like a sigh — then a roar.
The snow fractured in a perfect, terrible line above them, the whole slope shifting forward in one slow, impossible motion.
Jake dropped his poles and dove sideways. “Leah!”
She turned, eyes wide, then vanished in a cloud of white.
The avalanche swallowed everything.
Jake felt the ground disappear beneath him, the world becoming sound and weight. He was tumbling, spinning, suffocating. Snow filled his mouth, his nose, every space that once held air.
Swim, he told himself. Swim toward the light.
It was a survival instinct drilled into him years ago. Keep your arms moving. Stay on top. Create an air pocket if you can.
The noise was deafening — a million tons of snow grinding like machinery. Then, all at once, silence.
When he stopped moving, he didn’t know which way was up.
The pressure was immense, crushing his ribs, his legs pinned. He couldn’t move his arms. He tried to breathe — nothing. Then a tiny pocket of air opened near his face.
He gasped, forcing himself not to panic. Conserve oxygen.
His mind went to Leah. She’d been above him. Maybe she was okay. Maybe.
He blinked into the darkness, his world reduced to the sound of his own heartbeat — slow, loud, human.
Time vanished.
Minutes, hours — they didn’t mean anything under the snow. Jake’s thoughts came and went in fragments.
He tried to remember the surface. The wind. The taste of coffee that morning. Leah’s laugh. Anything but the growing cold in his fingers.
At some point, he heard a voice — distant, muffled.
“Jake! Can you hear me?!”
Leah.
He tried to shout but managed only a strangled grunt.
Then — scraping. Faint at first, then sharper. Metal against ice.
“Keep talking!” she yelled.
He made another sound, louder this time, slamming his head weakly against the snow. His left arm twitched — enough to move the air pocket.
Finally, light — a thin blade cutting through the white.
Then hands — Leah’s hands — pulling snow away, reaching for him.
When she uncovered his face, she was crying and laughing at the same time. “You idiot,” she gasped. “You’re supposed to stay above the fracture line.”
He coughed, every breath a knife. “Good… advice… next time.”
They dug the rest of him out, collapsing together on the crusted surface, lungs burning, bodies shaking uncontrollably.
The avalanche field stretched below them — a sea of destruction. Broken trees. Debris. The trail erased.
“Beacon saved us,” she whispered, glancing at her transceiver.
Jake nodded weakly. “And you.”
They made camp at the base of the ridge, too exhausted to move farther.
Leah wrapped her jacket around Jake’s shoulders, lighting the emergency stove. “Drink,” she said, handing him a metal cup of melted snow.
He took a sip, shivering violently. “How long was I under?”
“About ten minutes.”
He blinked. “Felt like ten years.”
She smiled faintly. “You’re lucky. Most people don’t make it past five.”
The fire crackled between them, small and fragile against the endless white.
Leah stared into the flames. “You ever think about how thin the line is? Between being here and being part of the mountain?”
Jake looked out at the slope where they’d nearly died. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “And how it doesn’t care either way.”
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The wind moved through the valley again, gentle this time, whispering over the snow like an apology.
When morning came, the sky was a clear, impossible blue.
They packed their gear in silence. Before leaving, Jake glanced back at the ridge — smooth, untouched once more.
All traces of the avalanche were gone, as if the mountain had swallowed its anger and erased the evidence.
Leah caught his look and said, “Ready?”
He nodded. “Let’s get off this mountain before it remembers us.”
And together they skied down into the blinding light, two small figures moving through a world that had tried to bury them — and failed.