The distant howl of a wolf stopped her, chilled her. But even that didn’t pump her adrenaline as much as the dread of the impending dark and the many dangers it could hide.
BEFORE she had left the shack, she had plotted onto the laminated map with a marker pen what seemed like an easy path, and she was sticking to it as closely as possible, comparing it against the GPS tracker every ten or so minutes. “Easy” turned out to be a relative description, as her aching legs and back were discovering. It was heavy going over the thick snow and until now, despite the fading light, she’d resisted using her flashlight or miner’s lamp. But it was no longer safe to advance without them. Her pack had been cutting into her shoulders, so she readjusted it, bounced it into the small of her back and retightened the waist straps for support. After ten paces, it was hugging a lot better so she strapped the halogen miner’s lamp over her woollen cap and snapped on the light. In her left mitten, she had her tracker and map, and her other gripped a walking stick that doubled as a probe checking for crevasses hidden under the snow.
The miner’s lamp was a mixed blessing. She could see whatever its fairly narrow beam illuminated, but out of the gloom at its edges a succession of sinister shadowy shapes kept looming, one appearing like an angry mother bear… another she lashed her hiking pole at, imagining that the branch was Ed.
Twenty minutes later, guided by the headlamp, she had already tripped four times—over semi-concealed rocks, tree roots, and twigs—so she dug out her flashlight and, despite some initial confusion with double shadows, the depth of vision was a welcome relief.
She trudged a mile down a slope packed with slightly thicker snow. Despite the deep holes sunk by each tiring step, her boot linings kept her feet dry.
A fallen branch, as grey in this light as the snow, caught her heel and she back-flipped and turtled, landing helplessly onto her pack with her legs and arms splayed out. She lay still for a while, winded, and scooped up some snow and sucked on it as she looked up, watching the tree canopy shiver as an eerie breeze whistled through. Suddenly realising it was foolish to lower her temperature, she spat out the remains of the snow, unstrapped her backpack and twisted herself out of it before getting back to her feet where, after wrapping her scarf around her face and yanking the hem of her parka down, she heaved her backpack on and continued walking.
This wind was going to be a friend, she saw. It was high, huffing away the clouds to let the moon through and a mellow light was already thankfully spreading around her. She paused to check her location—the base of Milligan’s Hill—and she pushed on. Her steps still sank deep but twisted a little on the pebbly terrain below the snow. She guessed it was a deposit of scree that had collected during spring rains, so she went on even more gingerly, wary of her footfalls as well as the branches scraping her outerwear. She was rubbing her arm where a surprisingly rigid limb had ripped through her parka sleeve when her boot caught under a rock and she pitched headlong into a fallen trunk.
When her eyes opened again she guessed she’d been blacked-out for at least five minutes. Her head was spinning and her forehead was aching and when she went to rub her brow, she discovered that when her head had hit the log, her headlamp had smashed. As she drew her hand away, she saw blots of blood on her glove.
She wobbled herself up to sit on the trunk, and slipped off the lamp strap. Attempting to wipe her head with her forearm sleeve, the shot of pain through her right arm jolted her. She could see blood seeping out of another rip and, looking around, saw that the offending branch at the base of the log was waving a tiny flag of her parka sleeve. Below it, pink bloodstains had spread into the snow.
Her arm only hurt if she lifted it, which also made her woozy. She knew she had to stem the blood and stop the cold seeping in through the tear in the fabric. She had to go on. Turning back was not an option.
Her GPS tracker had perched itself on top of the log, safely she thought, and the strap of her flashlight was balanced on the tip of her walking pole as though she’d carefully hung it there herself. After she oofed off her pack, she took out the first aid kit and, puffing some antiseptic powder through the rip, plastered her arm and then, after removing a few shards of glass from her head wound, cleaned and taped that too. For good measure, she sealed the slash in her ski jacket with two strips of duct tape, making an X. Ready to move off, she reached out for the tracker but the pain from her arm scorched her again.