Three more energy-draining scoops with my arms, and I felt my right fingertips emerge. I wiggled them and suddenly felt as free as a butterfly bursting from a cocoon.
“Marlee!” I heard him shout again.
A few more frantic scoops, and I jerked my head out of the snow. “Marsh!” I hollered. He was about forty feet away and came running to me. He looked stunned and incredibly scared as he dug his gloved fingers into the snow around my head and grabbed my shoulders. He was breathing so hard that I thought he would give himself a headache.
“I thought I was the only one who made it,” his face crumpled, and he let out a sob.
Marshall’s emotions made me feel like crying, too. I mean, I’m a girl, so if I cry, it might not actually be a big deal. But even Marshall was crying! What had we just survived?! What was ahead of us? If we didn’t make it back to camp before sunrise, our parents would be worried sick. Where were the others? Marshall said he thought he was the only one who had survived, so that meant that Lydie, Ellie and Sawyer were still missing. By now, tears were slowly sliding down my cheeks, and my nose was running. Marshall’s head was bent low, but all at once, he lifted his head, looked at me, and began scooping snow from around my body. I was lying somewhat sideways, kind of parallel to the mountain.
“Can you unbuckle your pack?” Marshall asked me. With my right hand, I reached down and numbly unclipped my backpack’s waist belt, then the sternum strap.
“Okay, I’m unbuckled, but I don’t know that I can wriggle out of the shoulder straps. Moving in this snow is like swimming in a sea of cold peanut butter.”
Marshall had scooped most of my right side free, and feeling like a stiff hippo, I heaved and sort of rolled out of my snowy cocoon, my pack still loosely on my back. My rib cage expanded dramatically, no longer confined in the dense snow. I gulped several huge breaths, just now realizing that I had been forced to take shallow breaths while buried. Buried alive. The thought made me very thankful to be out of the snow, but also very worried about the others. Marshall dropped to his knees next to me and again grabbed my shoulders. I looked back into the spot where I had been, and to my amazement it was barely below the surface. At first, when I had felt like I would never get out, I would have figured I was twenty feet down, not five inches.
“You okay?” Marshall stammered. Honestly, I felt better than he appeared, and I was afraid he was having a panic attack – just what we needed.
“Uh,” I quickly thought, tested out my limbs, stood up and successfully took two steps, “I think so. What about you?”
“Oh Marlee, you’re bleeding!” Marshall exclaimed.
“Where? Areyouokay?” I demanded, his anxiety making me more nervous.
“Your forehead,” he pointed, and I stretched my left hand up, noticing for the first time that my arm felt stiff after being packed under the snow, but with my glove on I couldn’t feel how severe the bleeding was.
“I don’t think I’m losing much blood, so if you’re okay, I say we start searching for the rest of the group,” I said, my voice sounding more confident than I felt.
I knew that avalanche victims have to get out ASAP, so I forced my emotions out of my mind. There wasn’t time to worry and wonder. We had to find Sawyer, Ellie and Lydie. Marshall was still visibly distraught. He looked like I felt. But right now, we had to act.
This time it was me putting my hands on Marshall’s shoulders. Suddenly feeling like a mother hen, I prayed that it would calm him enough to think clearly. “Marsh,” I began, “we just lived through an avalanche.” He nodded and his breathing began to regulate. “Right now,” I continued, “our job is to search for the other three.” His breathing began to increase. I kept my hands firmly on his shoulders. Marshall must have had an impressive growth spurt during the year, because last summer I was about four inches taller than he. Now, standing face to face, we matched each other for height. I bet Marshall clears out their fridge weekly!
“Marshall, you and I are going to stay together, side by side, and we are going to find our siblings. You know more about rescue than I do,” I went on, thinking that delegating him a role would help him focus, “so tell me, where do you think they are?” When the words came out of my mouth, it sounded so devastating, as if they had hit, landed, and would remain until found. That’s what they call ‘search and recovery.’ I silently begged God this would be a search and rescue. I again swallowed my fear and maintained eye contact with him.
“Well,” he began matter-of-factly, “Sawyer and Ellie ran down the ridge as the avalanche hit. So I would say that we need to start searching about twenty feet lower than where you were buried.”
I nodded, and without a word, I repositioned and buckled my pack before I noticed Marshall’s was gone. “You lost your pack?” I quietly asked.
Marshall blankly nodded. His backpack had contained one of two first aid kits. The other was in Ellie’s. “Well at least we still have gorp,” I tried to lighten the mood, referring to the “good old raisins and peanuts” in my pack. My attempt at a joke was not appreciated, so I turned and we headed down the ridge, where he figured Sawyer and my sisters were. It had probably only been two minutes since I was dug out, but every minute under the snow made the situation more serious. Like, exponentially more serious.
“Look for any sign of them,” Marshall said, “gloves, packs, headlamps,” he trailed off. Glancing in the direction he faced, I nearly whooped for joy when I saw Lydie’s glove. “Look!” I squealed. Together, we ran to her glove and began digging and calling her name. As I dug with my trowel, I wondered if we should spread out to increase our chances of finding her, but I sure didn’t want to be alone right now, so I stayed close to Marshall. Suddenly I scooped into a pocket similar to the one I had dug in front of my mouth, and my heart raced with renewed vigor. Two more digs, more carefully now, and Lydie’s beautiful, eleven-year-old face surfaced. “Lydie!” I sang, “Oh, Lydie, can you hear me? Does anything hurt?” Marshall, who had been digging a few feet downhill of me, ran to my side and began furiously digging around Lydie’s face.
Lydie’s eyes opened and she weakly smiled. I threw my arms around her head and whispered, “Thank You, God! Oh, Lydie, I love you.” When I pulled my head away from hers, I noticed that her expression was weak.
“Get her out!” shouted Marshall, “She can’t breathe! The pressure on her lungs is too much!”
I had been so happy to see Lydie’s face that I had momentarily forgotten that the rest of her was still cemented in the packed snow. Startled by Marshall’s command, I reached along Lydie’s side and wrapped my arms around her waist. Trying to do a squat, I heaved with all my might, hoping to pull Lydie up with me.
“Yeeowwww!!” she shrieked, the pain in her voice sounding authentic.
Startled, I staggered backward, falling onto the ground.
“Tell us what hurts, Lydie,” Marshall directed her.
“Leg,” she whimpered as she tried to blink away the tears that had begun gathering in her eyes and trickling down her face.
Marshall glanced at me, squinted his eyes to try to see her lower body in the semidarkness, and then looked back to me. His eyes were serious as he quietly said, “You stay by her face and calm her. Make sure she keeps breathing. Start clearing snow off her chest if you can. I’ll work on digging out her legs.”
“Hey, Lydie, how was your ride down the slope?” I tried to sound casual, hoping my nonchalant attitude would lighten everyone’s thoughts. With the back of my glove, I gently wiped snow and tears off her eyelashes and face.
Her weak smile and sigh confirmed that she was in pain and very scared. I tilted her face to look squarely in her eyes, “Lydie,” I started, sounding more confident than I was, “God has your back. We’re here now, and we’re going to do all we can to get back to Mom and Dad.”
With that, a lone tear rolled down her cheek, which made my heart ache. Marshall winced, as if he had just now thought of our parents. As he dug deeper, I heard him gasp. Cautiously looking into the hole he was making, my throat felt like it caved in when I saw Lydie’s left leg. Her boot was at knee level, and her lower leg was twisted away from her body.
That explains her pathetic, “Yeeowwww!!” when I first tried heaving her out of the avalanche, I thought. It made me hurt just looking at her disfigured ankle.
Marshall sharply sucked in a breath, and I was afraid he would go back into panic mode. Suddenly I thought I heard Ellie’s voice, but it sounded distant, and Marshall and Lydie did not appear to have heard.
“Maybe,” I said as the thought occurred to me, “now that Lydie can breathe, we should look for Sawyer and Ellie. Lydie’s stable, but if the other two are still under the snow, we need to get them out ASAP.”
Lydie faintly nodded. “Marlee’s right, Marsh. You got me to air, so we can worry about my leg once we know Ellie and Sawyer are safe.”
Marshall did not hesitate to jump up, and though I realized I should help him find the others, it was very hard to pull myself away from my injured little sister. “Do you have any idea where they are?” I asked her.
“Ellie was holding my right arm. Sawyer–”
But she was cut off by a voice shouting, “OVER HERE!” Marshall stopped walking, and loudly said, “Where are you?”
Then, like a dream, Sawyer jogged over to us, with Ellie a few strides behind. Like they were out for a midnight run. How did they look so normal? Since they obviously weren’t buried, they must have made it to the side of the ridge before the avalanche hit. Sawyer was limping, but Ellie looked fine. I mean, scared out of her wits, but physically fine.
“Ellie! We’re here! Everybody’s accounted for now,” I informed her. “Are you okay?”
Ellie and I fiercely hugged each other, and I suddenly felt much more confident with my seventeen-year-old sister here. And she still had her backpack. The backpack with the remaining first aid kit. Phew. Marshall gave his brother a manly-type slap on the shoulder and sighed, “Boy, is it good to see you.”
“You too, Brother,” Sawyer breathed, his hands on his knees. “Wow, our first avalanche.” Was he hoping to experience more avalanches?! And my friend Braelynn Gunderson had told me I was a little weird. After a moment of taking big breaths, Sawyer stood up straight, and smiled at Marshall and me. His brow abruptly wrinkled and he leaned his head towards mine and carefully pushed my helmet up an inch or so to look at my forehead. “This looks sore, Marlee. Are you okay?”
I had forgotten about my forehead until now. I gently patted the spot with my gloved hand. “I’m not sure, but we need to help Lydie.”
“Where is Lydie?” he looked around worriedly.
“Lyd’s over there, able to breathe, but her leg looks, uh,” Marshall looked at his feet, “hurt.”
Sawyer looked way more concerned when Marshall mentioned Lydie’s undiagnosed injury, so we rushed back to her location. I barely noticed the snow melting off of my helmet and running down my neck. As I worked to help scoop around Lydie’s legs, the chilly drops helped cool me as I sweated from the hard work. I was gaining a new appreciation for those construction guys who shoveled cement all last summer in our town. No wonder they were ripped.
When Ellie reached Lydie’s cove, she screamed with joy and threw her arms around Lydie’s shoulders. “Ellie!” Lydie said,
“I was so worried when you let go of my arm.”
Ellie’s face wrinkled in grief at the memory. “I held on with all my strength, Lydie. I tried to pull you to the ridge, but you were literally swept away from me.” A small sob escaped.
