Chapter 2
Avalanche
Elizabeth arrives 30 minutes earlier. She takes a long look up at the slopes and takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly! She says this is the life! She is eager to get started. Her first class starts at 9:00. There were only 6 people signed up for today. Everything is going pretty good when all of a sudden the sirens start going off. Everyone scatters. She looks around and sees nothing. Then all at once the ground started to rumble. Someone yells AVALANCHE! She looks up and there are skiers trying to out run the avalanche. She sees several people taken down by the avalanche. People are screaming everywhere. By the time she was inside the lodge watching from the large window. Total chaos was going on around her.
The Search and Rescue squad had arrived. There were 6 that climbed out of the rescue vehicle. There was Captain Thornton, Faith Carter, Carson Shepard, Mike Hickman, Bill Avery, and Lee Coulter. They moved about the crowd to assess the situation. Captain Thornton was talking to Henry Gowin the lodge manager. Henry informed Captain Thornton that there were several still on the lifts and 6 unaccounted for on the slopes. The squad gathered together and was whispering but Elizabeth over their convention. Captain Thornton was saying that this wasn't going to end well for someone. Captain Thornton was concerned that he wasn't going to have enough rescuers. So he asked Henry how many ski instructors did he have? Henry says he has Elizabeth That her, your brother Tom Thornton, Rosie LeVeaux, and Shane Cantrell here but he has 2 more that he can call in. The Captain said best call them we're going to need everyone. He asks for their names. Henry says Jesse Flynn and Peter Stanton. The Captain writes their names as well. He tells Henry to have all of them to meet out behind the back deck.Jesse and Peter arrived about 10 minutes later. Everyone introduced themselves. Captain Thornton asks Elizabeth how old she is because she doesn't look old enough to have the experience that is needed for this rescue? Elizabeth informs him that she has been on skis since she was 3 years old and knows she has the experience that is needed for this and that she is a Thatcher and they don't run from a challenge. He says fine but under his breath he says we'll see about that. Captain Thornton tells his squad to pair up with an instructor and head out to the lifts. He tells Elizabeth she was pairing up with him. Frank Hogan shows up but the Captain tells him to hang tight and he'll radio him to bring the helicopter. Frank agrees. The lift took them to the top of the slopes. They had to ski over to the spot where the skiers went down. As they are fixing to make their decent Elizabeth speaks up and informs them that she saw 2 go to the east of the avalanche and 4 go to the west of it. Captain asks you saw all that? Where were you standing? She says yes she did. She points to the training slope just to the left of the lid. He gives her a gentle smile. She thinks to herself that he has the cutest dimples when he smiles. She quickly tells herself to get a grip. This isn't the time or place. The Captain 3 of the pairs to the east and took the other 2 pairs with him to the west. They found the 4 skiers huddled around different trees on the way down. The Captain radioed for Frank to fly up and that there were 4 skiers found just a little scared. Frank drops the rescue basket and he lifts them one by one. Then he flies them back to the bottom and has the EMTs check them out. He waits for the radio to tell him to fly back. One of the others on the east radios and said they found 1 and she has a possible broken ankle. Frank flies back and sends the basket back down for her. The Captain takes his crew back over to meet up with the other crew. The crew search for hours but with no avail. He has to make the hard decision to call off the rescue until morning. Elizabeth was so upset that they didn't find the last skier. They all descended down the slope.
