After a long tense descent, the path widened. At last there was enough room to safely set up camp. After spending two hours defrosting at the fire and drying our blankets, we went to our tents. David wasn’t speaking to me, which was just fine. I lay down between him and the tent door. The ground was hard yet welcome. I heard Frodo’s gentle sighs, then faded into dreams.

Early the next morning I drank strong coffee heated on the fire. David examined charts and consulted a strategy manual for roadwalkers. Shad sat next to him, reading the GuideBook. I heard faint sounds on the mountain slopes above us. The beautiful snow seemed to quiver slightly.

“We must go,” Shad said. “We’re in danger.”

We quickly packed and continued our descent. I could see where the ground leveled out only five hundred feet below us. Then I heard a sound, like a huge hungry stomach growling. Everything seemed deathly still except high on Peirasmos where a large slab of snow wavered. I watched it slowly break loose from the slope, beginning to pull away. It shattered into separate blocks, the blocks smaller and smaller but spreading out so as to create a cloud of snow and ice. I was almost hypnotized by its beauty when I heard Victoria scream.

“Run!”

Oblivious to my throbbing ankle, I ran forward, my pack slinging back and forth, the sack of riverbed stones pummeling my right shoulder, and Frodo swinging against my chest in his sling. Everyone else was in front of me. The noise grew like an approaching locomotive, but I couldn’t resist turning back to look over my shoulder as I ran.

A river of snow and a cloud of icy particles rose high into the air, hundreds of feet above the surface of the slope. The cloud of what must have been thousands of tons of snow and ice chased us. Up above, where we’d just come from, faint screams emerged from the massive momentum of falling snow.

“Run, Nick!” Malaiki yelled back at me. I turned to see my companions much farther down the mountain than I. From the corner of my left eye I saw snow slipping over the bare rocks and onto the path. I moved to the right, snug up against a guardrail, still hundreds of feet above stony ground.

As I ran, I slipped on ice and slid, feeling my back crunch into my pack, which became a makeshift sled, sliding me faster than I could run. I spun and lost control. My last image was of a great hand of snow pushing me into the guardrail and trying to thrust me off the cliff. I felt my head slam into something, and before I could even feel pain, a black hush overtook me.

16