Everything feels frantic and dire as I race to return my equipment, then meet Jack back at the truck. There’s a small buildup of snow behind Gillian’s rear tires, but thankfully, Jack once learned this lesson the hard way, and she now carries emergency winter supplies in the back of the truck. She pulls out a shovel and clears enough of a path for us to get out of the parking lot.

Just in the time it takes her to dig us out, the snow has started coming harder and faster. The road back to the highway is slick, but Timberline was busy, and enough cars have driven the road that we’re able to make it back to the highway safely.

The highway itself is a different story entirely; cars plod along at fifteen miles per hour, and Gillian’s windshield wipers aren’t quite up to the task of clearing snow fast enough for Jack to actually see. She cranks down the driver’s-side window and sticks her head out every few seconds just to make sure we’re not about to plunge off the side of the road. It’s doing wonders for my anxiety.

“We’ll be okay,” she takes pains to reassure me every few seconds. “We are totally okay.”

And she’s right. We are okay, until we make it to the turn-off for the cabin, and Gillian immediately gets stuck in a bank of snow. The tires spin out until the back of the truck pitches, and Jack hits the brakes. “We’ll be okay,” she says quickly. “Just hang on. I can dig us out. Stay here.”

She leaps out of the car, and while I wait for her to return, I attempt to warm my hands on the one heater vent that works. When she climbs back in ten minutes later, her face is flushed and distinctly unhappy. “Did it work?”

“Uh,” she says, half nodding, half scowling, leaving me wholly unconvinced we’re ever going to move again. She pulls off her gloves and grips the wheel. She coaxes the car from first to second, and Gillian seesaws in the snow, gaining ground and slipping back. The road up to the cabin is steep, and despite the grueling effort Jack makes to gain ground, we end up back where we started. Jack’s right hand massages the gearshift back down into first, the tendons straining against her skin. I have to give it to the Kim-Prescott siblings. They both have the unnatural talent of turning driving into something mildly obscene.

She clears her throat, flexing the muscles in her jaw. (Also obscene.) “I don’t want to alarm you, but—”

“We’re going to die.”

“Probably not.”

“Probably?”

“It’s unlikely this is how we go. But I don’t think we can drive the rest of the way home.”