The Kalama Incident

Chapter 2:  All in a Day's Work

The pilot twisted the handgrip and the Huey's twin turbine engines surged, the rotor blasting debris and droplets into a churning stormcloud at the drop zone. Anxious to return to the relative safety of home base, he grabbed as much collective as he dared and pulled the chopper into the darkening sky. The wind grew quickly to blizzard proportions and then subsided as the aircraft shrank into the gathering evening.

"Looks like we got our shit together just in time." Rick unscrewed the cap off his flask of George A. Dickel Tennessee Sour Mash Sippin' Whiskey and offered his companion a swig.

"Thanks, man," Dave said, tipping the bottle back. He would have called it just plain Dickel, but it was Rick's whiskey and Rick insisted that it deserved its full, formal name. Dave swallowed hard as the liquor burned his throat and the flurries cooled his face, and then he handed the flask back.

Rick brushed some of the snow and wood chips off his parka while he waited. "The wind's a little hoarse," he said. "This snow's going to stay with us for a while."

The north wind had been carrying a throaty edge most of the day. Dave had blinked at windblown twigs and smelled the building humidity in the air, but it hadn't foretold a heavy snow to him. "How can you tell?" he asked. "It sounds just like the blast that almost blew us off the Snow Creek Wall last August to me."

"Easy." Rick's mouth spread in the toothy grin that told Dave he had asked a silly question. "It wasn't snowing then."

"You asshole," Dave scowled. It was a game they played a lot of the time, one trying to maneuver the other into asking a serious question that had an obvious, flippant answer. This round was Rick's.

"Well, let's get this shit into the cabin before it really starts snowing," Dave laughed, acknowledging Rick's score.

Rick Kennedy and Dave Hooker lived in a cabin on Dumbbell Lake, on the Pacific Crest Trail near Mount Rainier National Park. Rick had lived there permanently since reaching burnout in his engineering career, but Dave was on temporary assignment, sent out by the forest service to learn something practical about the national forest before trying to run it from a desk. That Dave and the mountains got along well was obvious from his having voluntarily extended the assignment for a second year.

Together, the two men kept watch over a twenty-mile square of wilderness land, protecting citizens from the wild and vice versa. They were a matched pair: gray beyond their years, proudly wearing the badges of four decades of life experience, each showing a youthful, permanent twinkle in eyes that in lesser men would have reflected half a lifetime of disappointment.

"Do you think we'll see anybody this week?" Dave asked, knowing their job was going to be pretty quiet for a while.

"Probably not," Rick said seriously. "All the mountaineers are waiting for snow, and the city folk have given up for the winter."

"I'm here, and I'm from town," Dave said.

"You may be from town, but you aren't one of the city folk," Rick sneered. "You know the type. They get the cheapest outdoor gear they c-can find, and then they spend their outings drinking beer and burning the c-cans." Rick stuttered on "c" and "k" sounds; it was ironic (but typical among stutterers) that his own last name was one of the hardest things for him to say.

Stuttering had nearly kept Rick out of submarines. The Navy psychiatrist had been unconvinced until Rick pointed out that Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte had overcome speech impediments like his own to become leaders of men. The Navy had wisely accepted him on the assumption that they could cure the stuttering. Years of therapy had made Rick one of the world's greatest at reciting tongue twisters, but he still had difficulty with his name.

"I know what you mean," Dave said. "They ride horses because they're too lazy to walk, and they make a hell of a lot of noise."

"Isn't that the truth," Rick said. "No self-respecting outdoorsman would disturb the peace of the wild the way they do. Whenever I hear a group of them c-clowning their way down one of the pack trails, I know I'm going to have to c-clean up a pile of burnt c-cans in the fire circle at American Lake."

"Well, at least they don't come around much after hunting season," Dave said.

"Let the bastards go home and watch football," Rick said. "All they do is fuck up the forest anyway."

Rick and Dave had just finished moving their month's supplies into the cabin when the snow clouds started rolling in over the ridge. They watched the woods fill up with snow.

"I guess you were right," Dave said.

"Right about what?" Rick asked.

"The snow."

"Predict snow often enough up here and you'll be right sooner or later," Rick answered, once again flashing the toothy grin that let Dave know his partner had scored again.

The two rangers clambered into the cabin as the snowfall began to thicken around them. Between them, they carried enough firewood to finish filling the rough-hewn bin. The bin would hold a week's worth of wood for the pot-bellied stove, and filling it meant that nobody would have to dig in the snow for firewood for another week. Dave pushed the front door shut, and Rick dropped his armload of wood noisily onto the floor alongside the bin.

Rick started building the fire as Dave put away the last of the food. Dave left some of the equipment and rations out on the table to bundle away into the survival packs, and Rick got the fire crackling as quickly as anyone else could have lit a gas stove. The fire and the survival rations were both high priority items in their winter mission--to rescue anybody who happened to get in trouble and keep them alive until medical assistance arrived.

Maintaining rescue teams and facilities was expensive. The federal government provided money for baseline operating costs, but the cost of rescue work was always billed out. Rick and Dave were strictly operational; somebody else would worry about collecting the invoice, presumably from the survivors but possibly from their estate if the rangers didn't do their job right.

Rick dug the flask of Dickel out again and unscrewed the cap. "To the fifty-eight thousand," he said solemnly as he handed the bottle to Dave.

58,132 Americans who made the pointless journey to Southeast Asia during the sixties and early seventies never saw their homeland again. Many more, Rick and Dave included, had offered to make that same sacrifice but were thankfully spared. Both men carried deep emotional scars left by the tragic war in Vietnam.

Dave took another pull from the flask and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "To the fifty-eight thousand," he agreed. They often began their serious drinking sessions by honoring their fallen comrades.

"Suppose it's time we started loading up these rescue packs?" Dave asked. "If this is the blizzard you say it's going to be, we might get a call yet this afternoon."

Rick shrugged and dragged his expedition pack out from under his bunk. "I don't know why we go through this exercise, Dave. You know we'll just repack it when we get the call."

Dave knew Rick was right. No matter how much packing they did in advance, they always took everything out and stuffed it back in right before they left. Dave painfully remembered the only time he had trusted his advance packing: he had forgotten his dry socks and spent four days growing new blisters. "Yeah, but at least everything will be out where I can see it."

They started packing anyway. The refreshment level was getting a little low, so Dave retrieved a new fifth from the cabinet and refilled the flask. Dave preferred Wild Turkey to the Dickel that Rick drank, and he always carried a flask of it in his pack, but as long as they were in Rick's territory, Dave felt obliged to bow to his partner's judgment. If cheap whiskey were his best friend's only shortcoming, Dave could live with it.

"Goddamn city folk," Rick grumbled, shaking his head as he packed.

"You still stuck on that?" Dave asked, surprised that Rick had held his mood for so long.

"Assholes," Rick said. "You know, there isn't anything wrong with department store gear--as long as you're c-camping in a department store." He stuffed a pair of pile pants into his pack; while a ten-dollar pair of sweats would have performed the same function under normal circumstances, Rick insisted on the quality and durability of top-notch equipment whenever his life depended on it.

"Isn't that the truth," Dave said. "I remember when I got started out here."

"You had a fucking truckload of gear from k-K-Mart," Rick laughed. "You must have spent at least a hundred dollars."

"At least it wasn't an expensive lesson." Dave chuckled to think about the cheap equipment, most of which hadn't lasted his first backpacking season.

"I remember," Rick said. "'I can't imagine spending $300 for a pack when you can get one that does the job for twenty,' you said."

"I just didn't know what the job was," Dave said. "That pack worked fine as long as you were carrying everything."

The cheap pack had made only a single trip into the mountains. Days later, Dave had grudgingly bought a high-quality expedition pack that was a virtual twin of the ten-year-old one Rick carried.

"And how much did you spend on your Gregory?" Rick asked.

"About $300," Dave admitted. "But it's a hell of a pack."

They had repeated the scene over sleeping bags, boots, tents, stoves, knives, and fishing gear. Rick would warn that trusting one's life to marginal equipment was foolish, and Dave would insist that cost was a poor indicator of quality. Finally, Dave stubbornly admitted Rick's hard lesson: in outdoor equipment, as with most things in life, the cost of quality is lower than the price of frugality.

As part of the rescue equipment, the National Forest Service provided a lightweight radio and batteries for it. The transceivers used lithium cells, whose long life reduced spare battery bulk greatly. In the old days, the rangers only listened at specific times of the day so their batteries would last. Lithium cells changed that; a ranger could carry a month's worth of replacement batteries in a trouser pocket. The only real drawback was expense.

"It's hard to assign a value to a human life," Rick had said, "even if it is one of the city folk."

Dave was looking at the radio and thinking about the investment the National Forest Service had tied up in lithium power cells when the speaker squawked, startling him. Through a background of auditory snow, they could make out a human voice.

"Ranger Six, Ranger Six, this is White Pass, over." A repeater station atop Hogback mountain, within sight of the highway at White Pass, handed off the ground station transmission to a series of repeater stations, at least one of which was in range of nearly every point in the forest. The repeater stations allowed the VHF radios, which are restricted to line-of-sight reception, to function among the peaks and valleys of the forest.

Rick picked up the transceiver and adjusted the squelch until the static faded. "Hello, White Pass. This is Ranger Six, over."

"Put your boots on, Rick. Looks like we got a rescue in your sector."

"Just fucking dandy," Rick answered sourly. "C-climbers or hunters this time?" Although rescue was his main reason for being in the mountains, Rick never approached a new assignment with enthusiasm. The potential for disaster was too great.

"Overdue hikers. Friends were supposed to pick them up at the Dog Lake campground this afternoon, only they aren't here yet."

"You satisfied they're really out there?" Risking life and limb on a false alarm was expensive and embarrassing.

"The guy here is frantic. Says he dropped them off himself at Bumping Lake three days ago. They're only a few hours late, but that storm looks pretty rough and this guy is driving us up the wall."

"Storm looks even worse from here. What are we looking for?"

"Two women, early thirties. Carried cold weather gear but no snow gear. Planned to walk up to American Lake and down the Crest Trail to White."

"If they're on the route, we'll find them," Rick said somberly.

"Keep us posted, Rick. Can't get the chopper out until morning at the earliest. Just keep 'em alive."

"Ranger Six is c-clear. Later."

Rick didn't have to tell Dave to start loading up for travel. By the time the radio conversation was over, Dave had stuffed all of his personal gear into the bottom of his expedition pack. Rick quickly caught up, and they started dividing the rescue equipment between them. They each took a snow shovel and a survival pack. Rick took the rope; Dave took the snow anchors. Dave took the emergency rations; Rick took the extra fuel. Rick took the first aid kit; Dave packed the flask of Wild Turkey.

As if to remind them of the gravity of the situation, the wind howled outside the cabin. Two citizens were fighting the mountain, and under these circumstances it wasn't a fair fight. Dave cinched up the drawstring on the top of his pack and turned around to see Rick dropping a revolver into the side pocket of his.

"What's that for, partner?" Dave asked, surprised to see the weapon.

"Gooks," Rick answered blankly, dropping in two boxes of ammunition for the pistol. Hollow point ammo, Dave noticed, good for little but stopping men dead in their tracks at close range.

"This isn't a patrol in Vietnam," Dave thought, but he didn't say it. They weren't going to meet VC soldiers or any other hostiles in the mountains, but Rick's scars from the war were deep. Dave was hesitant to make light of his partner's experience because he, too, bore scars from earlier mistakes. Dave politely ignored Rick's regression.

Moments later, the two rangers strapped their back-country skis to their mountaineering boots and aimed them up the trail toward Cowlitz Pass. The weather was threatening, but they weren't out on a weekend outing. Lives hung in the balance, and braving the storm was all in a day's work. Dave checked his watch; it had taken them less than ten minutes to go from alert status to movement on the trail. It was a decent scramble, he thought.

"Let's move out!" Rick shouted over the gale.

When the wind would let them open their eyes, they could see half a mile or so through the snow. The lake was still clear, but the temperature had dropped low enough that it would freeze over soon. The gusting wind whipped the lake's surface into whitecaps, which would soon freeze in position and record this day's weather until springtime, when milder temperatures would erase them.

Taking up a trail position, Dave followed Rick's yellow mountain suit as it danced through the trees and blowing snow. His pack was heavy, but a long summer of carrying backpackers' trash and trail maintenance gear made it feel no more burdensome to Dave than an overnight pack in August. Rick's skis made squared-off grooves in the snow, which quickly shifted to erase them as he passed. Dave didn't need to look to know that the signs of his own passage disappeared just as rapidly. He turned around to check anyway, and a cascade of snowflakes found their way in around his glacier glasses. He decided to switch to his goggles at the next navigation stop.

The pair trudged silently northward, enjoying as much of the winter wonderland as the biting wind would allow. A few days earlier, the trail had been cold but clear of snow; by now, they could see little of the ground as the white blanket sifted among the trees. Tomorrow, they would see the tracks of small animals, playing in the fresh snow and rooting out whatever edibles they could sense beneath it.

Rick stopped and turned around, leaning on his ski pole to face backward along the trail. He waited until Dave skied a little closer before he shouted at him. "Hey, Dave. You ready to take a turn in the lead?"

"Yeah. Just give me a second to break out my goggles." Dave took a sixty-second breather as he put his glacier glasses away and adjusted the clear lens ski goggles over his balaclava. Rick had made a similar equipment change as they traveled.

"My guess is that they got c-caught early this morning, just north of c-Cowlitz Pass." Rick absently studied his map as Dave adjusted his eyegear. "We can start looking for them any time."

"You figure one day to American Lake, one more to Fish Lake, and then one more day, bad weather and all, I'll buy that." Dave had made the hike himself, and it was a grueling day's walk from Fish Lake to White Pass, even under good conditions. "Hell, they probably would have been late if the weather hadn't turned to shit."

"Here we go again," Rick said. "One more time, the city folk use the rangers as a substitute for planning."

"It's a good thing we're here, don't you think?"

"Fuck you, asshole. Just watch for them while you lead--it'd be a shame to miss them and ski all the way to Bumping Lake."

Dave adjusted the hood of his parka over his head and turned into the storm. "Let's ride!" he shouted.

As Dave broke through the fresh snowfall, he created a trough through which Rick could ski easily, like a team of cyclists taking turns punching holes in the air. The snow accumulation grew steadily deeper as they continued northward along the Crest Trail. It had been at mid-calf when Dave took the lead, but the drifts among the trees were waist deep by the time they reached the meadow north of Cowlitz Pass. The storm was nearing blizzard proportions, and Dave was beginning to mentally question the advisability of traveling unroped after dark.

"Hey, Dave! Hold up a minute!" He could barely hear Rick's shout through the wind.

"What's the problem?" Dave was hoping they would make camp for the night and continue the search in the morning.

"I heard something! Be q-quiet a second!"

Dave held his breath and listened as hard as he could. The wind howled and the snow beat against his face as he strained for the detail that had caught Rick's attention. His ears rang with the effort.

At first, Dave thought it was just his ears ringing. But then it stopped. And then it started up again, and he knew it was a whistle.

"Rick!" Dave's blood suddenly ran icy cold with the realization that the rescue was seriously in progress.

"Yeah, I heard it! Which way?" The excitement was obvious in Rick's voice as well.

"Beats the hell out of me," Rick shouted against the gale. "It's just sort of there."

"Let's get our whistles out and see if we can k-keep them going," Dave shouted. "We'll rope up in this whiteout and search in a circle until we can establish a direction."

"Good idea," Rick nodded. "You belay me here, okay?"

They took their skis off and leaned them against a small fir tree that had decided to push the forest back into the meadow. Dave got out his compass and tied one end of the safety rope around his waist. Guessing east, Rick groped off into the storm, blowing his whistle for all he was worth. Dave held a little tension on the rope so he would know which way Rick had gone. And so he could provide something of a belay if Rick fell off a cliff in the whiteout.

The two sharp jerks came so quickly that they startled Dave, and he almost forgot to return the signal before he started to follow the rope. Dave's heart was in his throat as he waded nearer the rescue. Would they still be alive?

Three dark forms appeared through the graveyard mist, one kneeling and two on the ground. One was obviously Rick, and he was apparently talking to one of the others. They were at least partially in time.