Volcano Watch

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Had there been the slightest indication that the sky was clearing, had the quakes stopped, we would have been content to sit tight at the Inn and wait for choppers.

But it was a grim dawn. Standing on the porch, stamping my cold feet and stirring up ash, I stared up the mountain. Bridgeport reported that USGS remote sensing indicated intermittent eruptions from Red Mountain and the moat, which had reawakened sometime in the night. Still phreatic eruptions. I could not see either eruption — I’d have to climb up to Walter’s viewpoint for that. Mammoth Mountain, which protected us, also blinded us.

Quakes talked, though, loud and clear. Magma’s on the move.

Eric and Mike came out carrying Krom. Walter followed. Walter was no longer in the mood to wait and watch. He wanted out, badly as I did. Walter’s priorities shifted, with me on his hands.

Whatever it takes.

We wore yellow survival suits. Eric’s pack had carried three extras; he’d known he was coming after two survivors when Krom called; he’d also known Walter was missing, so he’d come prepared. His pack held suits, rations, flashlights, ropes — nearly as much stuff as I’d brought — but he’d come equipped for rescue, not arrest. I’d watched him repack his gear. He had no handcuffs, no gun.

We clumped down the front steps to the snowmobiles Eric and Mike had brought around from the garage. Krom, wrapped in one of the Inn’s fine quilts, was lashed onto the sled; the sled was attached to Eric’s snowmobile with ropes. We lashed packs and skis to the vehicles, Walter waving off attempts to help him load his bulging pack.

Eric said “one last check” and went machine to machine.

These were sturdy machines, used by crews to crawl all over this mountain, but I had limited faith in them. They have box filters meant to keep birds from being sucked into the engine but they have no defense against ash. I waited until Eric was squatting to check the front runners of his machine and then I squatted beside him. I leaned in close as I could, bulky suit to bulky suit, and in a whisper told him about Krom. He slid a glance back at the sled then continued fiddling with the drive-chain. He said, to the chassis, “You certain?”

“No proof.”

“But you believe it?”

I nodded.

He rose, passing so close to my ear that I felt his breath same time I heard his words. “Count on me this time.”

By the time I’d got to my feet Eric had his goggles and mask on. I pulled on mine, veiling my face, gamely pretending I did not want to hide in his arms.

The others finished suiting. We all mounted. We were bright tropical creatures with goggle eyes and plastic beaks and neon yellow plumage astride squat metal beasts. We were absurd, but against all logic my hopes rose.

Engines started smoothly. Headlights shone. We passed our lone Guard jeep in the parking lot and took the chute up to the unplowed continuation of Minaret Road. Eric broke trail, slow. We followed in line, at a distance, spacing ourselves so as not to eat each other’s ash.

The road wound through mountain hemlock, burred in ash, the drooping tips like fingers trying to shake themselves clean.

Plan is, we round the north slope for about a mile and then reach Minaret Summit, the low point in the Sierra crest. From there, another five miles as the road drops down into the deep canyon of the San Joaquin River and heads north to the campground of Agnew Meadows. Primitive facilities, but space for a rescue chopper to land when the air clears.

Could be days. Could be weeks.

We crawled. Ash was shallow but Eric’s runners kicked up twin plumes that flanked the sled. There was no apparent movement in there. Krom could have been dead and frozen as Georgia on her litter ride down from the glacier.

Walter followed, as he’d followed Georgia’s sled over two months ago.

I followed Walter, eyeing his pack. Last night, when the two of us went to his room to collect his supplies, I’d asked about the open safe, the love letters. He’d shown surprise; he’d said he didn’t realize I’d known about the letters. He’d agreed that the letters were what drew him to her office, that he’d collected them on the way up the mountain. Her office was empty, he’d said. There was nothing between him and Krom, he’d said. I eyed the bulging pack lashed to his snowmobile and thought, that’s a whole lot of love letters.

We rounded the corner, and Eric and Krom up ahead rounded the next.

Ash worked under the edges of my dust mask and burrowed into my skin. Already, ash was scratching and frosting my goggles. My snowmobile sucked in ash and the particles were surely incising their way through the engine.

I began to worry about avalanches. Not so much here, but over the summit — once we started our descent we’d be at risk. I came around the bend and saw Walter’s and Eric’s snowmobiles and it was a moment before I realized what was wrong. They were not spouting ash. Eric was twisted on his saddle gesturing at Walter. Krom was sitting bolt upright.

Avalanche? I neared them, getting a better view. There were boulders in the road. Maybe a rock avalanche, from quakes. Please be that.

I drew up behind them, and Mike behind me. We left our engines running. Eric and Walter and I left Mike to tend to Krom, and we set out on foot.

The road was strewn with rocks — boulders, stones, chips, gravel, like a mad quarry crew had been at work. I examined the mountain. Where there should have been a scar, some indication of the source of this rockslide, there was nothing. I felt sick.

We picked our way through the field of rocks until the road turned the next bend.

There was devastation, far as we could see. Bigger boulders here, some large as snowmobiles, and the pulverized remains of others, and where the ground showed through it was no longer the familiar coating of ash but a congealed mud, and everywhere there were branches and limbs and stumps of trees, and those trees that had escaped dismembering were dead anyway, killed a decade ago by carbon dioxide, for this was one of the old treekills. Slightly upslope was a crater with fresh rock showing, like a tooth that had lost a filling. Steam issued from the hole.

I fought to get my glove off my bandaged hand and bent to touch rock, mud, splinters of trees. Cold. Walter scooped a handful of rock chips. We looked, heads together. “Old stuff,” I said. He nodded. Quartz latite, basement rock. I eyed the crater, a few tens of meters across. It had spat out old stuff.

We moved around the next bend and it was the same, rock and steam.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Eric said and we all three broke into a run.

Mike was shouting “what, what?” as we hauled up.

Eric pulled down his mask, fighting for air. “Some kind of eruption,” he got out.

“Phreatic,” I gasped.

Walter was bent double.

“What?” Mike’s voice rose.

“Steam blast,” Krom said. He alone breathed easy.

Eric said, “What now, Cassie?”

I shoved aside my mask and wiped my face. I tried to think. What’s setting off steam blasts up here? Compared to the eruptions in the caldera and on Red Mountain, this was a little guy, like someone had set off a charge of dynamite. But you wouldn’t want to get closer than a football field to something like that. Is this puppy going to vent again? Are there others? What’s the alignment? I looked at Walter. He shook his head. Years of Lindsay pouring this stuff in his ear, years of Lindsay drilling it into my head, and she hadn’t made a volcanologist of either one of us. “Let’s go back,” I said, already moving, because we surely could not go forward.

Krom gave a brusque nod. Both of us, momentarily, in alignment.

We retreated two abreast, in double line. I kept looking back, although if that thing vented again we’d feel it before we’d see it. My snowmobile died. I moved my gear to Eric’s machine and doubled up with Mike. Walter’s machine died not an eighth of a mile later. He put on skis and saddled up his pack. We paced Walter, creeping, and then Mike’s machine crapped out and then Eric’s. We all saddled up with gear. We had to abandon one pack. Eric dragged the sled and Mike and I took turns pushing from behind. We ran on adrenaline but that crapped out too. We took forever and a day to cover the last quarter mile.

When the lifts showed above the hemlocks, I let out a sob. We’d made it. And then I sank to the snow. Where to now?

Georgia whispered in my mind. No way out.