Lost in the Woods. Chapter 5. A Friend in Need...

“We what?!” Ellie answered angrily. “It’s getting dark and it’s snowing. We have no idea where we are and because of you, we are totally out of bounds where the ski patrol can’t find us. But yeah, everything will be fine, Lilly.”

“You’re such a tool!” Lilly muttered under her breath.

“What did you call me?!!” Ellie half shouted.

“I said that you were a tool,” Lilly muttered between clenched her teeth.

The cousins continued to bicker while the valley steadily darkened around them.

“STOP IT!!!” Ellie screamed at the top of her voice.

“Okay ,okay. Stop yelling before you cause an avalanche,” Lilly said. “I know that I got us lost and I’m sorry but getting mad at each other won’t help at all. If anything it will make things worse.”

“Okay fine. You’re right. I’m sorry that I got mad at you and yelled,” Ellie conceded.

“Well, I forgive you too. So now that you have forgiven me, let’s work on making a plan to get out of here,” Lilly said.

“Let’s look at the map first and try to find out where we are.” Ellie said, standing up and taking the map from Lilly. She pointed out where they had been that day and where she though where they were.

“Uhh, okay then, so what should we do now?” Lilly asked.

“Well what I think that we should try to get back to the cat track that we were on and then skate up the main trail from there and/or get to a place where the ski patrol can find us.” Ellie said

“Well, I hope it works because if it doesn’t we will have to spend a night in the woods.”

“Okay, we had better get going then and try to follow our tracks back.”

“But we already tried that!” Lilly whined.

“I know but we have to try.”

The girls turned around and followed their tracks back into the trees.

“Lilly,” Ellie said concernedly and half an hour later, “I’m really sorry, but I think that by following our tracks we are getting out selves more lost.”

“I really think that the cat track is just up here,” Lilly said, pointing into the gnarled evergreens ahead of them. “ You even said so and remember we were….”

“Shhhhhhh,” Ellie said, cutting her cousin off. “Did you hear that?”

“Don’t you be shooshing me!” Lilly demanded angrily.

Ellie ignored her and headed toward the sound. “Come on, it’s right behind us at the bottom of that hill, I think.”

Bewildered, Lilly followed her cousin. She was still angry at Ellie but she would do anything to get them out of their predicament.

The cousins edged forward as a loud cry of pain echoed through the darkening valley and up through the trees. Around a bend, they came across a face twisted in pain, a blonde-haired, brown-eyed face, the face of Angela Adams. Angela was sitting in a heap on the snow, holding her left knee and writhing in pain. She could not see the girls.

“Oh gosh,” Ellie breathed, pulling her cousin behind a group of trees.

“What should we do?” Lilly asked anxiously “She is obviously hurt.”

Ellie glanced around the trees and said, “She’s holding her knee. Maybe she twisted it?”

“Well obviously,” Lilly answered.

“Listen, Lilly” Ellie said “We’re lost and she is by the look of it hurt.”

“Yeah, so?” Lilly replied

“So we can help each other.”

Lilly opened her mouth as if to protest but Ellie cut her off.

“Okay, I know that you hate her. I do too, but like I said, she is hurt and we are lost. Her dad probably sent her to come look for us or she came anyway for some reason and so she probably knows where we are!” Ellie put an emphasis on the last six words.

“Okay fine,” Lilly said, throwing up her hands. “We can go help Angela but if she calls you a meathead or something its not my fault.”

“Come on then,” Ellie said, and they moved out from behind the trees.

“What are you doing here?”

“’ looking for you guys,” answered Angela. I had a hunch you guys would be here because that’s what I would’ve done. The problem is I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. And now I’ve hurt my knee. I think it’s my ACL.”

“Well, do you expect us to help?” demanded Lilly.

“Shut up, Lilly.” Ellie snarled under her breath. Her cousin was really starting to get on her nerves. “Sure Angela is mean at school,” she thought, “but we are lost, she is in trouble and we can help each other. Why can’t Lilly get that?” She turned to Angela, “Do you know the way back, Angela?”

“Yeah,” Angela said.

“Good,” Ellie said. She had a plan and took charge. “Lilly, can you please go get some branches? I saw a new fallen one over there” she said, pointing into the trees. “And Angela, I’m sorry but I’m going to need to break your ski poles.”

“What?! Why?” Angela asked.

“Lilly is going to make a brace out of them. I would use Lilly’s or mine but we are going to need them, and seeing as you can’t ski, it seems like a good idea to use your’s,” she said picking up Angela’s poles. “I think Lilly has some tape or bandages in her pack that she can use to make a brace. While she does that, I’ll go and find the trail.”

The girls worked on putting Ellie’s plan into action.

While Lilly was getting the branches for the brace, Angela turned to Ellie and quietly said, “Thanks, Ellie. Hey, I’m sorry that I was mean to you the other day at REI.”

“No matter,” Ellie replied, “but you should really apologize to Lilly.”

“I will.” Angela said.

***

After a few minutes, the girls were ready to execute their plan.

“You can just follow my tracks from earlier because your tracks will have been filled in by the snow. My tracks should get you back to the trail,” Angela said.

“Okay. Wish me luck!” Ellie said and skated off. Lilly and Angela watched her black helmet disappear thought the trees. It was fully dark by now and the two girls sat waiting under an old pine tree that would shake snow onto them every once in a while.

“Would you like the rest of the Luna bar?” Lilly asked, holding out the half wrapped snack.

Angela smiled shyly. “I’m sorry that I have been such a jerk to you,” she said quietly. Angela felt that it was time for her to apologize to Lilly. Apologizing to Ellie was easy but to Lilly she knew it would be a challenge.

Lilly looked up for a second and then looked back down at Angela’s leg that she was splinting. “Its okay,” she said, looking up again and smiling. “I admit that I was a pretty big meathead also, getting us into this predicament. My dad is going to KILL me!”

“Mine too,” said Angela, very relieved that Lilly had forgiven her. “He kept telling me to stay right behind him so that I wouldn’t get lost and the Ski patrol wouldn’t have to look for me too. I even got in trouble for petting one of the dogs.”

“Ohh,” Lilly said “What kind of dog was it?” Dogs were her favorite animals aside from elephants.

“It was a black lab puppy,” Angela said smiling, “He is being trained to be a search dog.

***

Ellie had been following Angela’s tracks for ten or so minutes when she edged around a bend and burst out into the open trail. She smiled, removed her skis and started hiking up the cat track. When she reached the top of the hill she leaned over breathing heavily. Then she listened as hard as she could. She heard voices, they were a long way off but there were surely people somewhere nearby. She yelled at the top of the voice for then to come. She was not a big fan of yelling, but she had left her skis at where they had gone off the trail so that the ski patrol would know where Lilly and Angela were. She didn’t want to run down the trail to find the people so she yelled.

After a minute or so a small black shape came gliding towards her over the snow. To her bewilderment, it was a dog. A small black lab puppy ran up to her and pounced licking her all over her face. It had a Search and Rescue coat on. Soon afterward, the ski patrol came trekking up the hill with their skis over their shoulders. Ellie knew that everything would end up okay.

Lilly and Angela’s conversation carried them further along into a new friendship, so when the ski patrol found them an hour later they were merrily chatting like old friends.

Lost in the Woods. Chapter 4. A Grumpy Rescuer.

“Here comes the sun, doot-n do do,” sang the phone from an inside pocket of Angela’s dad’s red parka.

“Hello?” Dave said loudly over the roar of the crowd at the bottom of the chair lift. Angela could hear a muffled voice issuing from the phone that sounded vaguely familiar. “Oh hi, Al. Is everything okay?” Then she knew where she had heard the voice. It was Lilly’s dad.

Lilly was Angela’s archenemy at school. How she hated Lilly and her wretched cousin Ellie!

“It’s was so unfair!” she grumbled to herself. “They are good at everything and get everything they want. Neither of them has to take care of their stupid siblings when they get home from school. They both have parents who are really there for them, not parents that leave for work at seven in the morning and return at eight in the evening. Hmmph!” Feeling very sorry for herself, Angie pulled herself back to the present in an effort to eavesdrop on the conversation.

“Okay bye,” Angela’s dad said, “See you soon.”

“What happened?” Angela asked, trying and failing to sound concerned.

“Well,” her dad answered with a grave look on his face, “Ellie and Lilly have gone missing.”

“Oh.” she said, “Okay. So what to we do?”

“I will radio the Ski Patrol and we will head out to look for them before it gets dark.”

“Does Al have any idea where they are?” Angela asked.

“He knows that they are somewhere on Blackcomb and he thinks that they are lost somewhere near, on or below the Blackcomb Glacier run.”

***

At the top of the Showcase T-bar, Angela undid her skis and started hiking to the Blackcomb Glacier trail. She followed her dad so that she didn’t have to make steps in the slowly deepening snow. How she hoped that she would find Lilly and Ellie. She was thinking of all of the grief she could give them at school. She reached the top of the hill and stepped back into her skis.

“Angela I’m talking to you. Can you here me?” Dave asked. Angela had been so busy fantasizing that she hadn’t heard her father talking to her.

“Oh, sorry,” Angela answered, “What were you saying?”

“I was saying that you have to follow me during this search. Okay? So everywhere I go, you go.”

“Yeah” Angela said. She took a deep breath and thought to herself, “Angela this is your first rescue. You should change you attitude.” Without further ado, she raced down the hill.

***

“Did you see anything?” Dave asked the other ski patrol at the trees.

“Not a trace,” said one.

“Nothing,” said another.

“Ruff!” said one of the Search and Rescue dogs. Angela chuckled and bent down to give the big black lab a pet.

“Angela!” Dave said in an exasperated voice, “Don’t pet Hayley! We are in the middle of a Search and Rescue right now and it is not time to play with a working dog.” “I shouldn’t have brought you in the first place,” he muttered under his breath.

Angela stood up indignantly and started to open her mouth to speak, thought better of it and closed it again. Acting up would certainly not a good idea in this situation, she realized. After all, she was not a member of Whistler-Blackcomb’s famed Search and Rescue squad. She was just along for the ride and wouldn’t be invited again if she were to act in any other than a grown up manner.

Dave conferred with the other members of the team, gave some orders and they were off again.

Before heading out he added, “Now Angela, I want you to stay right behind me okay? I don’t want you getting lost. The last thing we need is another skier to rescue!”

Angela was so mad that she could have kicked something. Her dad was always so annoying! If he wasn’t reminding her do to some chore, he was criticizing her about something or other.

“Angela, you aren’t following me. You need to be right behind me okay?”

“Fine!” she said grumpily and glided over the snow to her dad.

She felt like being rebellious, and when she glimpsed a cat track up ahead, she had an idea.

“Dad,” she called “I think I’m getting a blister so, umm, can I stop and put a band aid on it?” She had always been a bad liar.

“Fine, but don’t take too long and please follow right away.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there,” she called. She waited for the group to ski out of view and then quickly sped down the cat track.

***

“Maybe Dad was right,” Angela thought. “Maybe I should have followed him.” It had been twenty minutes and, from what she could see, there were no tracks. “Then again,” she thought, “it has been snowing for an hour and an half so any tracks Lilly and Ellie might have left would be covered up now.”

Angela coasted down a small hill and looked up second too late to see the tall sapling in her path. She swerved but caught an edge and fell over awkwardly. Just then a sharp pain ripped through her right knee and she cried out. It started to feel weak and warm. She tried to stand up but her knee snapped and bent horribly in the wrong direction and she cried out again. It hurt so much!! She leaned over and felt her knee. It was swelling, and fast.

Angie winced. She had seen these symptoms before on other skiers and they all pointed to one thing – a blown anterior cruciate ligament or ACL. She remembered of all of the stories that her dad had told her about his multiple knee surgeries, how when you tore your ACL, you had to get surgery. The surgeon would cut into your knee and put screws into your leg bone to secure the new ACL. And then there would be weeks of painful physical therapy. Dave nicknamed his own therapist, who was a perfectly nice lady from what Angela could tell, his “Physical Terrorist” because of all the torturous exercised she had led him through to re-strengthen the muscles around Dave’s injured knee. Arghhh!

Tears of fear and pain rolled down Angela’s cheeks. She buried her face in her hands. Then all of the sudden it hit her. She was alone and in the middle of nowhere with a torn ACL. It was snowing and no one knew where she was. She certainly couldn’t ski herself out of this one!

Angela’s sobs grew even more fierce for a time, but one can only cry and wallow in self pity for so long. Gradually her breathing returned to normal. She wiped her eyes, took a Clif bar and some water out of her backpack and started to think about what to do next. It was only then that she heard and saw some movement in trees ahead. She looked up and saw Lilly and Ellie walking towards her in the snow.

Lost in the Woods. Chapter 3. The Best Laid Plans....

“Okay,” Ellie said, “That is extremely scary.”

“Yeah, I know. It creeps me out too,” Lilly replied with a shudder. “Can we watch something else, like The Amazing Race or Get Smart?”

“Sure,” Ellie replied as she scrolled through the list of videos on her brother’s iTouch that they were borrowing for the trip.

Ellie and Lilly were sitting in the back seat of the Saab watching a documentary on avalanches while they raced down the highway on their way to Whistler.

“Are you guys alive back there?” Lilly’s dad called from the front seat of the car. The girls had been glued to the screen ever since they had crossed the border into Canada.

“Yeah,” Ellie replied with a giggle. “We’re alive.”

“We were just watching this really creepy video on avalanches,” Lilly said, shuddering again. “Why do you ski in the backcountry if you know that you could be buried alive by an avalanche?”

“Yeah, I definitely never ever want to go skiing in the backcountry if there is ANY avalanche danger,” Ellie said.

“Well,” Al said as they sped around a bend in the road, “I bet that you will change your mind after you do go skiing in the backcountry.”

“It has to be pretty good if you know you are risking your life to do it,” Lilly said.

“Backcountry skiing is really good, and I have taken two or three avalanche safety classes,” Al replied, “Plus whenever I go out of bounds, I never go alone and I have an avalanche beacon. ”

“Okay, that’s cool and all,” Ellie said, “but l still don’t think that I will ever go out of bounds.”

“Suit yourself,” Al said with a sly smile, “but I bet that you will change your mind!”

The threesome fell silent as they sped down the road.

d d d

“Woah!” Ellie said loudly as she raced around their suite, “This place is awesome!!”

They had finally arrived after a three and a half hour drive at the Château Whistler. It was very fancy, by far the fanciest place Lilly and Ellie had ever stayed in.

“I call this bed!” Lilly announced to the room at large as she jumped up and down on it.

“Calm down girls, please!” Al pleaded as he walked in the door of the suite carrying two duffel bags. “And Lilly, don’t jump on the bed. I thought that you knew better!”

“Aww, Dad!” Lilly whined. She jumped off the bed and continued to explore while Ellie did her best not to laugh.

“Ellie come here!” Lilly cried from the bathroom. “The bathtub is the size a swimming pool!”

“Wow! This place is so awesome!” exclaimed Ellie in a voice that was a little too loud for a hotel room.

“Can you guys please tone it down a bit?” Lilly’s dad implored. “Why don’t you guys unpack your stuff while I go get the other bag?”

“Okay,” Lilly answered, “but can we just go ski for a half day or something?”

“No,” Al said “The mountain closes in half an hour so I think that it would be more trouble than it’s worth. We should get to bed at a reasonable hour though, so we can get up the mountain early.”

“Okay,” the cousins said together as they headed to their suitcases to unpack.

The threesome unpacked their things, ate dinner at the resort restaurant and retired early after getting all their ski gear ready for the next morning. It took a while to fall asleep since they were so excited.

The next morning, Ellie woke Lilly up an hour before the alarm went off, but they had to wait an hour because Al had told them the night before not to wake him up before the alarm went off. For the next hour, the girls quietly got ready for the day. By the time that the alarm went off, they had already eaten breakfast, gotten their things together, laid out Al’s clothes for him, gotten themselves dressed and phoned room service to send up Al’s breakfast. They easily made first chair.

“Do you guys want to stay on Whistler or take the Peak-to-Peak tram over to Blackcomb?” Al asked.

Al, Ellie and Lilly were sitting in the lodge drinking coffee (hot chocolate of the girls of course) and discussing what they were going to do that day.

“I wouldn’t mind doing a warm up run here and then heading over to Blackcomb to ski the Blackcomb Glacier,” said Ellie as she adjusted her new goggles. “Then we could do some other runs over there. I’d really like to try 7^th Heaven.” She added as an afterthought.

“Well, that’s a great idea, but I’m meeting my friend Dave back here for lunch. Then we were going to go skiing until three thirty or so.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You never told us about that Dad!” Lilly said indignantly. “Are we supposed to ski with Angela while you and your Angela’s whoop it up together on the slopes?”

“No, Lilly,” Al said wearily, “You don’t have to ski with Angela. What I was thinking was that we could do some runs on Whistler this morning. Then you and Ellie could have an early lunch and we’d put you on the Peak to Peak. I would meet Dave and you two could ski the glacier and do some other runs for a few hours. Then you could wind your way down to the bottom of Whistler at hook up with us by, say, 3:30? Does that sound good?”

“Yeah,” Ellie said happily. She was keen on the idea of skiing alone with her cousin, something she had never done before.

“Yep,” Lilly replied, sounding happier also. “That sounds great. I have no desire to hook up with Angela.”

“You have made that very clear,” said Al.

***

It had been hours since lunch and Ellie and Lilly were careening down the Blackcomb Glacier for a third time. As they neared the bottom, Ellie went into a tuck and yelled over her shoulder to Lilly, “ Race you to the trees!!”

The wind screamed in her ears as she sped across the flats in a tuck. Lilly was gaining on her fast but they were approaching the trees, which marked the finish line. Ellie skated as fast as she could, beating out her cousin by a nose. Out of breath, both girls collapsed into the powder on the side of the trail howling with laughter. When they finally stopped laughing, Lilly sat up and slung her backpack off her back and pulled a bag of Skittles.

“What color do you want?” Lilly asked her cousin.

“Well,” Ellie said, “It depends how many we can have.”

“How about we each have five now so that we can save some for later?”

“Okay,” Ellie said “then I want two yellow, one red, one green and one orange.”

Lilly carefully divided up the candies and put the bag back in the main pocket of her backpack.

“It looks like it’s going to snow,” Ellie remarked.

“Yeah, I noticed that too,” Lilly answered, looking up at the sky and then down at her watch. “We should go. We are supposed to meet Dad in forty-five minutes.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ellie said. She stood up and unfolded her map of the resort. “How do you want to get down? There are a bunch of routes and we don’t have much time.”

Lilly skated over to her cousin and took the map from her. “Well, because there are all of these trails crossing this one,” she said pointing to the map, “we should probably take this one.” They headed down the track.

A little while later, Lilly pulled over and beckoned to her cousin to follow. Ellie wove through a group of skiers and pulled up beside her cousin. “Is anything wrong?” she asked.

“No, but see this cat track here? Well, I think that we can go down that and then cut through to,” Lilly paused as she pulled out the map and found their location, “to this trail here.”

“That’s cool and all but this cat track does not appear on the map. It may not go all the way though, and if it didn’t, then we would have to skate back here and that would waste a ton of time,” Ellie said.

After some hemming and hawing and a few more examinations of the map, Lilly managed to convince Ellie to try the new route. A half an hour later however, Ellie was perched on a stump with a very unhappy look on her face while Lilly was studying the map.

“I told you we shouldn’t have gone off the trail,” Ellie griped, “We have been going in circles for twenty minutes!”

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Lilly assured her cousin, trying to sound more confident than she really was about their situation. Inside her head, she knew that she had made a bad decision. It would be all her fault if they had to spend a night outside in the snow.

***

“Bye, Al!” Dave called over his shoulder, “It was nice skiing with you!”

“Yeah!” Al called back, “’ hope to see you soon!”

Al removed his skis, placed them on the ski rack and walked over to the restaurant where he was supposed to meet up with Lilly and Ellie. He removed his gloves and checked his watch. They were late.

“That’s weird,” he thought, “Both Lilly and Ellie are very responsible. I was expecting them to be waiting for me.”

He walked up to the counter and ordered a mocha to take his mind off things. He checked his watch again.

“They should have been here fifteen minutes ago,” he thought, “I hope that they aren’t in trouble. I’ll give them fifteen minutes and if they aren’t here I’ll call ski patrol.”

He sipped his coffee with a sense of foreboding. “What if they got lost or kidnapped or one of them had got hurt?” he thought worriedly, “I was so stupid to send them out alone, when they are only eleven!”

He checked his watch again and stood up, pulling a phone out of his pocket. He dialed Dave’s number. This was a job for the ski patrol….