Avalanche!

By Girad Clacy

During the maiden run of Amtrak's newest, fastest and sleekest train, the Desert Wind encountersforce of nature so powerful it stops the train cold. High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, xtreme cold and high altitude are starting to take their toll on passengers and crew. The avalanche that buried the Desert Wind, like the City of San Francisco decades earlier in the Sierra Nevada's, is about to meets its match. The railroad industry learned a hard lesson with the rescue of the City of San Francisco. Now, with technology not even conceived of only a few decades earlier, Amtrak decides to put this technology to use. Join two couples, a female pair at the controls of the Desert Wind, struggling for survival and a male pair at the controls of a one-of-a-kind emergency rescue train. Two couples, one destiny; unconditional love knows no boundaries.

Book reviews:

"This book gets two thumbs up. Excellent flowing storyline with action, suspense and romance all rolled into one." --Heidi Dukes, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 31, 2005
• ISBN: 9781475941227

Girad Clacy

This is Girad Clacy’s vision of the future for members of the GLBT community and for those that are suffering at the hands of medical science. This is also Mr. Clacy’s last book of the STARCORE archive files and his last book under this pen name.

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Copyright © 2005 by Girad Clacy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Lincoln, NE 68512www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-35815-1 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-475-94122-7 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-35815-2 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-80280-X (ebk)

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

About the Author

For all of those kids in all of us, this book is for you. Trains have always held a mystic sort of place in our hearts, minds and souls. To all those train conductors who have to wear different hats all the time, you will not be forgotten.

Girad Clacy

CHAPTER 1

Snowflakes, thousands of snowflakes, were flying around the Colorado Rockies. It is late October and all ready snowflakes had started to fall. Snowflakes look innocent enough but banded together, like outlaws, they are beautiful but deadly. A special part of the Rockies running through Colorado, known as the Seven Sisters, began reaching out their hands.

Those hands, eternal and graceful, cradled each snowflake gently. Each snowflake was given a special place on the Seven Sisters. A marmot, out for the last day in the high country, started shaking its head. Snowflakes collected on its furry body, matting to its whiskers.

After shaking itself off a couple of times, the marmot decided it was time to go home for the winter. Home for the marmot lay inside of the rocks, well above timberline on the Seven Sisters. This barren rocky area was home to another small creature, the pika. The marmot was eyeing the pika, Ochotona Cavia, as the humans called him. The marmot surveyed his surroundings one last time, noting the relative position of the pika on the rocks below.

The pika stopped and looked up at the marmot, who was shaking himself off again from the snowflakes that had accumulated on his fur. The pika, seeing the marmot shake himself off, followed his example. Between the two of them, they were pretty much the kings of this land above timberline. Not too many animals, or humans for that matter, made it up to the 11,000 to 13,000 foot elevations. The only real threat to the marmot was the occasional small game hunter. A hiker might stop and feed the marmot a candy bar or chips, but the marmot and the pika were the owners of the land above timberline.

The marmot, shaking itself off for the last time, twisted its head a couple times before giving off a high pitched whistle. This whistle not only alerted thepika to head home for the winter, but also gave the marmot one of it’s more colorful names; the whistle pig. The humans, however, had given him the name of Marmota Monax.

The marmot repeated this whistle several times. After the last time, the marmot headed off his rock and into his home to sleep until spring. The pika shook himself off and headed into his home.

The Seven Sisters started collecting the falling snowflakes in great numbers. The great numbers began adding up. The first storm of the winter season only dusted the Seven Sisters. More storms were to follow. By late November, the Colorado Rockies were completely covered in snow. Ski areas opened early, most before Thanksgiving, and more storms kept coming into Colorado.

By early December, nearly three feet of snow had fallen in the Rockies. The lower elevations were getting almost as much. Denver and Colorado Springs were the hardest hit with snow depths reaching eighteen to twenty-four inches in some places. Pueblo was hit as well with heavy snowstorms, which dropped more than twenty inches of snow in that city, almost paralyzing it.

However, high in the Rockies, the winds, reaching speeds of two hundred miles an hour, sometimes whipped the snow around into beautiful cones and cornices. These small cones and cornices were carefully monitored by the Colorado Ski Patrol. These cornices and cones finally started to hold their shapes despite the wind’s speed. As more and more snow fell in the middle of December, the Colorado Ski Patrol decided to send a team of people up the backside of the Vail ski resort and investigate the Seven Sisters.

A group of volunteers from the Colorado Ski Patrol decided to climb the Seven Sisters when the weather finally cleared. A few days after the fifteenth of December, the weather cleared and those volunteers received their chance to go climb the Seven Sisters. Equipment was being loaded into the back of a four-wheel drive Humvee at the Vail ski resort. The ski resort was sending a team up the Rockies to investigate those beautiful cornices and cones on the Seven Sisters.

Jeffery was coming into work at the Vail ski resort. Quickly he stashed his ponytail inside his red, Colorado Ski Patrol jacket. The red ski jacket and emblems on it were a common site on the ski slopes in the State of Colorado. On the jacket was also a cross, making this jacket a little different from other red jackets. The jacket kept the wearer very warm, even in the most frigid of conditions. Also inside the jacket was a special transponder.

The Colorado Mountain School had developed this transponder in Estes Park, Colorado. In short, the wearer was hooked up to the transponder via a ripcord attached to the left thumb. The ripcord had some give to it, but not too much. If the wearer was caught in an avalanche, the wearer merely detached the ripcord and the transponder activated.

The transponder’s signal would be sent to a ground transmitting station in the area covered by the transponder. Since each area of Colorado was a little different, the transponder had been programmed with many transmission frequencies. Once the ground transmitter received the signal, the signal was sent to a satellite with Global Positioning System capacities. The signal was coded with each wearer’s special code number. If the satellite was able to get a good lock on the transponder, the wearer could be located within about one to two hundred yards of where the satellite Global Positioning System had tracked the signal. On the ground, ground units with the hand held Global Positioning System trackers could get much closer to the wearer, thereby saving precious time.

However, due to their costs, the company manufacturing these transponders had only made a few hundred of them. The Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Ski Patrol were some of the blessed units within the state that had received funding for those transponders and possessed the hand held tracking devices for those transponders. A very few civilians had been trained, properly, how to wear the transponder and how to properly use the item since it had been put on the market in late 2003.

As Jeffery entered the ski patrol office for the Vail area, he saw Bob, his immediate supervisor, sitting behind the desk at the office. He looked up as Jeffery entered.

Jeffery, the commander wants to see you in his office, said Bob.

Oh no, what kind of mood is he in today? asked Jeffery.

His usual.

Great, did he say what he wanted?

No, but he did ask for your personnel file.

I’m screwed. Thanks, Bob.

Anytime.

Jeffery, one of the smallest members of the ski patrol assigned to the Vail, Colorado area office, nervously knocked on the ski patrol commander’s office door.

Enter! was yelled from behind the door.

Jeffery entered and closed the door behind him. The commander, who had poured himself a cup of coffee, turned around. He smiled, which made Jeffery even more nervous and sat down at his desk. Jeffery approached, as the commander picked up a piece of paper off of his desk.

Oh no, thought Jeffery; here’s my termination paperwork.

You wanted to see me, sir? said Jeffery cautiously.

Yes, I did. Take off your jacket, get a cup of coffee and sit down. I want to ask you a couple of questions.

Yes, sir.

Jeffery took off his jacket, hanging it on the back of the commander’s office door. He poured himself a cup of coffee, added just the right amount of sugar and creamer to it, and took a seat in front of the ski patrol commander for the Vail, Colorado area office.

Jeffery, I’ve been reviewing your personnel file recently.

Am I being terminated, sir? asked Jeffery.

The commander laughed a little then looked at Jeffery.

No, I couldn’t fire you even if I wanted to. Because, you seem to be the invisible glue that keeps this ski patrol unit together. If I fired you, half the ski patrol unit would walk away from here and I can’t afford that right now.

"That’s nice