Chapter 1: Playing With The Boys

“Okay, guys. Let’s make sure we have everything we’ll need.”

That voice was the property of Hunter, a young man from my university whom I will always consider to have been cooler than me. Of course, being “cool” isn’t everything, and caring about that is likely more of a reflection on the “cooler” person than anything else, but it is what it is.

I gulped. “What…will we need?” 

Hunter gave me a glare, the slightest glint in his right eye. You could easily have convinced me that he was going to live up to his name.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you, Spencer?”

My eyes widened. “Of course I’m not, Hunter! What are you talking about?”

“Good. We paid a lot of money for this equipment, and it would be a shame not to see it put to good use. You’ll notice that there’s a backpack in front of each of you.”

I glanced toward the black bag at my feet. It was a little bigger than my backpack at college, but I suppose it had to be considering what it held.

“In each backpack, there is a water bottle, which you should always fill before embarking on a journey like this. But it’s not just that – there’s a beacon, probe, and shovel.”

That would be a good set of stage names for a band, I thought. Or, more precisely, that’s a thought that entered my mind of its own accord. I’m weird like that.

“Now, can anyone tell me what these items do?” Hunter enquired.

Xander raised his right hand, and Hunter called on him like this was one of my GIS courses at GPU.

“Yes. Everyone must wear the beacon as long as they are in the backcountry.”

“That’s right,” Hunter stated bluntly. “Each of you, take the beacon out of your backpack and sling the strap over your shoulder.”

I did as I was told. Due to not being the most coordinated individual in general, it was easier said than done for me to fasten the beacon like the others. Soon, though, I was all set, the transceiver right over my heart.

“Set the beacon to Transmit mode at the very beginning. These babies have excellent battery life, let me tell you. They’re not going to run out during this trip.”

Manuel raised his hand. And again, much like a professor of sorts (which, for all intents and purposes, he was a professor in this element), Hunter called on him.

“This tech looks so dated. Like, it looks like something they’d have come up with in the 1960s and never updated since.”

Hunter snorted. “That’s because it doesn’t need to be updated, Manuel. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. What do you want it to do, make you a smoothie?”

“Fair point.”

We were then shown how to use the probe and shovel. Basically, if one of us were buried in an avalanche, the others would switch their beacons from Transmit to Search and use them to look for us and fish us out of the snow. The probe would be used to pinpoint where we were beneath the snow, and the shovel would be used to excavate the victim.

The whole time, I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t pay as much attention as I could have. The transceiver strapped to my chest looked secure, but sometimes those things only look secure. Could there have been a way to surgically implant it or something?

“Now it’s time to go,” Hunter stated matter-of-factly. “Let’s carry our skis to the snowfront and get on the lift.”

The numerous Butterfree that had been chained in my stomach were now on the loose, fluttering about in a vain attempt to escape. They were clogging up my windpipe, making it harder for me to breathe as deeply as I would have liked.

I’m going to do something dangerous, I thought bitterly. This is…this is not something I do.

And yet, here I was. On a ski trip with four of my college buddies at one of the mountains on the outskirts of Coronet City. There wasn’t a speck of sky visible; the light gray clouds hung low in the atmosphere. And I knew what clouds these were – the kind that promised more snow.

Hunter showed us how to switch our skis from ski mode to walk mode and vice versa, but he emphasized that we shouldn’t do that yet. “Wait until we reach a point where we have to climb a hill” were his exact words.

“I can’t wait ‘till we get to apres-ski later!” Xander exclaimed. “We’ll head to the bar…”.

“Xander, aren’t you only twenty?” Manuel stated.

 Xander rolled his eyes. “ Only twenty? That’s still older than over a quarter of the population!”

“I mean, you can’t drink,” Manuel replied, running a mittened hand through his slight mustache. “So what are you going to do at the bar?”

“The same things everyone else who doesn’t drink enjoys at the bar” Xander muttered.

“Such as…”.

“It’s probably best that we don’t drink tonight, Manuel” Hunter stated curtly. “This isn’t a frat party. Some people go to Alola for winter break and relax at an all-inclusive the whole time. That’s not what we’re doing, not remotely.”

I shivered. “I’m fine with that.” The thought of navigating through avalanche country with a few frat boys who were still half-sloshed was less than appealing.

So we got on the lift and rode it up the mountain. The ride felt both interminable and also like it went too fast. I think my heart was trying to get in a lifetime’s worth of beats in the next few minutes, just in case it didn’t get another chance to do so.

“So what grade do you think Professor Frankly’s going to give you in Biology, Hunter?” Xander enquired.

Hunter shrugged. “Probably a B- at best.”

“But you’re supposed to be really good at Biology,” Xander snorted. “Just imagine, Hunter of all people isn’t good at Biology.”

“You know, there are book smarts and street smarts. Or in this case, wilderness smarts. The skills required for passing an exam are very different from those required to survive in the mountains.”

“Fair enough,” I muttered. What I didn’t say was this: Hopefully we won’t have to survive in the mountains.

The chairlift deposited us about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, and Hunter led us part of the way across a traverse, during which I nearly fell several times. (And in this case, several means seven, not four!)

In other words, it took me a while to get my ski legs back, and I think I can be forgiven for that. Skiing isn’t quite like riding a bike, after all, especially when there’s so much extra equipment you need to keep track of.

“All right,” Hunter began. “Once you’re in these woods, it’s more like water skiing than regular skiing. That’s why you’re wearing those snow overalls – which, by the way, have the funniest name in existence.”

 Xander stared blankly at Hunter. “Yes?”

“They’re called bibs, Xander. Bibs. Like those things babies wear when they eat so that food doesn’t get all over the place.”

“Are you calling me a baby?”

“Yes, Xander, because you’re younger than the rest of us” I mumbled, trying for a joke. Unfortunately, it fell flat, which to most people would have been utterly predictable. But not to me.

Hunter gave me a dirty look. “In any case,” he continued, “it’s so you don’t get soaked if you fall. And I really mean when you fall, because you’re going to fall a lot at first. But it’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

“Right” the other three of us responded in unison. My face was red by this point, and not from the cold mountain air.

“Follow my lead” Hunter commanded us before swiveling around and pointing his skis directly downhill. Soon he was several stories below us, getting smaller and smaller in the woods.

“Might as well go for it” I mumbled, shoving forward with my poles and into the forest.

Right away I understood exactly why Hunter had compared it to water skiing. Because that’s exactly what it was like. As someone who lacked the upper body strength necessary to excel at that sport, I found myself wobbling before long, only barely managing to stay upright through the first several turns.

I also couldn’t shake the thought that there might be a rock or root anywhere in this glade, and I had to pray to Arceus above that there’d be enough snow to cushion my fall if that happened. 

The skis strapped to my boots were also harder to control than I was used to. They were wider and lighter than the resort skis – they had to be, Hunter had explained, to deal with this much powder. As such, it was more difficult to turn, to the point where averting a fall was my most important goal.

But it was still exhilarating, carving through the deep snow like a knife through half-melted butter. Even if it took a little more effort than usual.

At the end of the glade, what I’d been fearing came to pass. My right ski got caught beneath a root I hadn’t seen, and I fell forward out of my bindings, landing softly on the groomed snow.

It didn’t take more than a split second to realize that I wasn’t hurt. It was then that I started laughing while grinning from ear to ear.

Manuel made a hockey stop about five feet from me. “What happened, Spencer? Are you all right?” he asked, his face portraying absolute gravity.

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s crazy how soft this snow is. It’s like baby powder – there’s so much of it!”

My companion laughed without any humor. “Well, as you’ll soon discover, it’s like a cross between that and quicksand. Notice that it’ll be hard to get up.”

Sure enough, moving to a standing position took more energy than it did at the resort. And to make matters worse, my next step went right into the white stuff – I sank almost up to my knees.

Manuel snorted; again, not one iota of humor was betrayed in that gesture. “Roll over, Spencer – that’s a better idea than getting your footing right away. Because you can’t.”

“I could use some help with that,” I muttered. “Could you reach out with your pole?”

Manuel did as I asked him to, and I grabbed onto the end of the ski pole. After being pulled into a standing position, I nearly fell forward again, but was able to keep my balance this time.

“Thanks” I mouthed.

“It’s no problem,” Manuel replied. Though it was hard to see any part of his face beneath his snow gear, I could tell he wore a severe expression because…I just could. Even someone like me can do that much.

Once I was back on my feet, the run continued. It wasn’t much longer before we were back at the base of the mountain, looking back up at what we’d accomplished.

“All right,” Hunter asserted. “Let’s get back in line.”

That’s the thing about skiing that even the most enthusiastic practitioners of the sport will admit: It’s rather repetitive. To some extent, you’re doing the same thing over and over again; namely, sliding down on the mountain on those boards clipped to your boots, then taking the lift back up, rinse and repeat. Except sometimes the lift line is longer than other times.

This pattern continued for a considerable period of time. We would get in line for the lift, and sometimes we would wait for up to ten minutes. (Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by the crowds; snow conditions were incredible and likely to only improve. Still, I selfishly wished the lines were shorter. You can’t have both.)

We’d ride the chairlift back up the mountain, during which time the other three young men would go on about some of their classes, complain about the food in the dining hall, complain about their professors, or whatnot. I was just there, fitting in with a longtime pattern I’d experienced throughout much of my life.

Still, I was enjoying myself to no small degree. The only thing that could serve as a major blemish on the trip was when I saw something on the trail map that I didn’t agree with.

“Hunter, you notice that?” I enquired, gesturing at the map with one of my poles.

Hunter frowned at me. “Yes? Spencer, we should get in line for the mid-mountain lift before it gets too long. Are you sure you’re not unnecessarily distracted?”

“But look at that. It shows a Piplup skiing. That’s not something you see on the mountains these days, is it?”

“We’ve never seen them on the mountains, Spencer,” Xander asserted. 

“I know, and that’s a shame. Why wouldn’t they let Pokémon enjoy the slopes like everyone else, huh?”

I can’t let this argument escalate too far. After all, there’s a non-negligible chance that one of these guys will have to save my life. Therefore, I’d rather they had a positive opinion of me.

“Because they’re not humans,” Hunter said.

“They might not be humans, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated humanely” I muttered.

“Separate doesn’t have to mean equal, you know” Hunter pointed out. “It could mean that…”.

“Nope,” I snapped. “I’m not having it. Separate is equal, just like several means seven.”

Xander chuckled. “Wait… several means seven? I thought it meant more than two, but not many.”

“That’s not important. What matters is that sometimes I use words differently from you three.” And that’s because my brain works differently from you three.

“Whatever,” Manuel sighed. “Maybe it’s best that we just stop for lunch now.”

“Lunch?” Hunter asked incredulously. “Isn’t it a bit early for that?”

“Maybe it is,” Manuel conceded.

I gestured at the clock mounted against the “cockpit” for whoever operated the chairlift. According to its hands, it was almost noon, so not ridiculously early for our midday meal. Still, I’d be lying if I said that my anxiety was one reason I agreed to have lunch ahead of schedule.

Ever since that morning, as much fun as I’d been having in the snow, that fun had come with reservations. On some level, I was well aware that this fun wouldn’t last forever. Indeed, it wouldn’t last very long at all; as soon as this ski trip ended, we’d return to our regular lives as students at Greater Pastoria University.

But it wasn’t just that. Part of me thought – no, knew – that this trip itself was too good to be true. Don’t ask me how; some people just have that sixth sense that their luck is about to run out. Since that was me right now, it made sense to delay, delay, delay.

“Yeah, let’s get something to eat” I stated.

Since Xander didn’t seem to have a preference, Hunter was outvoted two to one. We skated over to the nearby lodge and entered the restaurant.

A few minutes later, we were seated at one of the lodge’s long tables, helmets off, enjoying some ramen bowls and pot stickers. In other words, close to the perfect food for a cold day like today when you were taking part in strenuous physical activity.

“So after lunch,” Hunter announced, “we’re going to take the lift to the very top of the mountain. And then we’re going to ski down the back side.”

“That sounds really scary” I stated, gulping down a bit of the broth.

“We’ll all be fine,” our de facto guide asserted. “We are all excellent skiers, and besides, there’s ski patrol.”

Manuel frowned. “I’m pretty sure the ski patrol doesn’t, well, patrol back there.”

“Bullshit” Hunter snorted. “Or, for the sake of those people who’d rather be woke, Tauros shit. The point is, the ski patrol will get us if we need rescuing. But none of us will – trust me on that.”

I shivered. It was pretty insane just how cavalier Hunter could be; this was a pattern in college when he neglected to study for exams, asserting that he’d absorb all the information through osmosis or whatnot. Here, however, the stakes were far higher.

Think about this, Spencer, I thought as I took a bite out of a dumpling. If all of your friends were drinking poison, would you do it too?

In a vacuum, it’s easy enough to say that you’d never do that. You’d never engage in such a reckless course of action, even if you were with several friends doing the same. That would be ridiculous!

But I’m convinced that anyone who says that has never experienced the power of peer pressure. Because let me tell you: It’s quite something.

“Okay” I sighed. “Let’s do it.”

Once we’d finished up our ramen and dumplings, we returned to the cold, blustery winter day that hung over the Coronet Range. Not for the first time, I wondered whether it would have been better to vacation in Alola, but whatever; that ship had sailed.

The line for this lift was considerably shorter, perhaps because there wasn’t as much demand for the highest slopes. Within a minute, we were seated on the chair and riding upward.

With every second that passed, the wind picked up, and the visibility was cut down further. At one point I chanced a glance behind us, and right away I wished I hadn’t done so. 

“The base of the mountain isn’t visible” I stated in a more monotone voice than I’d intended.

Manuel glared at me. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be safe on this run.”

Hunter nodded. “Sometimes you worry too much, Spencer. Like today. Do you really not trust me?”

After about seven minutes on the chair, we ended up at the summit. Here the wind howled like a Lycanroc does at the moon. What was more, each snowflake felt like a sharp needle against my cheeks. And my neck gaiter only did so much, since it didn’t stay up on its own and was growing wet from my breath.

“All right, guys,” Hunter announced. “We’ve got a bit of a traverse here, so it’s best to switch the skis to walk mode.”

Once we’d placed the skins on the bottom of the skis, it was time to go. Hunter led the way, followed by Xander and then myself. Manuel brought up the rear.

At first I tried stepping in the regular manner – turns out that’s not how you tour on skis. Instead, a “shuffling” motion is considered preferable, making it easier to keep one’s balance.

Despite the frigid temperature, I felt warm before long, a function of both the exertion and the several layers I wore. I do not know how long it took to reach the start of the run, but it was long enough for sweat to make itself known on my skin.

“All right, let’s go for it!” Hunter stated. “We take the skins off, then switch back to ski mode. You all got this!”

It took most of my strength to tear the skins off my skis, and it was in the process of doing so that I noticed some unsettling language on the sign.

“Hey, Hunter?” I blurted.

Our “guide” swiveled in my direction. “Yes?”

“Read the damn sign,” I muttered. “It says the ski patrol doesn’t operate in this area. In other words, you were wrong.”

“You can do it, Spencer. We’ll all be okay” Hunter asserted. To this day, I do not know if he actually meant it or if he were merely saying this to comfort himself. 

Anyway, before long we were off, experiencing the bliss that is a dense snowpack on a steep slope. It was easy enough to convince oneself that there was nothing to worry about when one was in the midst of such an event. I knew that if I fell, I would not get hurt; the snow was far too deep for any impact to seriously injure me.

That should’ve been enough to reassure me, but something else spoke for me. After a while, my bladder became uncomfortable, and I raised a thumb on one of my mittens to signal to the rest of the group that I’d be a minute.

Wait a minute…I’m the last one in the group. If I stop to take a leak now, I’m gonna lose them. 

Regardless, whenever nature calls, you can’t exactly refuse to pick up the phone. So I bit the proverbial bullet and made my way into the sparse woods nearby.

As soon as I found a suitable tree to water, I realized another problem. There were so many layers that it would be quite a hassle to undo all of them at once, and then especially to don them all once more. I could have used my water bottle, but that was gross, and besides, I’d still need that water bottle afterward.

Nonetheless, sometimes there are things you just have to do. So I unzipped the snow bibs and a few other things until I had an opening to relieve myself.

So I did my business, looking around occasionally to make sure nobody was determined to hold a conversation with me. Not that this was the end of the world – didn’t coworkers do this all the time at the urinals?

What was that joke again? Oh yeah – when you pee with me, you’re in good company.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that, just because bad jokes can be funnier than good jokes. But what happened next would be no laughing matter.

Once I’d emptied my bladder, the next problem came to pass: Namely, suiting up once more for the rest of the run.

“Where’s an expert when you need them?” I asked Arceus rhetorically. 

Of course, no response was forthcoming. It never was; after all, the Creator of the universe probably had far bigger fish to fry.

Regardless, it took a good five minutes to figure out how to strap the bibs back on. Had Hunter been present, this could have been a lot easier, but he was somewhere down below in this valley.

Somewhere.

My heart skipped a beat as I realized that he was away from view. Having literally pissed away at least several minutes (yes, several does in fact mean seven), I had gotten separated from the group.

It is a strange thing, but whenever you’ve prepared for a specific situation, you might think that you’ll remember exactly what to do when that situation occurs. However, when the time actually comes to put that plan into practice, it’ll melt away faster than butter in the oven. That’s exactly what happened to me.

Think, Spencer, think! What did your mother always tell you to do when you got lost in the mall as a child?

That was right. You were supposed to stay where you were and wait for an adult to find you. That way you wouldn’t make it harder for them to do so.

Then again, I realized bitterly, being a child at a mall was a very different setting from being an adult skiing in the Coronet Range’s backcountry. In this icy landscape beyond the reach of the ski patrol, there was only one option: Taking matters into my own hands.

The first thing I did was to ditch my skis. If I had to search for the rest of the group, who might in fact be taking the lift back up right now, skis would be a hindrance, not a help.

I regretted this decision instantly.

As soon as I stepped out of my bindings, I sank like a stone into the snow. What had I compared it to earlier? Oh yeah – a cross between baby powder and quicksand.

  The point being, of course, that the snow was incredibly light, to the point where it wouldn’t remotely support my weight. So it’s no wonder I sank up to my knees yet again. 

Well, great. Just great. Now how am I going to make any progress?

I tried to climb back onto my skis and clip into my bindings, but that effort was soon to be abandoned as my knees sank cleanly through the new layer of snow. I would hardly be surprised if the skis fell into a tree well, because there were in fact trees nearby.

“The beacon!” I realized, as a tiny seed of hope formed in my chest.

It didn’t last. You see, beacons only have so much range. By now the others could be a few miles away, far beyond the ability of the radio technology to locate me. They were only useful in the immediate aftermath of the event, and even then, only for a short time before the victim suffocated.

In any case, I wasn’t buried beneath the snow, but that’s about all I had going for me. Rummaging through my backpack, I took inventory of my, well, inventory.

The backpack contained a water bottle, which was still full. Once it ran out, I could eat snow for water, but that would risk making my insides colder. And “colder” was not something I wanted to experience, not if I ended up stuck in the forest for a while.

The probe and shovel, two members of the band known as the Avalanche Rescue Trio, were absolutely worthless. They could only be used by others. Partly because the snow would settle quickly from within, and partly because the victim might be unconscious and therefore unable to even try digging themselves out.

We hadn’t brought any food, which was just as well, since we’d just eaten at the lodge. Eventually, once I was hungry again, I’d regret that decision, but I couldn’t worry about that right now.

And then I found the backpack’s last feature: A cord not unlike the ripcord on a parachute. And it served a similar purpose, making the comparison even more apt.

You were meant to pull the cord if in the path of an avalanche that you couldn’t ski out of. If you did this, the airbag would inflate, hopefully making it easier to stay above the white stuff cascading all around you. At a minimum, you wouldn’t be buried as deep, making it easier for the others to locate you with their beacons.

That last part obviously didn’t apply here, but there was still another use for the airbag. Maybe I wouldn’t sink as deep with each step, meaning that it would take less effort to traverse the landscape.

Well, it’s worth a shot. What else do I have?

I donned the backpack yet again and pulled the ripcord. In a split second, the airbag, a giant orange blob shaped much like a Lucario’s aura-sensing organs, was deployed. It curled around my chest like a pair of headphones.

I forced a laugh.

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure I look ridiculous. But I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Before I began my trek toward what I hoped would be safety, I cast my gaze skyward, not even needing to squint due to the thick cloud cover.

According to the old stories, Arceus, the King of Everything, had descended to Earth at the Hall of Origin. That hallowed palace was perched high atop the summit of Mount Coronet, not terribly far from the range bearing its name. Some said He was still there today, watching over all of Sinnoh – all of Earth, even.

I gave the clouds a defiant glare.

“Arceus, if You’re listening…You’re not going to take my life. If that is Your intention, I will not submit to it. I am going to live, damn it.”

Nature might have had plans for me, but I had other plans for it. What happened next would determine whose plan succeeded. Yet I would win, simply because there was no world in which I wasn’t more desperate than Arceus.

After looking back toward my immediate surroundings, I began my long winter hike.