5 Minutes Left
By: Adrie Clendineng
Tags: Avalanche, Cold, Winter, Ski, Suspense

Prompt: Write a 650 word story in the suspense genre. It’s about a mountaineer and should include a pair of jeans. Also use the sentence ‘Repeat after me.’ Bonus prompt: There is a great storm.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

There I was, climbing this mountain with my kid. Jackson liked my stories and wanted to go with me. At first, I was a bit hesitant. But after some thinking and a little bit of researching how dangerous it was to mountaineer with a child, I decided to have him join on my next expedition. I chose to mountaineer a smaller mountain that I had climbed before so that I can keep a better eye on Jackson. Once we got there, the staff warned us about a storm that could come this way if the winds decided to blow to the west. I took no thought of this and told the staff,

“We’ll be back before the storm even gets here.” I got Jackson in his mountaineering outfit, and we started heading up.

As we got up higher, the more snow seemed to appear. I should have gotten snow pants instead of jeans. After a little over 2 hours and 30 minutes, we were ⅔ up the mountain when the snow started picking up. By the time we were at the top of that mini-mountain and finished, the snow was coming down hard. I had to carry Jackson because the snow had piled up to his upper torso, and could barely move on his own. The plan was to take a break at the top and have some food. But the snow was too deep now, so we had to head down almost immediately. When we barely got ¼ down the mountain, there was a giant crash somewhere. The snow on the plateau above us moved. I then just started booking it down because if something started an avalanche there, I didn’t want to be there.

I was running along the general path that we came from with Jackson in my arms. But, as I was running further and further down the mountain, it got harder and harder to tell where our footprints were when we first climbed up. It didn’t help when it started snowing so much that you couldn’t even see 3ft in front of your face. When I got ½ way down the mountain I turned around and saw the snow coming towards us at 50, maybe even 60 miles per hour. I ran like I never ran before in my life and somehow I was able to go faster than I was before even though my lungs were burning and I felt like I was going to collapse at any moment. I started to feel Jackson shake really hard from all of the cold. I held him tighter to try and give him some of my body heat to warm him up.

I decided to make one of the stupidest decisions of my life and looked back. I looked and saw that the avalanche was coming right for us and I couldn’t run anymore. I looked around for a tree, a rock, something to hold on to but it was too late. Right before the avalanche hit us I yelled at Jackson to close his mouth and clench his teeth and to not stop until I told him too. He did and once I followed suit and balled myself around him, the avalanche hit us and we started moving.

When you are in an avalanche, you are being tossed and turned around like in the ocean but it is a lot colder and a lot deadlier. Once I felt that we stopped, I opened my eyes to try and see if we were anywhere close to the surface. Answer, we weren’t. I tried to move but I was stuck and I started to shiver too. I looked down at Jackson and told him that he can unclench his jaw now. He opened his eyes and started freaking out. He was getting short of breath and started crying which was understandable.I tried to maneuver him as best as I could to hug him and try to calm him down. I remember somewhere that you would die within 15 minutes from suffocation in an avalanche. I don’t think we would be saved in those 15 minutes so I just held him and calmed him down for the possible last few minutes of our lives. After 10 minutes of comforting, he calmed down and lost consciousness. I proceeded to do the same and hoped that someone would save us in time.