It is only a pack trail, narrow and dangerous at best. During the summer a line of burros or donkeys winds along it, bringing down ore from the mine and carrying back provisions. But when winter sets in, the trail becomes very dangerous, and the zigzags have caused the death of many prospectors who have stayed too late in the mountains, or taken the trail too early in the spring.
Gus had little difficulty down the first part of the trail. In an hour he reached the zigzags. They were covered with hanging masses of snow that threatened with every blast to go grinding down the wall of the canyon.
By his pole Gus held himself on to the side of the canyon, moving cautiously across hanging drifts. He made his way only by grim, desperate effort.
At the end of thirty minutes of hard struggle he stood half-way down the trail. Then a savage blast tore a pile of clinging snow from the top and drove it at him. Gus saw it start, gathering speed and bulk as it came. The whole mountain side began to move. Tons of hard-packed snow were slipping, and he was directly in their path. There was no way of dodging the avalanche—he must outrace it.
There was no time to zigzag back and forth down the side of the canyon; he had to take as direct a route as the avalanche. He threw his pole from his grasp and shot ahead of the oncoming mass of snow. Death was behind him. Before him rocks jutted out to trip him, and jump-offs endangered his course.
He Swung Down the Trail with a Speed that Mocked the Wind at His Back
But he rode his skis with reckless abandon, leaping, twisting, dodging down the slope. Behind him crashed the snow. He was veering to the left to escape its path.
A leap brought him to the bottom of the canyon. But before he could glide to safety, a mass of snow at the side of the slide caught and hurled him before it, bruised and half buried.