Avalanche Gulch was a mile-wide concave tiered arena carved into the southern flank of Mount Sunder at eight thousand paces above the sea.
Above the trail rose a three-thousand-foot hanging wall of smooth, forty-degree granite, capped by a huge wind-slab of blue-white firn twelve feet thick. The slab had no support beneath it. It hung over the deep pit like the roof edges of a cathedral, held in place only by the pulling strength of the frozen snow crystals.
The morning sun had not reached the gulch. But the sky had cleared to a pale, terrifying blue that revealed every crack, every fracture line, and every stress-seam in the hanging snowpack.
The heat stood at thirty-two below zero.
“Silence,” Kael said before they stepped out onto the open cross. His voice was barely a whisper, his bushy eyebrows drawn down in grim concentration. “No shouting. No cracking of the whip. If a trace-chain clinks against an iron bolt, wrap it in wool. A loud cough can trigger a slab of that size.”
Tomas checked the sledge’s draft chains. He wrapped each link in strips of oily rag, securing the wraps with twine to prevent any metal rattle.
The trail through the Gulch was a narrow groove cut into the scree slope. It crossed two thousand paces of open, exposed terrain where there was not a single boulder, not a single tree, and not a single crevice to offer shelter if the hanging wall broke loose.
