Mesa Trail ch. 31
Draft 2

Reports came early and fast this time around -- big storm coming our way, from the Divide.  Hannah's father spent his days watching gauges, watching screens, testing numbers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.  If there was so much as a sunburst out there in the Milky Way, if there was a gust of low pressure wind swooping off the Pacific, a molecule out of place, then  that was the job of the department of the Mesoscale & Microscale Meterology Laboratory. Hannah's father's job was often to send up weather balloons to gather data in the formation of those nasty front range thunderstorms.

Hannah began to pull the tarps down over the open walls of the outpost.  Wasn't much here, most everything brought up day by day, two coolers full of ice and well packed menu items for lunch.  Two teachers were on sight today, Mrs Hix from history and Mr. Joel from Phy. Ed. They began to pack up small picks and place their gloves in their back packs.  Kitie lifted up the entrance chute to the sluice box and placed it over on the dry bank. Most importantly, she walked over to the two mason jars of gold they had collected in just over three hours work.  Since last storm, nobody wanted to say anything out loud, but the creek was lined in gold.  There had been times when Josh might skip the panning altogether and simply dip the jar down there near the bottom and scoop up the residue, splash the water back through his fingers tipping the jar upside down and what was left over was the good stuff.  But where was Josh and Inuna? A side dig? High up at Flagstaff? That was where they usually would end up.  It took a good hour and a half to get up there walking.  There was no way Hannah or anybody else could follow them up there and warn them of the coming storm -- if they didn's see it already -- in time.

Inuna would know what to do, to take cover, to stay as dry as possible and certainly not try to walk out in the open during the flash of the storm, but what about Josh? Josh did not like storms, everybody knew that.  He had terrible dreams of storms and deep water, always had.  It might have been from the stories they heard passed down from great grandfather, of days or nights spent in rain soaked clothes waiting for the rain to pass, always worrying about hypothermia, not something anybody wants to get, but that could happen even in the summer months.  The miner always has to be ready for cover up here in the mountains, he would say.  You work all day under the sun.  You sweat like a fish.  The storm comes, just like that.  He would click his fingers and snap. Then before you know it, it's cold and if you don't have a change of shirt with you, you freeze right there on the spot.  They knew he was exaggerating some because great grandpa was as tough as they got and he was still standing back then.

But some of this stories weren't quite as funny.  Men who tried to summit peaks in the winter trudging through hip high snow then freezing in place.  People would find them a day later, stick straight, and call to them only to find out they were froze.  Men caught in washouts along what seemed like small streams that turned to rushing rivers.  Never try to walk across a creek in a storm.  It gains speed and starts to roar. It will take you out, I've seen it.