Buried Alive With My Rival, The Yeti Saw Everything

“Eat my fucking powder, Brice!” Katie’s voice, sharp and clear in the thin Greenlandic air, cut through the hiss of his skis.

He glanced over his shoulder. She was a flash of neon pink and green against the blinding white, a hundred feet back but closing the gap with a terrifying, beautiful precision. He dug his edges in harder, carving a deep, aggressive turn that sent a plume of fresh snow arcing into the air behind him, directly in her path. A purely dick move. He grinned under his face mask.

“You wish, sweetheart!” he yelled back, his words snatched by the wind. “You’ll have to get closer than that to taste anything of mine.”

This was their element: an unnamed peak, miles from any designated trail, with nothing but jagged rock, ice, and an endless expanse of untouched snow. The helicopter drop had been an hour ago, leaving them in a profound, almost holy silence. A silence they’d immediately shattered with their bullshit. It was always like this. On the pro circuit, they were cordial for the cameras, two top-tier athletes respecting each other's game. Out here, with no one to watch, the gloves came off.

He risked another look. She’d powered through his spray, her form perfect, knees bent, body a coiled spring of potential energy. He could almost feel the heat of her glare through her polarized goggles. He hated how much he loved it. He hated how much he thought about the body under all those layers of Gore-Tex—the tight, powerful thighs he’d seen in the gym, the sharp line of her hips. He imagined pinning her down, not in the snow, but in a bed, that competitive fire in her eyes turning into something else entirely.

“Getting slow in your old age, Brice?” she shouted, her voice closer now. She was drafting him, using his line to conserve her energy. Smart bitch.

“Just giving you a nice view of my ass before I leave you behind!” He crouched lower, tucking his arms to reduce drag, pushing his speed into the reckless zone. The slope steepened, dropping into a wide, pristine bowl. This was it. The finish line was the stand of gnarled, frozen pines at the bottom. He shot her one last look. She was right beside him now, so close he could see the faint fog of her breath on her goggles. Her skis were perfectly parallel to his.

“Last one to the trees buys the whiskey,” she challenged, her voice a low, intimate promise that had nothing to do with alcohol.

“You’re on,” he said, the words barely out of his mouth before he broke his line, aiming for a riskier, steeper drop to her left. The race was on.

He hadn’t even completed his turn before the world dissolved. One moment, he was carving through brilliant, sunlit powder; the next, he was skiing into a solid wall of grey. The wind shifted from a high-altitude whistle to a deep, guttural roar that vibrated through the bones in his skull. It wasn't just wind; it was a physical presence, shoving him, trying to tear him off the mountain. Snow, driven horizontally, sandblasted the tiny patch of skin exposed between his goggles and his neck gaiter.

“Katie!” he yelled, but the sound was devoured by the storm. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see anything past the tips of his skis. The brilliant landscape of jagged peaks and endless snow was gone, replaced by a churning, claustrophobic chaos. The ground, the sky—it was all the same swirling, featureless white. Vertigo threatened to send him tumbling.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through the adrenaline. This wasn't a squall; this was a Greenlandic monster, the kind of storm that pilots and old guides spoke about with a grim reverence. The kind that killed people. Fast.

He forced himself to a stop, his edges chattering on the ice he couldn't see beneath the fresh powder. “Katie!” he screamed again, putting all the force of his lungs into it. The wind ripped the name away, a meaningless noise in the symphony of the blizzard. For a terrifying second, he was utterly alone.

Then, a shape emerged from the maelstrom, a ghost in neon pink. She was just a few feet away, her skis perpendicular to the fall line, her posture rigid with tension.

He pushed himself toward her, his movements clumsy and uncertain. “Fuck!” was all he could manage when he was close enough for her to hear.

“The race is off, asshole!” she yelled back, her voice tight with fear. He could see her chest heaving under her jacket. “We can’t see shit! The trees are gone!”

He nodded, the simple gesture feeling momentous in the chaos. The stupid bet, the rivalry, the sexual tension—it all felt like it had happened a lifetime ago, in another world. That world was gone, buried under the sudden, violent fury of the storm. All that was left was this. The roaring wind, the biting cold, and her.

“We have to find shelter,” he said, his voice raw. “Now. A rock overhang, a cave… anything.”

“Which way?” Her question hung in the air between them, a testament to their shared blindness. Down was the only logical answer, but down could lead them over a cliff edge or into a crevasse they’d never see coming.

“We stay close,” he commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Side by side. So close we can touch. We move slow. We feel the mountain.”

She didn’t argue. She just moved closer, so their arms brushed. The brief contact was a shock of warmth, a tiny point of solid reality in the disorienting white. They were no longer competitors. They were a single, two-headed creature, pushing blindly forward into the teeth of the storm, their shared objective reduced to the most primal of instincts: survive.

They moved like a single, wounded animal, shuffling blindly through the deafening roar. Every step was a calculated risk. Brice used his poles to feel the unseen slope ahead while his left arm remained pressed hard against Katie’s right. Her solidness was his only anchor in the disorienting chaos. Through the thick layers of their gear, he could feel the rigid tension in her muscles, a mirror of his own. The wind was a physical assault, a constant, brutal shove. Snow worked its way into every tiny gap, melting against his skin, a wet, creeping cold that felt like a prelude to death.

Time dissolved. It could have been minutes or an hour. Their thighs burned with the strain of the controlled, agonizingly slow descent. His mind was a blank slate of fear and focus, narrowed down to the next step, the next probe of his pole, the feel of Katie’s arm against his. He stumbled, his ski catching on something unseen, and pitched forward. Katie’s arm, locked with his, kept him from tumbling into the white abyss. “Fuck,” he breathed, the word devoured by the gale.

“Keep moving,” she grunted, her voice a raw sound next to his ear.

He took another shuffling step and his outstretched pole hit something that wasn’t rock or ice. It made a solid thud. Wood. He stopped, planting his feet, and probed again. Thud. Thud. A wall.

“What is it?” Katie yelled, her voice tight with a hope she didn't dare feel yet.

“A wall,” he said, the word catching in his throat. He let go of her arm, a brief panic flaring in him at the loss of contact, and moved his hands forward. His gloves met rough-hewn logs, slick with ice. He followed the structure, his hands tracing its shape. A corner. Another wall. And then—a frame. A door.

“It’s a cabin!” he screamed, the words a raw cry of victory against the storm. “Katie, it’s a fucking cabin!”

She was beside him in an instant, her own hands finding the doorframe. There was no handle, just a block of wood frozen solid. It wouldn’t budge. “It’s iced shut,” she said, her voice cracking with desperation.

“Stand back.” He unclipped one of his skis, the simple action taking monumental effort with his frozen, clumsy fingers. Using it as a lever, he jammed the tail into the crack between the door and the frame. “Push with me. On three.”

He positioned himself, his shoulder against the rough wood. Katie pressed in beside him, her hip and shoulder flush against his back, adding her strength to his. “One… two… THREE!”

They threw their combined weight against it. The ski groaned under the strain. Ice crackled like gunfire. For a second, nothing. Then, with a scream of tortured wood and shattering ice, the door gave way, swinging inward into blackness. They stumbled forward, a tangle of limbs and gear, and fell through the doorway, collapsing onto a hard-packed dirt floor.

The heavy door swung shut behind them, cutting off the storm’s roar with a sudden, shocking finality. The silence was absolute, a physical pressure on their eardrums. The only sounds were their own ragged, desperate gasps for air, echoing in the small, frigid dark. Brice was on his hands and knees, the profound cold of the floor seeping through his pants. Katie was half on top of him, her chest heaving against his back, her face buried in his shoulder. The air smelled of old wood, dust, and the faint, animal scent of long-gone occupants. They were alive. They were out of the wind. And they were utterly, completely alone together.