Slide

The pirate outfit was entirely unnecessary, but it made Digby Marks laugh. Procured from a custom shop in Denver, he'd added a parrot, formerly alive but currently taxidermied, to the silk left shoulder of the billowy shirt. He kept a few fake, though heavy, Spanish doubloons in his pockets. As he looked out over the white peaks edging the Foxraven Valley, he often imagined they were gargantuan waves, ready to splinter his ship.

The previous night's snowfall had left little doubt on Digby Marks that today would be an ideal day to head back to his perch on Hawthorne Pass overlooking the back bowls of Foxraven Valley. Anyone who knows anything about mountain engineering will tell you that slopes angled between 25 degrees and 45 degrees fall into the slide zone. Two shallow to let snow buildup just run off efficiently, and too steep to keep it from avalanching down once provoked. The mountainsides of the Foxraven Valley ranged from 32.3 degrees and 40.7 degrees, and the freshly fallen snow that sat on them was ready - no, wanted - to move. 

Enter the Howitzer. 

Lately, this particular cannon has been used to blow limbs and lives away in several Eastern Bloc countries. Its low velocity but intimidating range made it perfect for killing the proletariat from the comfort and safety of one's backyard. End an uprising while sipping on your morning coffee. Marks had purchased it, piece by piece, from a three-fingered arms dealer and reassembled it in his garage. He then towed it - in the open and without cover - to Hawthorne Pass, deep in Foxraven Valley, without incident or alarm. 

The shells were bought from the back room of a military supply store. Surrounded by sniper flares, motion-sensing trigger bombs, phase-shifting alpha repeaters, 3D printable missile launcher blueprints, and remote-controlled ballistic vests, three perfectly good and ready-to-use Howitzer shells were bought for less than a meal at one of those fancy restaurants that lined Pearl Street in Boulder.

The intent was never to kill. Marks didn't want a record. But what he did want was to, in his words, scare the fucking piss out of some rich city-dwelling assholes. And what better place to find rich city-dwelling assholes than at the Foxraven Ski Resort, which just so happened to offer the chance for rich city-dwelling assholes to ride to the top of Foxraven Peak in a heated six-person Gondola for the low, low price of $200/day?

It was early. The lifts had only been spinning for half an hour. It'd take a few more minutes for the pseudo-daredevils to head to the back bowls, hungry to try some of that "sweet pow" and make "first tracks." Before they arrived, Marks lined up his shot. Wind calculations were determined. Earth curvatures were estimated. 

Through his binoculars, he watched two ski patrol members make their way down the bowl, safely determining that their precious customers would be able to spend the day enjoying the wilderness, return to pay $200 the next day, and do it all over again. 

Finally, what looked like five guys in their late 20s and early 30s started down. Outfitted with horribly expensive rare-duck down feathered ski jackets, the newest titanium plated vacuum pocketed boots, and goggles tinted to reveal every edge line on the mountain, these were the targets. 

Marks lit the fuse and ran back a few feet - the doubloons rattling in his pockets. THWUMP. The shell volleyed out of the Howitzer and began its journey to the pristine snow facade of Foxraven Ski Resort's second most-famous ski trail. (The first, known as Doc's Knob, was famous - or infamous - for being the location of a prominent American family's ill-fated capture the flag meets paintball meets skiing game in which an uncle wound up castrated by a low-hanging tree branch.)

Marks saw the cloud of snow rise up before he heard the report. The skiers, too dialed into the music blaring in their headphones and lost in their own self-importance, never heard the impact. In fact, they didn't even notice the slide for the first several hundred meters of its journey. 

The avalanche sent a horizontal crack across the ridge line and then spiderwebbed throughout, sending the harder top layer of snow falling in sheets of incongruous polygons. Beneath those, the fine white powder acted as a liquid - molecules joining together in one common goal: reach the bottom of the mountain as quickly and with the most destruction as possible. 

If Marks had timed it right—and it appeared as though he had—the slide would have crossed the skiers' paths within a dozen feet or so. Not enough to do any real damage, but enough to give them a story to share on their Facebook pages, Instagram photos, Snapstories, Yelp reviews, Strava feeds, Twitter accounts, and favorite obscure subreddits. 

The first skier stopped. Without thinking, he snapped out of his skis and began clump-running in his ski boots up the trail and away from the avalanche. Thinking it was a game, the second also took off his skis and attempted to race the first skier to an as-yet-undetermined finish line. The third stopped and stared like a cupcake-deprived child at a birthday party as the wall of billowing snow crashed a few feet in front of him. The fourth, in fright, lost all bladder control while skidding to a stop. The fifth. Well, the fifth went right into the slide. 

Despite having a powerful military-grade weapon, an unpredictable form of nature, and a seething anger toward well-to-do people, Marks had no intent on injuring or killing anyone today. And with the introduction of the fifth skier to the avalanche, this was going off script. 

The rest of the group, skiers one and two having ended their race in a tie, watched hazily through the kicked-up snow cloud as the avalanche stopped. Marks tried desperately to figure out what had become of the fifth skier through his binoculars but could only see the cumulus of snow boiling from the valley below. 

Had Marks subscribed to SkiGod69 on Instagram, he would have seen first-person footage—filmed in 4 K resolution—of SkiGod69 entering and seemingly surfing an avalanche for a few hundred meters before wrapping his body in the pointed canopy of an Aspen. The footage gained views exponentially once internet-famous accounts like SunsOutGunsOut and GaryAndBroseph reposted it. 

Five broken bones, a punctured lung, two missing teeth, and 33 seconds of internet gold brought caffeine-infused liquor companies, neon-named painkiller suppliers, and a t-shirt manufacturer who specialized in parodies of famous brand logos to SkiGod69's hospital bed, all seeking to get in on the remaining 14:27 seconds of SkiGod69's fame.

Marks did what any sane person in a pirate outfit with a stuffed parrot standing in the Colorado wilderness in the middle of winter would do, he pushed the Howitzer down the Hawthorne pass to hide the evidence, watching as the cannon picked up speed and tumbled loudly, end over end, before its barrel twisted itself around a series of loose boulders. 

Above Hawthorne Pass in Foxraven Valley, above a strange man wearing a stuffed bird on his shoulder, a clump of freshly fallen snow heard the thunderous clang of the Howitzer as it hit the rocks. And it knew its time for action had come.