EGRV 14 | Sea to Sky

【Chi Yu, I told you, you don’t need to worry about me.】

Chi Yu shot up from his seat. “Something urgent came up, I have to go first, sorry. Can you… can you get a cab home?”

One look at his expression and Liang Muyi knew something was wrong. He stood up too. “What’s the matter?”

“We’ve lost contact with Gao Yi. Vivi-jie… Xiang Vivi just messaged me, said she hasn’t been able to reach him since this afternoon. The signal in the backcountry is bad, and at this hour…” He raised his wrist to look at his watch, anxiety written all over his face.

“You’re going back to the mountain? At this time… will they even let you up?”

“I have to go back. Before he left, he told me where he was planning to ski. I know that area really well, I took Gao Yi there last year too. Maybe I can help.”

Gao Yi had been planning to ski off-piste in the backcountry. The Whistler area had just received a heavy snowfall two days prior, which was why this morning had such good weather and deep powder. Most North American ski resorts have professional patrols who assess off-piste snow conditions, but the power of nature is something humans can never fully grasp or predict. Skiing off-piste at a time like this was exhilarating, yes, but it also came with a real risk of triggering an avalanche.

Chi Yu knew Gao Yi; he was the type of person who would bring two spare batteries even when just going out for fun. The weather today was perfectly clear, he was at a resort he was familiar with, and he was planning to film videos, yet he still went through the trouble of bringing emergency gear. Chi Yu clearly remembered Gao Yi’s backpack being stuffed full, which meant he had likely brought a self-rescue avalanche airbag, as well as the three essential avalanche rescue tools—a transceiver, a shovel, and a probe—commonly known as the “safety trio.”

But the reality was, the safety trio wasn’t a silver bullet. When something actually happened, there were too many things that could go wrong—could you deploy the airbag within ten seconds? Was your partner also buried? Could a search and rescue be conducted effectively and in time? A transceiver’s range was only fifty to seventy meters. If an accident happened, you had to rely on people nearby to help, and the golden window for rescue was only fifteen minutes.

It was now seven o’clock in the evening. Whistler closed at four. Still having no contact with Gao Yi at this point likely meant the worst.

Chi Yu grabbed the car keys from the table and was about to leave when Liang Muyi reacted quickly, slamming his hand down with a thwack, pinning Chi Yu’s wrist and the keys to the table.

“What are you doing…” Chi Yu was getting frantic. How could he stop him from leaving at a critical time like this?

“How much did you drink?” Liang Muyi asked him.

Chi Yu looked at the empty, large beer glass on the table and was dumbfounded. “Fuck,” he cursed. His mind had long since flown to the Whistler backcountry, and he had completely forgotten about the beer.

Only then did Liang Muyi lift his hand. He watched Chi Yu quickly pull his wrist back, while he himself closed his hand around the Highlander’s keys.

“I’ll drive you. I’ll go get the car. Do me a favor and pay the bill first, I’ll reimburse you later. Come straight out and get in the car across the street.”

He was older, after all, and remained calm in a crisis, his first thought always being how to solve the problem. After speaking, he didn’t give Chi Yu any time or room to react and went out to move the car.

The highway from the village to the Whistler area was beautiful. On the left was the calm, expansive Howe Sound, and on the right, the rolling Cascade Mountains, hence its name: the “Sea to Sky Highway.”

This morning, it had taken them a full two hours to drive up the mountain. But now, the same road seemed exceptionally short because Chi Yu filled every single minute of the journey.

First, he started asking in all his group chats if anyone had seen Gao Yi that day, including the several 500-person ski groups on Liang Muyi’s phone, which he borrowed to post the message. He and Gao Yi had parted ways early in the morning; it was very likely someone had seen him somewhere else at noon or later in the afternoon.

Before they had even reached Squamish, Chi Yu had already made three or four calls.

He expertly tuned the car radio to the Whistler ski patrol’s channel, just as he had as a child at ski camp. Back then, the camp’s single old radio was a window into the adult world. He and the other kids would huddle around it all day, listening to off-piste snow reports, accident updates, and the patrol team’s banter. But today, that window had opened, and he had been thrown right into that world.

Sure enough, ten minutes after they entered the broadcast range, he heard the patrol’s report about Gao Yi’s party of two being missing.

Chi Yu’s next call was to a friend who used to be on the patrol team. He had him help pass a message to the person on duty, relaying, word for word, the backcountry ski plan Gao Yi had told him that afternoon, combined with the time and place he was last seen according to people in the group chats. Of course, people change their plans. Chi Yu knew that if Gao Yi had gone to those places and found the snow conditions weren’t ideal, he would very likely have adapted on the fly.

Between two of his calls, Liang Muyi managed to interject, “Aren’t you… going to call his girlfriend?”

Chi Yu was not in a good mood and told him bluntly, “Don’t talk to me right now.”

And the fact was, assisting the rescue during the golden hour was more important than consoling the family. After contacting the rescue personnel, Chi Yu’s next call was to Xiang Vivi. Vivi was also in those group chats and had seen the messages searching for Gao Yi, so she knew how serious the situation was. Her voice was trembling when she answered the phone.

“I told them his plan for the rest of the day, and someone in the group said they saw him around 1 p.m. I’ll help them with the routes when I get there. Vivi-jie, try not to worry for now… Yes, I know. Mm, I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news. You drive safely too.”

He comforted her, his voice low and his tone steady. It was only after he hung up that Chi Yu tossed the phone onto the dashboard, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose tightly.

The phone hit the plastic dashboard with a clatter. The effects of the alcohol were kicking in late. After an hour of making calls, seeking help, and severe dehydration, his head was throbbing with pain.

“How is it?” Liang Muyi was fully focused on driving. He wasn’t familiar with this road and could only use his peripheral vision to glance at Chi Yu in the passenger seat.

Chi Yu’s hand was still covering his face. He didn’t speak for a long time.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was also trembling slightly. “Not his girlfriend.”

Liang Muyi couldn’t follow his train of thought. “What do you mean?”

“You just said Gao Yi’s girlfriend… She’s not his girlfriend. She’s his fiancée. He proposed to Xiang Vivi just the week before last,” Chi Yu explained, word by word.

“You…”

It was such an insignificant detail. It was as if the world was collapsing and spinning before his eyes, yet he had grabbed onto a tiny, tiny twig and just wouldn’t let go. Liang Muyi wanted to say something, but Chi Yu wasn’t looking at him anymore.

The Sea to Sky Highway was pitch black. He faced the dark, imposing mountains, showing Liang Muyi only his profile, which looked incredibly stubborn.

He’d actually sensed it before. Chi Yu was usually a very laid-back person. His three daily meals were never planned; his answers to everything were always “it’s alright,” “anything’s fine,” or “whatever.” He had six or seven boards and two pairs of boots in his trunk and would always decide which set of gear to use only when he reached the foot of the mountain. Yet, in a crisis, he acted like he was wound up, methodically doing everything that needed to be done without missing a beat or pausing for a second.

Liang Muyi himself was used to being independent and taking the lead. He was always the one arranging things for others; no one ever had to arrange things for him. Since his university days, he had lived like a wanderer, his whole life in a 70L hiking backpack. He had experienced his car breaking down in the middle of nowhere and friends getting injured in the wild and needing medical attention. No matter the situation, big or small, he could always control his emotions well; it seemed to be an innate ability. For any outdoor activity with even a hint of risk, every small group needed a few people to take charge, and he was that pillar. That was why, even after he had waved his hand and declared he was done playing, all his friends, including Wang Nan’ou, still thought of him.

Now, this incident hadn’t happened to him, so Liang Muyi tried his best to restrain himself from taking charge, from helping Chi Yu think of solutions. He told himself repeatedly that he was just a driver, responsible only for getting Chi Yu to his destination. His intuition also told him that Chi Yu seemed to really dislike him meddling in his affairs.

This guy was also born to worry. Even though his mind was split into eight pieces coordinating the rescue efforts, he was still habitually looking out for him. He even remembered that Liang Muyi had an international driver’s license, and seeing him driving ten-plus miles over the speed limit, he taught him how to answer if he got pulled over by the police.

Right up until they got out of the car, Chi Yu kept asking him, “Are you okay?”

Liang Muyi replied once again, “I’m okay. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“There’s some stuff in the trunk, quilts, blankets, a change of clothes, some food too. See if you need anything, just take it. You can sleep in the car for a bit…”

He was just saying whatever came to mind, but having spent the entire drive planning and preparing, his brain was clearly overloaded. It was Liang Muyi who interrupted his scattered thoughts, saying, “It’s fine, I’ll get a hotel room.”

“Oh, right,” Chi Yu finally realized. Not everyone was like him, ready to sleep in their car at a moment’s notice. “Well, if you have something tomorrow, I can find a friend to take you back to the city in the afternoon. Tomorrow’s a weekday, but I should know an instructor…”

Liang Muyi cut him off again, calling his name. “Chi Yu, I told you, you don’t need to worry about me. Just let me know when you need to be picked up.”

Chi Yu was stunned and finally stopped insisting. He nodded slowly and said, “Thanks.” As Liang Muyi drove his car away, turning the wheel to exit the parking lot, he saw Chi Yu make a small movement in the rearview mirror. He was putting on the hearing aid in his right ear.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but that small, gray in-ear device seemed to be the invisible bridge connecting him to the world around him. When he wasn’t wearing the hearing aid—when he was sleeping, skiing, driving—he lived in his own world. When he put it on, he lived in everyone else’s.