The Beginning of the Beginning

“There was a roar of the engines and the plane vibrated as the Fairchild tried to climb again; it rose a little but then there came a deafening crash as the right wing hit the side of the mountain. Immediately it broke off, somersaulted over the fuselage, and cut off the tail. Out into the icy air fell Steward, the navigator, and their pack of cards, followed by three of the boys still strapped to their seats.a moment later the left wing broke away and a blade if the propeller ripped into the fuselage before falling to the ground. Without either wings or tail, the plane hurtled toward the jagged mountain, but instead of being smashed into pieces against a wall of rock it landed on its belly in a steep valley and slid like a toboggan on the sloping surface of deep snow.”

This quote stuck out to me because death can approach very quickly that your last moments alive are so unexpected that you have no time to react to it. At this point the plane is completely destroyed and the lives of the people inside are threatened. This is the beginning of the journey on the mountains. At this time the students are thinking that they are all going to die. For all of the 29 people in the plane, they most likely think that they are all going to end up dying stranded on a mountain or during the plane crash. Being a student on a plane with your fellow peers is great but when you notice one of them just fly out the back of the plane, emotions and thoughts are running wild especially when you are trying to save yourself.

Once the plane has stopped sliding down the mountain the thoughts going through the students minds are questioning what the next step is going to be. At this point they all realize that they are stranded on a mountain looking for their next chance of survival.