As they closed in on the third waystone, Kei’Taro passing it before the King by a significant margin, the rumbling of the mountain had reached a fever pitch. The Goat knew what this meant, and he had been counting out the minutes that passed before each shake, gauging how long it was before the break point of their race.

The blizzard had picked up again at this point, obscuring Kei’Taro from view as he ploughed on ahead. However, the Goat was not worried about his progress, though he did fear somewhat for his life. Taking advantage of his intimate knowledge of the Mountain, the goat had already began moving at a diagonal, judging the tremors carefully. With a few leaps and bounds he set himself behind a favourite shield of his, a large rock set at a diagonal which was favourable to the valley of snow which they had been climbing. 

Then, all he had to do was wait. Before long the rumbling was growing into a great cascade of sound and the snow began moving up above Kei’Taro. The avalanche struck with little warning, huge volumes of snow crashing down towards the climber as he made impressive distance up the mountain. It was a shame, Havardr thought to himself, believing his challenger was almost certain to die in the wave of white death.

The snow hit Havadr’s shelter and crossed past him, luckily he had already moved away from the centre of the fast-moving snow, and so only a fraction of the avalanche’s force hit his shelter and deflected away, heading further down. He would have no choice but to wait it out however, or risk being caught in the snow’s crushing embrace himself.