Gabe Walker is a practised climber, but has been traumatised by witnessing a friend's 4000 foot fall. A year later, Gabe still can't bring himself to climb, but his colleagues finally manage to convince him to rescue the passengers of a plane which has crashed in the mountains. However, once in the mountains, the passengers take him hostage and it transpires that they are criminals in search of hidden booty and they need an experienced mountaineer to find it.

On a visit back to the mountains six months later, Gabe is apprised of a rescue effort to aid plane crash survivors during a storm. As the flurry of rescue preparations swirls around him, Gabe's conscience takes hold and he summons up the courage to face his fears and join his former partner, Hal, in the rescue. In the fiercest blizzard of the year in the Colorado Rockies, Gabe discovers that the survivors are a ruthless gang of thieves led by international criminal Eric Qualen (LITHGOW), desperate to retrieve the three cases he has stolen of newly minted $1, 000 bills - a total of $100 million dollars.