Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Kristi was concerned about her fuel situation, knowing it would be twenty-five miles to the nearest gas station. She hesitated. “If we drive around much more, we won’t make it to Hanksville. We’ve got maybe thirty miles left-we should really go and get gas and just meet him at Goblin Valley before it gets dark.”

Not feeling strongly about it one way or the other, Megan acquiesced, and the friends drove to Hanksville for gas and a hamburger and milk shake at a greasy spoon called Stan’s.

An hour later, around the same time that Brad and Leah were roving the desert back roads at Goblin Valley, Kristi and Megan turned off the highway into the state park, looking for the same party. A large sign indicated that the campground was full. Kristi stopped the vehicle to consider their next move.

“Should we go to the campground and try to find the party?” Megan asked.

“I don’t know.” Kristi laughed at herself, then explained, “It’s funny, this whole day has been so indecisive. ‘Should we wait or should we go get gas? Should we go this way or that?’ ”

“It’ll be fun, but I’m tired.”

“Me, too.” Then Kristi reconsidered. “But it’ll be fun.”

Megan said, “You know what’s going to happen? We go in there, and everybody’ll be drinking, and then we’ll drink. And then it will be dark, and the campground is full, and we’ll be drunk and have to go drive around the desert looking for a place to camp.”

Figuring they would find me over at the Little Wild Horse Canyon the next morning, Kristi and Megan turned around and drove down the highway on the way to Little Wild Horse until the pavement ended. They pulled off on a spur road, where they camped out that night. Sunday morning, they took their time getting ready and then drove the short commute, parking next to a Toyota Tacoma at the parking area for Little Wild Horse. Kristi noticed the vehicle first.

“Hey, do you remember what kind of truck Aron has?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t think he told us,” Megan said, still feeling tired from the previous day’s effort in Blue John.

Kristi said, “That Toyota looks like it could be his. It’s got skis and a bike. And it’s got Colorado license plates. I bet that’s his truck.”

“He’s probably already in the canyon,” suggested Megan.

Kristi agreed. “Yeah, it’s already eleven-thirty. He probably went in.”

“We should put a note on his windshield with our e-mails, in case we don’t see him in the slot.”

“But what if it’s not his truck?”

Megan was used to exchanging e-mail addresses with people, to arrange future trips and invite them to visit Moab. She was surprised she hadn’t done that with me the day before. “Well, if it’s his, he’ll have our e-mails, and if it’s not, they’ll just throw it away.”

“It’s an out-and-back canyon, though. If he’s in there, then we’ll see him on his way out.”

“OK, then. Should we have lunch before we go and see if Aron shows up here?”

“Hmm, I’m not really hungry yet.” Kristi was ready for some hiking and exploring.

While they were walking, Megan continued speculating about whether they would see me at Little Wild Horse. “Do you think he came and went already?”

Kristi pondered the question for a few seconds. “I guess he either got up really early and went through it already, or he’s so completely hungover that he decided not to go hiking today at all.”

“Why didn’t we get his phone number?”

“We were just going to see each other again.”

“Yeah, but that’s weird. I’d usually have exchanged numbers or e-mails or something, and we didn’t. He was really nice. That was so cool that we met him in the canyon, and he hiked with us and didn’t just blow by us.”

The pair enjoyed themselves through the morning, exploring the narrow slot of Little Wild Horse. In the end, they doubled back on their entry path, coming out the same slot to the parking area. After packing Kristi’s white 4Runner with the remnants of a weekend of off-road adventuring, they drove back through Green River to Moab on Sunday afternoon. Megan wondered what had happened to me, but neither thought about something out of the ordinary. There were too many rational explanations. They didn’t worry about whether they would see me again; they talked about how much fun they’d had over the weekend and about how refreshing it was to get away from work for a change. They agreed it was too bad that they had to go back to the Outward Bound warehouse the next day to prepare supplies for another set of upcoming trips. They were hardly ready to trade their carefree desert explorations for their indoor offices, but they decided they would go out again soon, and with that promise, the shock of returning to civilization lost some of its sting.

After helping me get my truck unstuck from the ice and mud on Thursday afternoon, my friends Brad and Leah Yule left the Mount Sopris area near Carbondale, Colorado, and drove the scenic highway over forested McClure Pass on their way to the southwest part of the state. It was well after dark when they pulled off Highway 550 into the scenic mining town of Silverton, where they slept in the back of Brad’s truck right on Main Street. Leah was already four months pregnant so the next day, she caught a ride with her mom and went shopping in Durango while Brad skied Silverton Mountain with some of his colleagues from Aspen’s Incline Ski Shop. Brad and his coworkers had saved up their tips for the entire season to pay for a trip to the recently opened experts-only ski mountain; lift tickets were over a hundred dollars each, but that included a guide and a unique in-bounds backcountry experience that powder junkies lust after. That evening, Brad and his friends stayed in a Silverton hotel room to sleep off the aftereffects of a local brewer’s festival that had included topless sledding at the base of the ski area. After a late start the next morning, Brad went down to Durango and met Leah. They drove the Devil’s Highway, Route 666, into the Utah desert. Late Saturday afternoon, Leah monitored their cell phone as they drove north on Highway 95 across the upper arm of Lake Powell, waiting for me to call and finalize our rendezvous plans for Goblin Valley that evening.

By seven P.M., they were heading into the San Rafael Swell, traveling west off of Highway 24. Leah watched the signal indicator bars on the cell phone’s screen disappear as they drove along the flat stretches of pavement. They got a usable signal only when the vehicle crested small bumps in the terrain.

“Why don’t we call him?” Leah inquired.

“He doesn’t have a cell phone. He said he would call to get directions.”

“You know what? Before we get so far out here that we lose the reception entirely, we should check the messages. Go back to that bump where it was higher. I got four bars there.” Brad made a U-turn to swing back into range. The homemade wood camper shell rocked the vehicle slightly to the passenger side as Brad pulled the turn tight on the two-lane highway.

“OK, stop right here, on this little hill.” Leah checked the three messages on the phone, but none of them was from me. “That’s weird that he didn’t call. Did he say for sure he was going to come?”

Brad answered, “Well, he never really said so. I told him about the party, and that we would be there, and that there were going to be people from Aspen there that he knew. He sounded interested, and he said he was going to call and get directions.”

“Maybe he decided not to. Should we wait here to see if he calls?”

“He didn’t have much of a clear plan before he left-he just wanted to go climbing and hiking and get the heck out of Dodge. You know, off-season stuff. I didn’t ask him to sign in blood that he was going to come. I think we should get going so we can find that billboard.” One of Brad’s friends had promised to leave more specific directions stuck to a billboard at the entrance to the state park, to cover for any last-minute changes.