Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Minutes later, Michelle opened the front screen door to find my mom involuntarily rocking back and forth on a stool at the kitchen counter, clutching her heaving stomach and sobbing in grief-stricken terror. My mom’s wail overwhelmed them both. They hugged for several minutes, crying together, and then my mom drew on her own courage and Michelle’s comforting presence to gather herself and start talking through the options of who might know something about my plans.

For my mom, this was the most emotion-wrought hour of her life, all the unspeakable what-ifs floating through her mind one after the other, but still she managed to reason through the puzzle. “He’s usually very good about telling someone where he’s going. If he didn’t say anything to his roommates, or leave a note there at the shop, I don’t know. Maybe he wrote an e-mail to somebody, telling them what he was going to do.”

Michelle’s face lit up. “We could check that. Does he have Internet e-mail, like Yahoo! or Hotmail or something?”

“I know he has a Hotmail address. Why?”

“Do you know his password?”

“No, I have no idea.”

“We can go online and see what we can do.” Michelle knew that at the least, they could try resetting my password, accessing my files, and seeing what my friends and I had written about most recently.

At the account log-in page, Michelle pointed out the link that suggested, “Forgot your password?” They encountered a screen requesting my e-mail address, home state, and zip code. My mom ran downstairs and pulled out her address book. Back at the computer, she and Michelle tried entering my Aspen zip code but were denied access.

Stumped for twenty minutes, my mom tried using the zip code for her house before she remembered that I’d set up my e-mail account when I was still living in New Mexico. Checking her address book again, she typed in my old Albuquerque zip code, and the site finally responded with the password reset page, asking, “High school?” My mom exclaimed, “Oh-I know the answer to that! Maybe this will work.” However, because the site demands that the spelling match the preregistered answer perfectly, the two amateur hackers had to blindly come up with the exact combination of abbreviations I’d used. Time and again, the site replied in bold red type, “Please type the correct answer to your secret question.” So close and yet so far. Michelle and my mom were guessing at variations on my high school’s name when the phone rang.

Back at the Ute, events snowballed after the first conversation with my mom. Brion called Adam Crider with the Aspen Police Department just after ten A.M. and reported me missing. He explained that I had gone on a weekend trip and hadn’t returned for a party on April 28, and that I’d subsequently missed two days of work without calling. Adam began filing the report, noting that Brion was “very concerned,” and logged the statement into the department’s Law Incident Table at 10:27 A.M. Adam asked Brion to keep compiling information on where I might have gone, and said that he would stop by the Ute in a few minutes to see what Brion had collected.

At 10:19 A.M., Brion called Elliott, who was alone at our house on Spruce Street, to have him look for anything that might indicate where I’d gone. Brion explained that he’d filed a missing person’s report and needed some more specific information about where I had been headed that past weekend. Brion was especially keen on finding out anything related to my Alaska expedition. He told Elliott, “I need your help. Somebody said Aron was supposed to be meeting his Denali team for a training climb. Can you check around in his room for anything that says who they are?”

“Yeah, sure.” Elliott wasn’t in any rush with his cleaning, moving, and unpacking. He didn’t have a job to go to, since he’d left his mechanic’s position at a local bike shop. He walked into my bedroom, off the living area, and looked for paperwork. He found it in abundance, but the first thing that caught his eye was a stack on one of my shelves with travel itineraries and folded photocopies of maps. While the stack looked promising at first, Elliott quickly determined from the water wrinkles and worn-through folds that they were all from past trips, most of which he’d heard about from me during his frequent visits to the house.

Elliott rifled through a dozen files stashed randomly about my room, folder after folder full of personal correspondence, old bills, and tax returns. A half hour passed before he found an orange folder in the back of a satchel under my clothes rack that said “Denali ’02” on the tab. Names and phone numbers appeared on old e-mail printouts, but Elliott dismissed calling any of my old teammates after he found the climbing permit application I had submitted in April 2002. Thinking, “Ahhh, the Park Service would have Aron’s new team information,” Elliott pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his worn-in pumpkin-colored Carhartts and dialed the number, which rang through to the Denali National Park and Preserve ranger station in Talkeetma, Alaska. Despite Elliott’s best assurances that he was honestly trying to help his friend who was missing by getting in touch with the expedition teammates, the rangers at the climbing registry desk were set against giving out any names or phone numbers. (Policy disallows the distribution of private information to non-government parties.)

Elliott understood their position but wanted to leave the issue open so that he might call back with some higher authority. He thanked the rangers for considering his request and hung up, debating whether to have the Aspen police call the Talkeetma station. First, though, he wanted to check in with Brion. Time was slipping by, but in the hour since they’d spoken, Brion had hit pay dirt. “Don’t worry about searching anymore. I found Aron’s folder in his locker, where I should have looked in the first place. Anyway, I’ve got their information.” On the printouts of e-mails to my teammates, he had found the addresses he needed. At twelve minutes before eleven, Brion had sent an e-mail to Team Green Chili Winds, alerting them to my absence and asking for information.

From: Brion After

Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 10:48 A.M.

To: Janet Lightburn, Bill Geist, Jason Halladay, David Shaw

Subject: Looking for Aron Ralston

Hello,

I am Aron’s manager at the Ute Mountaineer in Aspen Co., and surprisingly he has not arrived to work in the last 2 days. We are getting very concerned about his well being, and I am wondering if any of you would know where he may be, or can give me any information on his most recent trip. None of his friends/roommates are sure where he went, but we do think he went to Utah on April 24th or 25th. Possibly to meet some of you for Denali training. If you have any information on Aron, please Email me back at this address. Or you can call me at the Ute. We have contacted the Police, and his family, as Aron is usually very diligent on arriving on time and keeping in touch with us and his friends.

Best regards,

Brion After

At that point, although he had done some excellent sleuthing, Brion was getting ready to leave for Australia for a few weeks’ holiday and was a little behind in wrapping up business at the shop. He needed to pass the baton to someone who would be around, so he circuitously asked Elliott for backup: “What are you doing today?”

Sensing the loaded question, Elliott said, “Uhh, I was cleaning out Leona’s room, getting ready to start moving my stuff in, unpacking, like that. You need me to do something else? I’m glad to help.”

“Well, yeah. I’m starting to get e-mails back, and I’m getting swamped. I’m supposed to be leaving tomorrow for two weeks. Would you be able to come in to the shop and make some calls and watch for e-mails?”