Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [109]
I long to see my family again, but I know I’ve entered the protractedly dismal final countdown to my death. This is going to be a hard night.
Stirrings of a Rescue
dum spiro, spero
—Part of the official state motto of South Carolina. Literally, “While I breathe, I hope.” Or more loosely, “Where there is life, there is hope.”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, Kristi and Megan left the confluence where they last saw me, hiked up the West Fork of Blue John Canyon, and sat down to have lunch. The two young women relaxed and chatted for about a half hour then packed up their trash and started on their journey up the wash. Sometime during the next hour, they became disoriented and weren’t able to interpret their map to navigate around the dead end below a fifteen-foot cliff rising up from the canyon floor. Backtracking, then returning upcanyon, pacing around below the cliff, they spent an hour trying to figure out the instructions that called for them to bypass the cliff on the right side of the canyon.
“If we go up the right side, it looks like we’ll have to go out the right-hand canyon. I don’t think that’s the way to go.” Kristi pointed at the two conjoined branches of the canyon upstream from their vantage. “And it’s sketchy-looking, trying to cross that ledge over to the left canyon.”
“Yeah. I’m not climbing up this overhang, either. But how else do we get up there?” The sandstone slab in front of Megan was discouragingly steep, even curling back over itself in a lip at the top. Flipping open the guidebook, Megan found the page marker for Blue John Canyon. “OK, here. The book says, ‘Walk along the right (east) side on a little trail, then route-find down two steep sections.’ Are we sure that side is east?”
“I don’t think either side is east. East is down the canyon, where we came from. We’re hiking up the West Fork, so we’re going west. I don’t get it; there is no east side. Can I see the map again?”
“Yeah, sure—here.” Megan handed the map over to Kristi, running her finger over the guidebook page again and again.
“Man, I wish Aron were here—he’d have this figured out in no time.” She sighed and started the route-finding process over again. “OK, so we put my bike up here, at the head of the West Fork. And we’re here…or somewhere around here. We haven’t left the main drainage. Yeah, we have to go left. Why does it say right?”
“Oh…my…God,” Megan blurted out. “Kristi, we are total idiots. It’s on the right on the way down the canyon. But we’re going up. The ‘little trail’ is on our left. It’s gotta be up there somewhere.” She pointed up to the left.
“Oh, man—you’ve got to be kidding me. That’s ridiculous. How did we miss that?” Kristi felt crushed that they had duped themselves with such a rookie mistake (akin to holding the map upside down).
Megan quickly found a sandy ledge on their left that cut back and forth up the canyon wall like a wheelchair ramp. They followed it up and over the cliff, where they continued up the wash until the footprints petered out into sandy hillsides textured by miniature ravines and water drainages. Two hours later, well after five P.M., they arrived at the main dirt road where Kristi’s bike was locked to a pine tree. Kristi lost the rock-paper-scissors toss to see who would ride the bike back to get her truck at the Granary Spring Trailhead. On the ride, Kristi searched the plateau for my red mountain bike. Had she known where to look, she would have seen it still leaning against a juniper tree a hundred yards off the left side of the road when she was about halfway back to the trailhead. By the time she mounted her bike on the roof rack of her 4Runner at the Granary Spring Trailhead and drove back to pick Megan up, Kristi