Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [134]
“Yes, I’ve started making a phone log,” my mom told him. From their combined experience working with bureaucracies, they knew the importance of keeping track of who said what, when, so the next time, when my mom called and someone different answered, she could still be effective.
By the end of the conversation, all the other possible explanations for my disappearance—that I might be out camping along a stream with some friends, or that I’d been irresponsible and not called to let anyone know I’d decided to extend my vacation—were exhausted. There was no Pollyanna rationalization, no easy dismissal that could explain my prolonged absence. With the alarm mounting to the level of a terrible ache in my dad’s stomach, by the time he said “I love you” to my mom and hung up, he felt like he’d been shot in the gut.
Things weren’t any easier on my mom, since ringing up the church turned out to be the most emotionally challenging call she made all day. As strong-willed as she is, she wasn’t used to asking for help for herself. However, when a good friend, Ann Fort, called back a few minutes later, saying she would be over to the house by seven P.M., my mom was glad she’d made the request.
At 5:23 P.M., starting with the Aspen police, my mom began calling the names on her yellow legal tablet. She told the same story a half-dozen times in a series of twenty-minute conversations. She talked with law-enforcement representatives across Utah for two hours, beginning at five-forty-five P.M., speaking first with two state patrol dispatchers within the Department of Public Safety (DPS) and then with another two dispatchers from the Zion National Park police, submitting request after request for urgency in their assistance on my case. Each time before she hung up, she finished with the question, “Who else should I call?”
Via our network of climbing friends and search-and-rescue colleagues, Steve Patchett had received a forwarded copy of the e-mail I’d written to Jason designating the four Utah canyons I’d wanted to visit. As a rescue leader with the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council and one of my many mentors, Steve was acutely aware that time was of the essence in the developing situation. The first twenty-four hours of a search are often the most critical. From his house in Albuquerque, Steve called Mark Van Eeckhout in Los Alamos, and they spoke about the canyon list at 3:38 P.M. on Wednesday, trying to figure out where some of the more obscure canyons were located. Mark typed “Seger Canyon” into a search engine that found “Tom’s Utah Canyoneering Guide.” Clicking on the link, Mark read through a full guidebook-style description, complete with driving directions and topographic maps for the canyon. On the other end of the phone, Steve marked an “X” in central Wayne County on his Utah road atlas, following the driving directions that Mark read to him off the Web page. They found Cable Canyon adjacent to Segers Hole, at the southern end of the San Rafael Swell.
Steve then called the Ute Mountaineer, responding to Elliott’s e-mail and volunteering his time. Steve and Elliott talked for almost twenty-five minutes, and Steve said he would contact the various authorities in Colorado and Utah. Elliott had received an e-mail from my climbing friend Wolfgang Stiller, and confirmed in a short phone conversation that we had canceled the Mount of the Holy Cross trip due to avalanche conditions. However, Wolfgang had acknowledged that it was possible I’d gone ahead with the attempt by myself. Elliott passed this along to Steve, who said he would call the Eagle County sheriff to close out on the Mount of the Holy Cross lead. He told Elliott his next efforts would focus on the Utah locations.
Between four-fifteen and five P.M., Steve called the Zion National Parks police and the Emery County sheriff’s office (ECSO), headquartered in Castle Dale, Utah, to initiate searches at the trailheads for the Virgin River and the Black Box of the San Rafael, respectively. The Zion police