Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [44]
“It’s eight miles, man. Here, take my sandals off my pack.” Chad leaned over, and I undid the Velcro loops. The rubber sandals were too big, but they were better than nothing.
The more we walked, the better I felt. I warmed up, and my stomach absorbed the river water. We rehashed the rescue, I asked if Chad had gotten the picture of me, and he confirmed, “It was you in the middle of ‘Yeee-haw’ jumping off the rock.”
“Well, then, it was worth it. As long as you got the picture,” I said sarcastically and grinned. Secretly, I was pleased to know that I’d have a souvenir of one of my stupidest moments ever.
As we headed back to our camp, Jean-Marc mentioned he had a bottle of Stolichnaya up at their gear stash above Mooney Falls, and all of a sudden, it was the only thing the three of us could think about. We sped the remaining three miles upstream, hopping over logs, splashing and slipping in the creek, in an hour-long dash for the Havasupai happy hour. We eagerly guzzled most of Jean-Marc’s vodka, then found Sonja as it was getting dark, to join up for a swim in the large pool below Havasupai Falls. Telling and retelling the story of my near-drowning, we waded up under the falls to reemerge in the moonlight like creatures from the Blue Lagoon. After polishing off the vodka, our group of four stumbled out of the water well past dark. We crafted a faux distress note to stick in the bottle before sending it over Mooney Falls toward its destiny. We imagined it making a journey all the way to Lake Mead, where a Jet Skier would find our message: “Help! We’re at Havasupai Campground. Send more vodka immediately! Emergency! [signed] Jean-Marc, Chad, and Aron, November 29, 1998.”
An hour later, when we’d called it a night, Sonja and I got into our sleeping bags. Lying there next to my sister, I told her what it had been like at the Colorado. All comedy aside, I said, “I was scared, Sonja. I saw headlines reporting my death. I thought I was a goner.” We cried together, then drifted off to sleep. The next morning, we packed up our gear for the ten-mile hike back to my car, then posed together for a final picture next to Havasupai Falls, happy to have each other. It became one of my favorite photos of the two of us.
By December 1998, I hadn’t yet climbed any winter fourteeners. Indeed, I’d climbed only seven total, and all of those in summer conditions. I planned to start with the easier, nontechnical peaks at the beginning of the winter 1998–99 season. Even these least demanding mountains would require safe snow-travel knowledge and winter-weather experience. On the last training trip Mark and I did before I left for my winter vacation, we attempted Engineer Mountain in southwestern Colorado, near Durango. Conditions were rough, due to a ground blizzard whipping snow into fifty-foot visibility conditions. About a third of the way in, we bailed on the climb and spent the late morning and early afternoon digging snow-study pits to practice evaluating the snowpack. Mark showed me how to check the snow layers for hardness, cohesion, and avalanche potential, something that would become routine for me as part of my fourteener project.
Two days later, after one of my best days skiing ever—in three feet of powder at Wolf Creek—Mark and I drove down into Alamosa in my fully laden sports coupe to get a motel room and recuperate from our binge of snow recreation. We had skied together regularly in the big snow year of 1997, usually camping out in zero-degree weather in the back of his Tacoma in ski-area parking lots, sitting on his tailgate eating hot oatmeal straight from his camping-stove pot, and watching the other skiers arriving. This time was even more special because Mark was moving to work in Alamosa for the winter.
In the morning, we parted ways, and I drove north toward Fair-play, in central Colorado. My plan was to attempt a winter solo of Quandary Peak before I visited my parents for Christmas.