Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [91]
It was an easy decision. Dianne and Wolfgang were in complete agreement, and we planned to try again in June. They knew I’d arranged time off from the Ute specifically to make the trip in April, and they apologized. It didn’t bother me in the least.
“Actually, my manager told me yesterday that I have off until Tuesday, so now I have a five-day vacation coming. I’m skinning up Mount Sopris tomorrow with a friend. I’ve been thinking about the desert a lot lately. I might head over to the Moab area for some time off from the mountains.”
I’d learned the year before that when you spend the month of June in Alaska, camping on glaciers, digging snow fortresses, and climbing icy headwalls, your time to enjoy the typical warm-weather activities of summer is substantially shorter. Presented with the chance to go to Utah for four days, I hoped to get in some summertime fun before the season started. Dianne and Wolfgang wished me safe travels, and I thanked them for the call. I needed to finish getting my things packed—adding my mountain-biking and climbing gear and guidebooks for the time in Utah—and go to bed. My Aspen friend Brad Yule and I had arranged a three A.M. rendezvous for our Sopris trip, and I had to get some sleep.
As I packed, Leona came home from an evening in town.
“Where’re you headed off to this time?” She was happily tipsy from a few hours at the local bars.
“I’m skiing Mount Sopris in the morning.”
“And you need all that?” My storage containers of climbing and biking gear, sleeping bag, and backpacks were piled in the middle of the living room.
“I’m going to Utah. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. My Holy Cross climbing trip was canceled.”
“Oh, bummer.”
“Ehh, not so much. I’ve been wanting to get out to the desert and warm up a little, you know? Do some mountain biking, hit some slot canyons. Brad told me about a party at Goblin Valley on Saturday. I might try to hit that, too. I guess a bunch of people from town are going out for an all-weekend rager.”
The last of the Aspen ski areas had closed on Monday, officially signaling the off-season emigration of Aspenites to exotic lands around the globe. Residents don’t get out of the valley much during the busy season because of work and skiing—in fact, driving twenty miles to Basalt takes on the feel of a significant road trip. But from late April till the end of May, when the highway department opens Independence Pass, things get real slow in town, and people flock to the warmer climes of Mexico, Thailand, the Bahamas, and Utah. It was due time for me to join the droves, right after one more ski trip.
Later that night, around four A.M., Brad bounced alongside me in the passenger seat as I busted my truck through two-foot-deep snowdrifts on the Mount Sopris access road. It was like a four-wheel-drive commercial, with snow shrapnel exploding from the wheel wells and the two of us grinning ear to ear. We were pleasantly surprised that we were able to drive all the way to the trailhead so early in the spring. Unloading our backcountry gear in the dark, we alternated trail-breaking duties up the four miles to the Thomas Lakes, the same area I’d been the month before with my friend Rick. Twilight broke over us at the frozen lower lake around five-thirty A.M., to reveal socked-in weather above treeline. Despite the weather and the increased slide potential from the previous day’s snowfall, I was much less nervous about being in the backcountry on this trip. I was prepared