Hey everyone! Sorry for the wait on the next entry. I should be able to edit and put out a new one soon.
On Friday, October 18th, we got a distress signal. The lost mountaineer spoke to us through his radio and informed us that he was lost. A storm had developed over the area. While the wind wasn’t severe, the snowfall had drastically hindered his visibility. While the man had his bearings and didn’t seem to be in immediate physical danger, he had lost the man he’d ventured out with.
The man’s satellite location revealed him to be in a forest at the base of the mountain range. The two had traveled by snowmobile and had become separated from their vehicles after they explored on foot and didn’t return before the storm. He was ordered to remain where he was and not search for his friend or his vehicle. The trees and snowstorm made helicopter travel dangerous. We decided to embark on our snowmobiles.
Caitlin, Buck, and myself were joined by David. He was our helicopter pilot and an ex-military field doctor. He silently lead the group into the forest, our headlights beaming into a blanket of falling snow around us. For almost an hour, there was nothing but the hum of engines against the faint wisps of the storm. We were forced to move slow, making the trip last almost an hour across the suffocating expanse. My heart raced for the men as I stared into the white veil surrounding me. It was beautiful.
We reached the coordinates from the satellite phone to find a black mound powdered with snow leaning against a tree. The man was cowering against the trunk, shrouded by the tree buckling under the snow. Caitlin and Buck pulled him to his feet. His arms were clutched tightly to his chest. He didn’t grab his loose gear, so I picked up pile of rope and an ice axe leaning against the tree.
“Thank you,” the man said, his voice trembling, “thank you, thank you so much,” Each of his hands clutched Buck and Caitlin as he rested on the snowmobile.
“Ain’t nothing,” Buck said.
“Can you tell me your name?” Caitlin said.
“Jerry.”
“How are you feeling Jerry? Are you injured?”
“No ma’am.”
Caitlin asked him some more diagnostic questions while the man slowed his breathing. I surveyed the forest watching faint pillars of snow sift through the tree cover. It was quiet.
“Now Jerry,” Buck said, “you had someone traveling with you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where did you lose him?”
“Up the mountain, sir, on the glacier.”
“Where?” Buck leaned in.
“I don’t know. We were walking down and it was snowing and I turned around and he was gone.”
“It’s alright, Jerry. We’ll fi–“
“I don’t know, man. We only went about a half mile up but we stayed too late and it started snowing on our way down. I couldn’t see anything, man.”
“When did he… hold up son, slow your breathing.”
“He was right behind me and then… when I turned he was gone.”
“How long ago did you lose him?” Caitlin said, putting her hand on his shoulder.
“He… I thought I could make it down to the snowmobile. Fuck man, I’m gonna have to tell his wife.”
David kneeled in front of the man. He took off his glasses and stared through the haze of the man’s labored breath.
“Jerry,” he said.
The man was quiet, clearly lost in thought.
“We were told your friends name is Hal, right?
“Yes, sir.”
“Now listen, when and where did you lose Hal?”
“I’m sorry, ma—“
“When, and where?”
“About a quarter mile down from where we were practicing at. Almost a quarter mile from the forest. By now, its been almost an hour and a half.”
David nodded and stood up.
“Thank you, Jerry,” Caitlin said, “We’ll take it from here.”
“You’ll find him?”
“Yessir,” Buck said, “David, you wanna drive him back?”
David shrugged and guided the man onto his snowmobile. I provided some encouraging words as I loaded up the rest of his gear. He was trembling when I shook his hand. Not ten minutes after we arrived, I watched as the blinking lights faded into the snow as the men rode off into storm.
The three of us remaining quickly roped ourselves together and put on our crampons.
“You wanna know what I think?” Buck said.
“Not usually.” Caitlin said.
Buck pulled back a branch and launched some snow into her face. She wiped it off, revealing a smug smile.
“So,” Buck says, “our Ben gets lost and he can’t see shit, right?”
“Yup.”
“And it’s clear these guys don’t have a lot of experience, so they were probably trying some new things out.”
“He said they were practicing something,” Caitlin said.
“He had a rope and an axe,” I added, “so they were probably trying out some climbing or crevasse rescue.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Buck said, “so our best shot is to follow their footsteps up the glacier. That’s gotta be our search area because if he got disoriented, he might have been the one to have the sense to stay in place.”
We walk towards the footsteps heading up the mountain. Before we got far, I said what we were all thinking.
“Do you think they went the Eye?”
“Nah,” Buck said, “these guys were reckless, but I don’t think they’d ignore the warnings.”
I was in the middle of the pack, so I turned to back to Caitlin to see what she thought. She just shrugged.
For fifteen minutes we marched through the forest, kicking up fresh powder into the air. My legs immediately started to burn. I focused on the land and everything I could appreciate. It’s rare to see a forest during a storm this strong and hear how quiet it is. Pitch white columns fell through the canopy but everything else was still. So many trees were slumping from the weight. Small ones in the distance started to look like people frozen on their way down the mountain, preserved from a time long ago.
In the distance we approached what looked like a white sheet cloaked over the trees. The wall of snow the forest’s edge appeared to be a cliff into nothingness. I shivered as I approached. Part of it felt too simple, almost welcoming.
“Lights on!” Buck yelled back to us.
The beams cut through the pouring snow and we followed the footsteps. I looked closely in front of us. The footsteps were small and deliberate. Evan must have made his way down slowly.
I surveyed our surroundings and saw a faint light at the ridge of the mountaintops. It just barely broke through the downpour. For a moment, it confused me what kind of light could be be flickering like a candle at the top of the mountain, but then I chuckled quietly to myself. It was the sun.
After almost half an hour of climbing, the steps in front of us got crowded and deep. We paused and looked for another path, but there was none. I briefly wondered if Hal had disappeared into thin air.
“Did he go back?” Caitlin yelled.
“I think so,” Buck hollered, “what do you think?”
I nodded, but I was confused. I understood being disoriented. The appeal of these places are that you get to forge your own path, problem solve when you get in trouble, but this was an emergency. How could you mistake going up for down?
For another fifteen minutes we marched in silence before coming upon a small mound of snow. We approached and noticed a sliver of blue cresting behind it. It got bigger as we approached and saw the scope of the crevasse next to it. It was the Eye, opening up to us. The tracks stopped there.
Instinctively, we left the previous tracks untouched to not destroy any evidence. Buck quietly surveyed the crevasse. Caitlin knelled at the side, the toe of her boot cresting over into the pit.
“Look,” she yelled, “there’s marks on the side.”
Faint lines of broken ice fell into the crevasse towards the hole. They were spaced out like footsteps. Someone had repelled down into the crevasse.
“Well,” Buck said, “these assholes went into the hole.”
“At least one did,” I said.
Caitlin and Buck started slowly walking around the crevasse, taking care to not disturb the snow and never straying too far as to become lost themselves. I stared into the crevasse and investigated the footholds created by their crampons.
Everything indicated that one of the men had ventured down with the support of the other. Based on the marks around the hole, it was unlikely they did anything more than just look in before ascending.
My eyes were glossing across the ice looking for more clues when I noticed something, something I still can’t explain. The others were so preoccupied with the tracks that they missed something about the ice. I kneeled at the side.
Snow was pouring in, but it wasn’t sticking. Each flake hit the ice and drifted down into the hole like water down a drain. During our first encounter with it, the crashed snow ceiling littered the bottom, but now it was completely smooth.
For a moment, I forgot about Hal and became fascinated by what could be causing this. I took my glove off and put my palm against the ice. Cold, but it felt like almost like silk.
“That’s strange,” I said. Buck and Caitlin walked up to me.
“What are yo— oh,” Buck said, his arms crossed.
“Interesting,” Caitlin said while gazing into the Eye. She quickly returned to searching for tracks.
“This isn’t weird to you?” I said to her.
“Nope.”
I looked at Bill.
“Oh yeah, it’s weird,” he said, “but I ain’t concerned ‘bout it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a meteorologist. I can’t explain what’s up with it, but that don’t mean it’s weird.”
“Unless it helps us find that missing kid,” Caitlin yelled, “it’s not our concern right now. We need to find evidence that he isn’t in there.”
“You didn’t find anything?” I yelled.
They shook their heads. My heart rate spiked as I surveyed the crevasse, praying there was another option. Our lights were darting back and forth. My eyes eventually found their way to the ridge.
“Wait, when did we leave?” I yelled.
“What?” Buck said.
“A little over two hours ago,” Caitlin said.
“Jerry said it had been an hour and a half since he lost Hal, and it took us almost an hour to get up here.”
Buck looked confused for a moment, but then nodded his head.
“If it took us half an hour to get here from where he turned around,” I said, “then that means…two hours is the maximum amount of time he was up here before we arrived.”
“Probably a lot less too,” Caitlin said.
“Well put, kid,” Buck said, “that means he’s not far.”
“Not far?” Caitlin said, pointing to the hole, “Where else could he be?”
“We don’t know that!” Buck yelled, a slight quiver in his voice. “We can’t see shit, and it’s snowing so damn much his tracks could be covered!”
“There are no tracks, Buck,” Caitlin yelled, her hand outstretched in exhaustion, “You would have seen them.”
Buck put his hand over his chin and crouched. He stared at his feet, trying to see something in the snow. For a moment, the three of us sat with our thoughts, the only spark of ourselves against the oblivion.
“Check again,” Buck said as he stood up.
Caitlin and I rose and started circling the Eye. I approached the path we ascended on and studied the area. I walked down it to look for divergences, but upon returning I payed attention to the mound of snow right at the edge.
It was more pronounced than the surrounding disturbances. I thought for a moment that this is where the two repelled down, but the marks in the ice didn’t line up.
I noticed two parallel depressions pointing towards the edge, nearly identical to the ones I made when I kneeled at the side.
I looked closer, and the snow surrounding it was elevated beyond the displacements made by the surrounding footprints. I ran my finger across the ridge. It was softer. Fresher.
I quickly looked to the edge; when we arrived, Caitlin had kneeled to survey the Eye just to the right of the mound. Her foot dug into the snow just enough to meet the foundation of ice. Snow had already started to fill it in. I kneeled next to it and brought two of my fingers up to it.
Two fingertips brought together is roughly an inch, and the snow in Caitlin’s recent footprint had already risen enough to reach half of one finger. In only fifteen minutes, just over a quarter of an inch of snow fell, meaning that every hour, one inch of snow was covering our tracks. I went back to measure the fresh snow over where Ben was kneeling, and the snow just barely met the hight of my two fingers, and then another two on top of them.
“Two hours,” I said softly.
I held my breath, trying to think of another scenario than Ben kneeling there, completely still, for almost two hours. I measured again, trying to find any deviation in the snow that would prove me wrong. I found nothing.
When the others returned, I told them my theory.
“It looks like he was here for a while. The snow piled up around him. Look.”
Caitlin and Buck leaned into the divot and nodded quietly.
“He disappeared just before we arrived, maybe even moments before we got up here.”
Caitlin only stood there quietly with her arms crossed. Buck said nothing.
“That’s all?” I said, “What do we do now?”
“We come back later to get the body,” Buck said.
“What?” I jumped to my feet. “He could still be alive in there! He might have been here just before we arrived!”
I was beginning to lose my breath. My mind was lost. I envisioned Hal, tired, cold, inexperienced, and alone up here, looking deep into the abyss, he decides to make it quick, just as we break across the horizon.
“Maybe h-“
“Kid,” Buck said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “the sun is going down. we have to head back. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“He could have just fallen in! Maybe there’s time!”
“It’s too deep for us to rescue him now,” Caitlin said.
“We’ll be back tomorrow. We don’t know much, but we know for sure of them walked on top of the ice. That means it’s safe to cross.”
Flashes of white cascading over my team. The surge through my knees as I walked down the mountain. Rage. That’s what I remembered from the descent. When we got to the snowmobiles, I leaned over mine, taking long then usual to start it. I didn’t know if I wanted them to notice or not, but before I could find out, they were right there beside me.
“Don’t let this get to you,” Buck said, “Remember, we do what we can and that’s all we can do.”
“Relax tonight, okay?” Caitlin said, “Buck and I’ll go down to the hospital to talk to Jerry. We’ll be back here tomorrow, and I want you to take the day off.”
“Why?” I said, more surprised than upset.
“This has been a lot. You need rest. We’ll get one of the rangers to help us out.”
“Okay,” I said, my unease growing. Buck noticed.
“Hey, a day off never hurt nobody,” he said, “You were a big help today. I don’t think we were going to notice some of those clues without you.”
I looked down at my feet.
“Really!” Buck said, slapping me on the head, “You’re not dead weight, kid!”
Caitlin smacked me on the side of my head too. Buck hit the other side again, and the both spent a couple seconds bouncing my head between them until I broke and started to laugh.
“Lets get out of here,” Caitlin said, “and please take some time for yourself tonight! Take a warm bath. Do whatever it is you do. We’re gonna talk to Jerry and announce yet again that people need to leave that place alone.”
“Why do you think they went down there in the first place?” I said.
“Well, that’s what Jerry is going to tell us,” Buck said, “and if he doesn’t tell us, then we’ll see if David’s dead eyes will do him in.”
I chuckled and they started to head to their snowmobiles. I took a moment to breathe, and I looked at the spot I had helped Jerry from beneath the tree. Seeing him curled up made me remember how helpless he looked when we arrived, and then I remembered something.
“Hey,” I said, “you all want to make a bet?”
They both turned to me.
“When the first guy fell in, a piece of his ski was broken next to the hole, and that wasn’t there today, right?”
“Yeah,” they said in unison.
“Jerry was holding his jacket pretty tight when we found him. How much do you want to bet he’s got a souvenir?”
They both smiled.
After they arrived at the hospital, Jerry handed over the ski as soon as they asked. They delivered the news in return, and he became inconsolable. Both of them left just as Hal’s wife arrived at the hospital.
My night was quiet. I ended up taking a bath, hoping the pain in my muscles would leave with the water. I’d never been given a bubble bath as a child, so I treated myself to one. I watched the mountains of bubbles break against the air, the valleys sink, until there was nothing left but the reflection of my legs against the stillness. The longer I looked across the water, the more it appeared that nothing was there.
