“I… loooooooove… HIKING!!”
Carey hollers between strained breaths, at the top of the tallest peak in all of Wyoming; “Titanium” by David Guetta, that guided her to the summit, dancing in her ears. Echoes of her voice bouncing around the valley and back to her fade to only the whisper of the wind. Hot pink and teal glacier glasses block most of the light from below; not the beauty of chaotically crumpled velvet laid out for miles. A muffled “wumph” from her pack dropping the rock, she eyes it disapprovingly, her wrinkled brow scowling over the thought of shouldering it again. Already laden with climbing rack and pieces on her harness, the pack only added to the challenge. Free from burden for a few moments, standing tall she spread her arms and legs wide stretching out the day’s arduous route. She collapses her Go Pro selfie stick, tossing it to the growing pile of gear.
“In through the nose… snnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiif.”
“Out through the mouth… hhhhhhhhhhssssssssssssss.”
“Namaste.”
The feeling of crisp cool mountain air filled her lungs, small goosebumps tickle her skin. “Time for snacks and snaps”, she giggles to only herself over her personal soundtrack pumping out of her Beats portable Bluetooth speaker. Turning to rummage through the top compartment of her The North Face pack: finds her cell phone with pop-socket, finds her one-hundred calorie sweetened with Stevia snacks repackaged into Stasher bags, finds her purified bottled water repackaged to a sticker laden Nalgene bottle. Gracefully spinning on one heel, she sits down on her backpack. On her phone, she thumbs the various apps to get to InstaBook and open the selfie camera.
Looking out across the valley thousands of feet below, she feels accomplished, strong, proud. Well above treeline, sunshine warms her as the constant breeze wicks away the sweat from the efforts of the climb. Thousands of feet below her in the valley the krummholz blends to deep green coniferous forest to the yellow of the drainage plants; fed water by numerous glaciers scattered throughout the range. At this height, there is only pure blue of sky with pure white of clouds busily streaking by the pure dark rock ridgeline. Her soundtrack begins playing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
The perfect song for a great post.
Her phone switched from airplane mode, she is locked in position. Chin up and slightly left, tightening the skin of her neck. Eyelids slide gently down, seductively obscuring the whites to enhance the hazel with flecks of gold in her irises. She gently purses her lips while waiting for the signal indicator in the upper corner of the screen. The no service flickers, then morphs into a single bar of service.
“Should be enough.”
A smile dances across her cheeks, spreading up to the corners of her eyes. Marvin Gaye crescendos as she allows the emotion to play out through her body, a beautiful pink flush flowing over her face. Raising her eyes to the horizon to catch the light; feeling the warmth of the sun.
“ca-click”, from her phone.
Her outstretched arm pressed the shutter button on her cell phone screen at the perfect moment, at the peak of her expressive pose.
[Post]
Elated with the sharing of her recent conquest, Carey began humming with anticipation of all the likes she will get; thumbs working the screen of her cell phone.
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Total Tour Search and Rescue found all of Carey’s equipment on the summit of Gannett Peak; just as seen in her recent InstaBook post. Exactly as her shared picture, with no Carey. Her mother had called emergency services when she did not return that night. Within 10 hours, TTSR had begun retracing Carey’s trip plan as provided to them by her mother. Only 20 hours later they make it to the peak, Gannett Peak usually takes a mountaineering crew 24 hours to reach it, the novice takes four to five days. TTSR knew they had to race if they had any chance to find her alive; they found only her gear. It was setup picture perfect still, just as posted.
Carey had been an accomplished crew member for Total Tour Search and Rescue for over six years; they all knew she had the skills to solo summit Gannett. The team setup a lower camp to begin the next few days searching. They worked their way around the peak, climbing sections to get into rock falls, rappelling down into crevasses with lamps. With the technical sections of the mountain covered by humans, on day three the corpse dogs arrived. Crews of three people and one dog each were created with a total of four groups. Following search patterns and standard protocol, they worked up from the lower angle sections of the mountain. A few hours after the teams dispersed, team two that was sent to the north-west lake that forms at the base of a glacier, got a positive hit from their corpse dog. The dog pulled hard at the edge of the glacier where it melts off into the lake. Jerrod’s heart began pounding in his throat. His feat struggling for purchase at a full sprint through the chunder, his grip shaking on the leash of his kite in a tornado pulling him towards Carey…’s body.
Dejected and confused, Jerrod packed up his gear at the search camp. His search group was stationed at tree line, just down from the ascent trail. They were tasked with retracing the original track, while the rest took the faster rappelling way down. The day before, his teammates Liz and Zach had followed the corpse dog to a body, just not Carey’s body. Upon inspection, the team physician determined it was an elderly man; he must have been a tourist that come to cross Gannett off his bucket list, must have been frozen in the glacier for years. After six days of searching and with the addition of one body to carry out, the lead was calling the search. Jerrod had been seeing Carey on and off for a few years, both understood it was casual. Still, he felt obligated to call Pam, Carey’s mom. It would be difficult to tell her of the team’s failure. His cell phone was off and stowed in his basecamp bag as per policy. It took a few minutes to retrieve it deeply buried beneath the various tools kept in his one hundred-ten-liter mountain rescue bag.
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An unbelievably loud screech, sounding of a freight train’s brakes in an emergency, metal tearing on metal in the wilderness. Throwing his cell phone into his tent before it can even be booted up, amplified screams slammed into Jarrod’s brain. His hands jolt to either side of his head to block out the terror. Just at the edge of his vision by her tent Liz is yanked up at an impossible trajectory, pausing midair to thrust backwards into the trees. Her blue coveralls folding into the branches, splashing into the dark. “Liz? Hello…hello… hello Liz?” emitted from the cell phone lying on the ground next to her footprints in the dirt, only the faintest of dust settling on the screen. Fording the ground behind with all his strength, Jarrod races with his flashlight to where she was only a moment before. Thumbing the switch on, a blast of intense light beam cuts through the forest. The spot frantically searches for something to make sense of what he just saw. Movement of to his right steals his attention. A raccoon center stage under spotlight; its hands busily picking at a shoe. Slowly, smoothly, Jarrod approaches it. Flashlight almost too bright, high-fidelity shadows distorting the world. A heartbeat away, he sees the racoon burry its face into the shoe, retracting its jaw dripping with a dark fluid. Deciding to finally notice Jarrod, the racoon hisses and dropping the shoe with a wet “thunk” darts past the sharp edges of light into the black. Focus of the flashlight frozen on the fallen, wet shoe Jarrod stretches his arm to pick it up. Left shoulder forward, left arm slowly extends, first finger and thumb reach the shoe as to pluck an overripe strawberry.
Is Liz’s shoe…red?
“What-tha-fuck!?”
Death throes from behind him; Jarrod is immediately reminded of the sounds from a mixed martial art competition his father took him to as a kid. Frozen in confusion; staccato grunts, bones shattering, a wet splatter coming from above. Silence releasing his faculties, he whips his flashlight around, seemingly ahead of the beam. His eyes struggle for coherence. Zach’s pack falls from the heavens slamming the earth torn straps tattered and akimbo, cell phone shattering and going dark. Zach’s eyes focused with a dead stare directly at Jarrod, unblinking and without the rest of Zach attached to the head. From the darkness above, a crunching sound demands Jarrod’s beacon of light skyward. In the boughs of the fir trees above his light finds the head that was attached to the body of Zach, shiny and sticky bark reflected dark, sticky red.
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The next morning when the rescue team did not call or answer satellite pings, the on-call dispatch at TTSR sounded “code red”. Every employee, volunteer, and lawyer were directed to report in at command central. The sweltering room was packed with people standing with shoulders pinched against each other. People sitting on the regular faux leather padded board room chairs with additional folding chairs and bar stools pressed against the long meeting table; air conditioning not able to keep up with the building anticipation and worry. Sounds of muddled voices, whispering theories while people waited, shifted, and eyed the smartboard display at the head of the room. It displayed - CODE R.E.D. Everyone knew it was not good, it could not be good; R-E-D stood for Rescue Evacuation Disabled. Something had gone very wrong.
“Good morn’n all,” Ralph McGowen’s voice, director of operations for TTSR, commanded all eyes to him. He took a moment to nervously blot his brow with a weathered paisley handkerchief before clicking to the next slide of the PowerPoint. The next slide depicting a topographic map of Gannett Peak.
“ninety-six hours ago, we received a missing hiker report – one of our own. Carey McGowen was reported late coming back from her ascent of Gannett Peak via the mountaineering route.” The words were acid in Ralph’s throat. Even though his daughter worked for him; he saw her nearly every day. The call was the first time he heard his ex-wife’s voice in six years. Ralph continued with a recap of the facts: his daughter called in lost, rescue team deploying, report back from the team they were calling off the search. Then, no report from the team. None of their cell phones were answered, although, the phones rang several times before going to voicemail. Neither of the three satellite phones issued to the three rescue teams were answered.
“We were able to fix a location based off of the satellite phone telemetry data”, Ralph clicks to the next slide. A red arrow pointing to the exact summit of Gannett Peak. “Here, at the summit, all three of the sat-phones are relaying their current location. “The exact same as Carey’s last know location.” He clicks to the next slide displaying three yellow triangles. “The yellow triangles represent the rescue team camps as of sunset yesterday evening when they reported they were calling…” his voice cracks “…off the search.” His red paisley handkerchief finds it’s way to his eyes before his brow. “The team’s egress route was NOT back to the peak. There was no reason for all three sat-phones to be there.”
The room explodes with concerned, excited questions.
“Hold on people!!” Ralph throws up his hands, “That is not all of the information!” He waits for everyone to settle down. “I had the state police poll every cell phone from each person on the team for location. Every device came back being on the peak…” loud, overlapping questions from the room. “PEOPLE!!!” Ralph waits for the room to compose itself. “Every phone EXCEPT Jarrod’s. His came back no signal, meaning it is off, out of power, or broken.”
Every phone in the room called out for attention, screens lit up all with the same number; some displayed a name - Jarrod.
The people who had saved Jarrod’s number frantically answered, while others stared at the unknown number; the force of the chaos creating mental shutdown. The few who had their phones to their ears seemed frozen, listening in unison. Ralph did not want the distraction, and left his in his office stood still, the PowerPoint clicker in his hand, knuckles white, muscles in his forearm pulsing. After the unanswered phones went dim, “What is he saying?” Demands Ralph. As if choreographed, every person with their phone to their ear collapsed to the floor, eyes fixed somewhere the living could not see.
“What – Theee – Fuck?” whispered Ralph.