Kristi said, “That Toyota looks like it could be his. It’s got skis and a bike. And it’s got Colorado license plates. I bet that’s his truck.”
“He’s probably already in the canyon,” suggested Megan.
Kristi agreed. “Yeah, it’s already eleven-thirty. He probably went in.”
“We should put a note on his windshield with our e-mails, in case we don’t see him in the slot.”
“But what if it’s not his truck?”
Megan was used to exchanging e-mail addresses with people, to arrange future trips and invite them to visit Moab. She was surprised she hadn’t done that with me the day before. “Well, if it’s his, he’ll have our e-mails, and if it’s not, they’ll just throw it away.”
“It’s an out-and-back canyon, though. If he’s in there, then we’ll see him on his way out.”
“OK, then. Should we have lunch before we go and see if Aron shows up here?”
“Hmm, I’m not really hungry yet.” Kristi was ready for some hiking and exploring.
While they were walking, Megan continued speculating about whether they would see me at Little Wild Horse. “Do you think he came and went already?”
Kristi pondered the question for a few seconds. “I guess he either got up really early and went through it already, or he’s so completely hungover that he decided not to go hiking today at all.”
“Why didn’t we get his phone number?”
“We were just going to see each other again.”
“Yeah, but that’s weird. I’d usually have exchanged numbers or e-mails or something, and we didn’t. He was really nice. That was so cool that we met him in the canyon, and he hiked with us and didn’t just blow by us.”
The pair enjoyed themselves through the morning, exploring the narrow slot of Little Wild Horse. In the end, they doubled back on their entry path, coming out the same slot to the parking area. After packing Kristi’s white 4Runner with the remnants of a weekend of off-road adventuring, they drove back through Green River to Moab on Sunday afternoon. Megan wondered what had happened to me, but neither thought about something out of the ordinary. There were too many rational explanations. They didn’t worry about whether they would see me again; they talked about how much fun they’d had over the weekend and about how refreshing it was to get away from work for a change. They agreed it was too bad that they had to go back to the Outward Bound warehouse the next day to prepare supplies for another set of upcoming trips. They were hardly ready to trade their carefree desert explorations for their indoor offices, but they decided they would go out again soon, and with that promise, the shock of returning to civilization lost some of its sting.
After helping me get my truck unstuck from the ice and mud on Thursday afternoon, my friends Brad and Leah Yule left the Mount Sopris area near Carbondale, Colorado, and drove the scenic highway over forested McClure Pass on their way to the southwest part of the state. It was well after dark when they pulled off Highway 550 into the scenic mining town of Silverton, where they slept in the back of Brad’s truck right on Main Street. Leah was already four months pregnant so the next day, she caught a ride with her mom and went shopping in Durango while Brad skied Silverton Mountain with some of his colleagues from Aspen’s Incline Ski Shop. Brad and his coworkers had saved up their tips for the entire season to pay for a trip to the recently opened experts-only ski mountain; lift tickets were over a hundred dollars each, but that included a guide and a unique in-bounds backcountry experience that powder junkies lust after. That evening, Brad and his friends stayed in a Silverton hotel room to sleep off the aftereffects of a local brewer’s festival that had included topless sledding at the base of the ski area. After a late start the next morning, Brad went down to Durango and met Leah. They drove the Devil’s Highway, Route 666, into the Utah desert. Late Saturday afternoon, Leah monitored their cell phone as they drove north on Highway 95 across the upper arm of Lake Powell, waiting for me to call and finalize our rendezvous plans for Goblin Valley that evening.
By seven P.M., they were heading into the San Rafael Swell, traveling west off of Highway 24. Leah watched the signal indicator bars on the cell phone’s screen disappear as they drove along the flat stretches of pavement. They got a usable signal only when the vehicle crested small bumps in the terrain.
“Why don’t we call him?” Leah inquired.
“He doesn’t have a cell phone. He said he would call to get directions.”
“You know what? Before we get so far out here that we lose the reception entirely, we should check the messages. Go back to that bump where it was higher. I got four bars there.” Brad made a U-turn to swing back into range. The homemade wood camper shell rocked the vehicle slightly to the passenger side as Brad pulled the turn tight on the two-lane highway.
“OK, stop right here, on this little hill.” Leah checked the three messages on the phone, but none of them was from me. “That’s weird that he didn’t call. Did he say for sure he was going to come?”
Brad answered, “Well, he never really said so. I told him about the party, and that we would be there, and that there were going to be people from Aspen there that he knew. He sounded interested, and he said he was going to call and get directions.”
“Maybe he decided not to. Should we wait here to see if he calls?”
“He didn’t have much of a clear plan before he left-he just wanted to go climbing and hiking and get the heck out of Dodge. You know, off-season stuff. I didn’t ask him to sign in blood that he was going to come. I think we should get going so we can find that billboard.” One of Brad’s friends had promised to leave more specific directions stuck to a billboard at the entrance to the state park, to cover for any last-minute changes.
Within five minutes of departing the hump in the road, the truck’s left rear tire went flat. Brad discovered that the spare was dangerously low as well. Moving at a sluggish 5 mph, the couple continued on toward Goblin Valley State Park. Brad retrieved the directions, the main navigation being to turn left at the Scooby-Doo stuffed animal stuck in a juniper tree. The evening sun hammered straight into Brad’s eyes, turning the dust-frosted windshield into a glass curtain. They missed the turnoff for the party and drove around for an hour as the sun went down and the desert sank into darkness.
Exhausted from a full day in the truck, they quickly lost interest in cruising the back roads of the state park at 5 mph, so Brad pulled over in a finger canyon off a spur road, found a flat parking spot, and they retired into the camper for the night. It was not a big loss to them to have missed the party-they were an easygoing couple out on a road trip for whatever fun they found, and there’d be plenty more parties through the off-season. With daylight aiding them on Sunday morning, Brad and Leah puttered around until they found the aftermath of the party-friends lying about the desert as if a plane had crashed into a nearby ravine. One friend revived enough to take them on the hour-long drive into Green River to repair the tires. They returned in the early afternoon.
Assuming that I had either found the party or come up with something more interesting to do, Brad and Leah were unalarmed that they didn’t see me in Utah. With only two days back in Aspen before their honeymoon trip to the Bahamas, they had pressing preparations on their minds, though they figured they would see me at the Spruce Street party on Monday night.
Monday was hectic at my house. My roommates were getting ready for our first party of the off-season, a big blowout to rejoice in the transition of seasons and of roommates. With the four Aspen ski areas closed, the season was officially over. After working with me at the Ute all winter, Leona Sondie was leaving for Boulder, where she planned to work as a landscape gardener for the summer. Elliott Larson was moving in to join his mountain-bike- racing teammate Joe Wheadon, rounding out the foursome with Brian Payne and me. Brian was back in town after a two-month absence-his January ski accident had forced him to move in with his parents in Ohio for recovery and rehab-and I would be back from my vacation. It would be a rare occasion that we’d all be together. That it was a workday night was inconsequential to the scale of the party; few of the attendees would have serious responsibilities the next day, off-season bringing with it a respite from significant duties on the job. Party planning included getting a keg, stocking up on grilling supplies, stringing decorative lights around the house, inviting fifty people to come over, and rolling up the living-room-wall garage door to add some extra party space to our thousand-square-foot home.
Typical of older buildings in the Smuggler Mine area of Aspen, 560 Spruce had gone through several renovations throughout its 115-year life. Consequently, the house had a funky character, including a roll-up garage door installed in the west wall of the living room. The Smuggler Mine Company had built the house as an assay office where assessors weighed silver ores and measured their purity. In 1894, when the largest silver nugget in the world was extracted from the mine, it most likely passed through 560 Spruce, though no one at the time was much excited by the find, since the silver crash of 1893 had dropped the bottom out of the silver market. As it sat on the assessor’s
