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Show THE ZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2006-JANUARY 2007 By late afternoon, we were looking for a body. We fully expected the search to end tragically under a large juniper tree. Time was running out for Millie. My friend Greg Gnesios, a fellow ranger who once worked at Canyonlands, was visiting when the search began and joined us. He was just as caught up in it as the rest of us. FROM Someone found a track and yelled, “Here she is.” Then Greg, who was next to me yelled, “There she is!” I looked at the ground, searching for a footprint. “There! FOOTPRINTS 121 EAST 100 SOUTH #108 MOAB, UT 84532 800.635.5280 “Where?” There she is!” Millie looked up at us from her perch. She was exhausted but ok. When:we surrounded her, Millie thought she was hallucinating. While we waited for the chopper to pick her up, Nellie described her ordeal. And finally she shed some light on the strange path she and her fellow lost persons had taken. Why did Nellie and Otto and Werner and Gunther head east, away from the park? “7 could see the car lights,” she explained. “The lights out on the highway. I waved my cigarette lighter but nobody would stop,” she grumbled. She was referring to the traffic on Interstate 70, twenty miles away. Neither she nor her other European kindred spirits could grasp the vast distances of the American South- Top 10 Excuses Why | Got Lost 10. My GPS is AFU so we're SOL 9. | knew where | was, but | didn't know where you was... 8. Maybe it was something I drank. 7. The Taleban stole my map. 6. Homeland Security re-drew my map. 5. TSA confiscated my map 4. Google Earth was down. 3. Became disoriented looking for WMD's 2. Still haven't figured out this ‘100 South 100 East' thing 1. My Hummer is camo west. Finally, no account of lost Arches hikers can be complete without mention of the multithousand dollar search for the hiker who wasn’t lost. On a cold blustery day in early April, I was notified by the noted photographer Phil Hyde of a possible missing hiker near Crystal Arch. Hyde was conducting a photo work- shop when he and his students discovered an abandoned campsite. The pack was there, a sleeping bag lay stretched across the sand. A copy of Desert Solitaire lay open on the ground. But sand had drifted over the bag and the scene just didn’t feel right. I inventoried the contents of the pack and found a piece of paper-a partial prescription. I could make out part of a last name, the doctor and “Springfield.” I also found a baggie of marijuana, which I thought might explain why he couldn’t find his camp. I turned over the paper scrap and the grass to my boss. Meanwhile search crews combed Fin Canyon and the surrounding area, a tangle of side canyons and fins and fissures. The guy could have been anywhere. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Finally as nightfall came, we gave up for the day, with plans to start again at dawn with tracking dogs. But at 6 am, Chief Ranger Jerry Epperson called me via radio and reported, “Discontinue your search. The missing person has been found.” “Where?” I asked. “Missouri,” said Jerry. We discovered that the missing man had gone for a hike, a week or so earlier, had forgotten where his campsite was (it may have been the Mary Jane after all), had simply walked away from his gear and went home to Missouri. But before he left, he did stick a note in the visitor center door for the “lost and found department.” Nobody at HQ made the connection. Later we mailed him his pack, sans the marijuana. There are a couple lessons to be learned from all this. First, if you're German ‘and ADOPT A GREYHOUND! in your 70s, your life is in grave danger if you come to Arches. Second, if you come anyway, we'll probably find you in the Yellowcat Mining District with grass stuffed up your legs. And finally, if you do get lost, rangers will certainly come looking for you because they get paid overtime and it beats unclogging toilets. It’s that kind of devotion to duty that makes me proud to have been a seasonal ranger. OO cee ee oo aera ee ee : RIVERSIDE 366 N. 500 PLUMBING & HEATING KEN SLEIGHT TRAIL RIDES * MOAB « Pack Creek Ranch CLARK’S | © LOST? Excuse me, but I can’t find my friend Lewis... Have you seen him? No...but my buddy Billy Bob just lost his tie in the DISPOSE-ALL KEN oe at Arches National Park in the 1980s IT’S WINTERTIME and we have cabins available contact us at 435.259.8333 Residential - Commercial - Sales Installation - Drain Cleaning COMPLETE LINE OF PLUMBING FIXTURES jsleight1@frontiernet.net Kohler - Grohe - Mansfield Ejer - Moen -~ Delta - Sterling - Price Pfister HOT WATER HEATERS - GARBAGE DISPOSALS WHIRLPOOL BATHS - SPAS Call or email Ken: 435.259.8575 13 kensleight@frontiernet.net |