“Shoot,” Derrick says. “I wish we had the satellite phone, a GPS, the camp first aid kit, a cook stove, and a water filter so we don’t all get diarrhea.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “They always at least drop you a note, and maybe some supplies, from the sky. Or they’ll fly low and buzz you so you’ll know you’ve been seen. But every helicopter and jet we’ve seen has been flying high. It’s obvious we’re not on their radar. What puzzles me is why.”
I nod in agreement. “This camp system seemed pretty organized. What about the people in Fairbanks who work for the camp? They should be on this. They’re four days late. I know it’s a long shot to make the walk, but to stay here now is an even longer shot.”
Brooke takes a step toward me. “Here’s what I remember from that walk talk. Mountains, rivers, and swampy valleys to cross. We won’t make it. I—”
“Brooke,” Shannon cuts in, “I don’t know why nobody came for us. Did all our parents die in the quake?” She makes a sweeping motion to take in the whole landslide. “There were twenty of us. Plus four adults. Are things so bad that we’re a super-low priority?” Shannon shakes her head. “I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But I do know one thing. They’re not coming for us anytime soon. We’re on our own.”
CHAPTER 13
Dear Rescuers,
On June 25th, an earthquake caused a massive landslide that buried the Simon Lake Leadership Camp. We recovered five bodies and buried them in shallow graves to keep animals from scavenging them. The graves are marked by rock cairns. An additional fifteen bodies are under the landslide. The four of us, who were away from the main camp during the earthquake, survived. It is now July 1st and no one has come to our assistance. We’ve decided to hike west to Talkeetna. We are in good health, but have limited supplies and no map.
The Survivors,
Josh Baker (Fairbanks, Alaska), Shannon White (Fairbanks, Alaska), Derrick Anderson (Fairbanks, Alaska), Brooke Simpson (Fairbanks, Alaska)
In the end, after we secure the note in the empty food canister and put the flags up, we decide to take almost everything else with us.
Not that it’s that much stuff.
The camp was pretty strict about what we could take on our solo experience, and almost everything else is buried under the landslide.
We each have a backpack, a tiny one-person tent, a blue foam sleeping pad, a sleeping bag, a raincoat and rain pants, a canister of bear spray, a pair of binoculars, a one-liter water bottle, and one set of clothing.
Brooke has a cell phone and a solar charger.
We also each started our solo experience with small blue stuff sacks. And inside the blue sacks we had the following items:
One lighter
One small bottle of insect repellent
One writing journal
One pen
One package of Band-Aids
One small bottle of water purification tablets
At camp there were three large water filters in the kitchen. And one of the jobs was to haul water from the lake and pour it into the holding tanks, which then released the water so it’d flow through the filters and be purified for drinking. On our solo trips we used the tablets, which make the water taste like liquid rust. You basically use one tablet per liter of water. And we’ve been using the tablets since the earthquake, so we don’t have that many left.
“We’re supposed to each drink about a gallon of water a day if we’re hiking,” I say. “I’ve got ten tablets left. Enough for about two and a half days.”
“Some water sources are a lot more likely to be clean than others,” Derrick says. “Creeks from snowmelt, or any fast-moving water, are going to be better than drinking from a lake or pond where bacteria can build up.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t use the tablets when we’ve got water that we think is clean,” Shannon suggests. “We could save them for when we’ve got to get water from lakes or ponds or puddles.”
“I’m not drinking from a puddle.” Brooke huffs.
“You might,” I respond, “if it’s the only place to get some water.”
No one else says anything but I’m pretty sure Shannon, Derrick, and Brooke are all thinking about the same thing I am, and how little of it we have.
Food.
CHAPTER 14
“IT DIDN’T GO THROUGH,” BROOKE says, staring at her phone. “Big surprise.”
We’re on top of the ridge above Simon Lake that I was camping on when the quake struck. My calf muscle seems to be healing up because it barely hurts from the steep climb to get up here.
Brooke sent the message to all her contacts. Maybe at some point on our journey we’ll get to a spot with a little bit of reception and the message will go through, and someone will do something about us.
I take one last look down at what used to be the Leadership Camp and then turn away and face the rest of the group. I worked up a sweat from the climb, but now I’m cooling off in the breeze. Clouds are stacking up in the distance to the west, the direction we need to go, and where the wind is coming from.
Brooke turns her phone off to save power. “Now, where to?” she says to the three of us.
“That way.” I point toward the clouds.
Derrick says, “We should stay up high if we can. I mean, I know we’ll have to go up and down a lot, but the walking is going to be easier on these ridges.”
“And,” Shannon adds, “we’ll have a better chance of being spotted.”
“The best chance we have of being spotted is to stay right here,” Brooke says.
I wish she would let this die. We already decided we’d leave if the message didn’t go through, and we’ve taken everything with us because we didn’t want to waste time and energy going back down to the lake if the message failed, but Brooke just can’t drop this.
But a small part of me believes that she might be right. I mean, this is where someone would come to look for us—if someone were to come.
And, if we had more food, I’d want to stay. But we don’t.
We’ve got three days’ worth of food for a hike that’s supposed to take seven to ten days. We’ve already figured out how to ration it so it’ll last about five or six days, but all that means is that we’ll be eating significantly smaller portions than we have since the earthquake.
Like today. We each had about a quarter cup of granola for breakfast—that’s half of what we’ve been eating. For lunch, we each get a stick of beef jerky. And for dinner, our last meal of the day, a package of dry ramen noodles. You can choose to soak them in cold water or not, but that’s what you get. A pretty simple recipe for starvation when you add in that we’ll be hiking through the trail-less wilderness. I wish we had some fishing gear, or a gun for hunting, but we don’t.
The only weapon we have is defensive. Bear spray. And hopefully we won’t have to use it.
I look Brooke in the eye and say, “There’s no choice here, Brooke. If we stay, we starve.” Then I start walking toward the cloud bank, already hungry.
CHAPTER 15
“WHAT TIME DO YOU THINK it is?” I ask. We’ve come to the end of this high ridge we started walking on after our last attempt to send a message with Brooke’s phone, and now we need to make a decision about which way to go. Simon Lake is a speck in the distance. We had to leave our watches behind for our solo experiences, so they’re buried under the landslide.