The Last Season (28 page)

Word had gotten around: if no concrete clues were found that day, it was likely the search would be called off. “No apparent progress on search,” wrote Lyness in her logbook. “Got a call this afternoon that I'm to be flown out tomorrow and my stomach's in a knot. Afraid the debriefing will be worse than what's gone on up to this point. Crying hysterically in front of a group of your peers is not at the top of my list.”

At day's end, Durkee and Graban were flown to the incident command post at Cedar Grove. They ambled halfheartedly to the fire station's planning room, where the overhead search team had been based. Inside, two picnic tables were pushed together. At one end, Coffman sat with a stack of papers, calm and composed but uncharacteristically subdued. A dry-erase board off to the side featured a list of notes, with two stick figures labeled “Durkee and Graban” climbing down a cartoonish cliff along the edge of the board. The taller stick
figure was saying, “The horror! The horror!”

“How appropriate,” thought Durkee as he sat down at the opposite end of the table from Coffman.

The seats between them filled with other members of the ICP's overhead team, including Dave Ashe and Scott Wanek. Debbie Bird was there as well.

Coffman began the meeting by thanking everybody for their hard work and then got down to business, going over the clues they'd followed up on.

A bag of trail mix was found in an abandoned campsite (the mix didn't match any food Randy had at his station). A First Need water filter was discovered near Bench Lake, where the smell of “something dead” had been reported by a search volunteer (Randy's water filter was still at his station, and a cadaver-trained dog did not alert in the area). A man was reported crouching in a snow cave on a high slope (the man proved to be a shadow). Something had glimmered from a talus slope on a peak, perhaps a signal mirror (it was a discarded water bottle). Numerous tracks were noted (scent-specific tracking dogs determined that they were not Randy's). In all, around two dozen clues were documented; none had led to Randy.

Coffman was well aware of the hazards encountered by the search teams—steep terrain, cliffs, swift water, bedrock “slick as snot”—and he went over a few of those scenarios as well. Durkee saw the writing on the wall: “He was breaking it down for us, showing us a little of his thought process, so we'd understand why he had to call it off.”

Before this meeting, Coffman had privately talked it over with various rangers who were closest to Randy. Was there anything they should or could do that they hadn't already tried? “I was extremely thankful for that gesture from Coffman,” says Durkee. “Asking me my opinion was probably one of the most gracious gestures of respect I ever got from a high-level administrator.”

Coffman queried this group as well, challenging them to think. As could be expected, he—all of them—were pretty fried. “The overall mood at that meeting was grim,” says Durkee, “and when nobody
came up with any new ideas, Coffman said he'd gotten something from a psychic, who suggested where Randy might be.”

When Coffman started to read the psychic's letter, Durkee began laughing, semihysterically. “Perfect,” he thought. “Randy would have loved this moment in his search.” But when he realized nobody else had joined in, Durkee abruptly stopped. “Oops,” he thought. “They're serious about this—Coffman is serious about this.”

With a sigh, Coffman looked everybody in the eye. “And to his credit,” says Durkee, “he almost sheepishly suggested that we were out of options.” Coffman then focused on Durkee and asked him directly, one last time, if he thought it was time to stop the major search effort. With the spotlight on him, Durkee leaned heavily on his elbows, his chin resting on clenched fists. After a long silence, tears welled up in his eyes. Durkee nodded his head, and then he began to cry.

“A long, strange trip,” says Durkee, remembering that moment. “Total bungathon—but there was no other choice.”

Operations Section Chief Scott Wanek had, for the past couple of days, hedged his vote when Coffman asked him what he thought about stopping the search. He admitted later what everyone assumed was a possibility: “that we'd end the search and then find Randy sometime later with a note documenting his last days, dying after we'd called off the search from some injury he'd been suffering. It's the ‘What if?' factor that makes calling off a search so emotional. I hate to admit it, but the decision would have been easier if it had been someone from the general public.”

Bird echoes this sentiment: “The truth is that had it been a visitor, we would have scaled back the search a full day or two before we did.”

By the end of the meeting, however, “everyone agreed that to continue to search would be essentially fruitless,” says Bird. “In reality, we sustained the search because I did not want any of my employees thinking that we did not do everything we could have done.” Given the rangers' feedback, Coffman and Bird jointly made the decision: the Morgenson SAR would end the following day.

On August 2, thirteen days after Randy's last contact, radios crack
led to life across the Sierra wilderness. Nina Weisman was on the porch of her Bearpaw Meadow ranger station sipping hot tea; Lo Lyness was at Charlotte Lake; Rick Sanger was at Bench Lake awaiting his next assignment; Graban and Durkee were at Cedar Grove, having stayed the night in the employee-housing cabins there. The grave voice on the radio was that of Sequoia and Kings Canyon superintendent Mike Tollefson: “The search for Randy Morgenson has occupied our hearts and minds for many days now,” he said.

“Randy last checked in by radio on Saturday, July 20. We know that he talked to two hikers that day near Mather Pass and that he returned to his station at Bench Lake that night and made an entry in his log. When there was no radio contact for the next forty-eight hours, a ranger went to check on him.

“Randy had left a note at his station on the twenty-first stating that he had gone for a three-day patrol. A hasty search was initiated on the twenty-fourth, using a helicopter and several staff, and a full search operation began the next morning.

“The effort put forth by people from all over these parks, as well as other parks and agencies, has been immense. They searched a rugged 80-square-mile area with almost one hundred people, five helicopters, and eight dog teams. But there has not been a single clue.

“Based on this intensive search, and the absence of any leads, we must begin to scale back on direct search tactics. Nonpark resources are being released to their stations. Park personnel will continue searching on Friday and Saturday. If there are still no results, we will scale back further.

“A ranger will be stationed at Bench Lake for the rest of the summer, interviewing all hikers and continuing to search. At trailheads we will continue to ask backcountry visitors to be watchful for clues during their trips.

“To know that Randy is missing is difficult; to have no resolution to the search is more so. For those involved in the search, there will be a critical incident stress debriefing over the weekend: contact Debbie Bird or Randy Coffman. Also, the services of the Employee Assistance
Program are available to all.

“Deep thanks are due to those who participated in the search, and our thoughts have been with them throughout.

“We will continue to seek the answer, as we will continue to keep Randy in our hearts.

“Thank you for being special.”

Then the radios—for the first time in ten days—fell silent. The official search was over.

 

AFTER ATTENDING
the group peer counseling session or individual counseling, the backcountry rangers returned to their duty stations in the high country. Critical incident stress management professionals call what these rangers had just gone through a “mission incomplete.” In essence, not finding Randy, a fellow ranger, was one of the most traumatic experiences to process and often leads to classic post-traumatic stress.

Individuals who have experienced a “mission incomplete” are, in a perfect world, routinely followed up on after their initial debriefing. For the backcountry rangers, there would be no follow-up.

Rick Sanger was flown back to the Rae Lakes ranger station. As the helicopter lifted off, he lay down on the ground and waited for the rotor sounds to fade away. He hoped that he wouldn't hear another helicopter for a long time. Eleven days had passed since he'd left his post to check in on Randy the evening of July 23. He remembered the hike, his lack of concern, and the happy anticipation of finding Randy with a broken radio—of boiling tea and catching up.

Now he wasn't sure if he was exhausted, depressed, or in shock. Feigning motivation, he tidied up the station. He wiped the dust and mouse droppings off his tiny desk; glued the sole of his boot, which had started to separate; and recharged his ham radio battery with solar panels. Though physically tired from the search, he had to walk somewhere. He wasn't sure where.

Once he got going, an unnamed lake the rangers call Ranger Treat Lake seemed a fitting place to dissect the emotions Sanger was feel
ing. The hike, he reasoned, would do him good. He stayed near the lake's shore until nightfall, waiting for the soothing alpenglow on the granite, hoping the Range of Light would work its magic and heal his wounds. It didn't.

He walked home in the dark.

That night, Sanger pounded the keyboard on his laptop—likely the only computer in the entire backcountry—inserting notes from the pad of paper he scribbled on obsessively. Eventually he caught up to the present day: “Cruise up to Ranger Lake. That place is a fucking temple, unbelievably beautiful. The shots of light passing on the lake's surface, the edge of the lake suspended in front of Fin Dome. The placement of the trees and their shapes.

“The hardest part: the best I could give was not good enough. Should I have gone longer hours? Hiked farther? I envision it's going to be spooky back here. I had nightmares of discovering him, and of him staggering into camp and falling on my tent.”

The glow of the laptop's monitor competed with the hissing Coleman lantern hanging from the ceiling to cast an eerie light. “Staring down at carcass of moth and mouse turds on floor,” Sanger typed, his mind spinning back to the critical incident stress debriefing. “Finding it tough to look anyone in the eye. ‘Be careful of alcohol' [one of the peer counselors had warned the rangers].

“I'll be careful to drink every can I come across.”

Sanger closed his laptop, hung his headlamp near the foam mattress that served as his bed, turned off the lantern, curled up in his sleeping bag, and retraced every route he'd taken in the search. He blasted himself for every moment he had not been on his feet looking for Randy.

The next day was an “administrative leave” day for the rangers who had taken part in the search. “Slept late, read Ed Abbey's
Fool's Progress,
made pancakes, and tried to soak in the events of the past week,” wrote Sanger. “Sat out in the shimmering sun with the onions that are now blooming around the spring.

“Reading and staring at Painted Lady and the Crest. This is an irreconcilably beautiful place. Abbey found his niche with the park ser
vice and I chuckle at a deep level of understanding at his descriptions.

“How lucky am I to be here?

“Why can't I hold myself in higher regard and admiration for where my body and spirit have led me!”

Meanwhile, just over Glen Pass at Charlotte Lake, Lo Lyness was equally somber:

Saturday, August 3, 1996, was “a painful day,” wrote Lyness. “Critical Incident Stress Debriefing. It was okay. I just feel like a truck has run over me most of the time…. Randy would never believe how many people have been touched by this, how many people care and want to help, how many people have and are hurting.

“Flew home…told to take the rest of the day and the next off. So I did. Read, wrote, cried. Sat by the lake and looked at the mountains. Tried to understand
something
. But it's not understandable.”

The following day, Lyness slept in late. She picked up a book she'd brought into the backcountry,
Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty,
by W. L. Rusho. Describing it in her logbook, she wrote that Ruess “disappeared in the Southwest at a far younger age than RM; never to be found.”

She and Randy had talked about Everett Ruess in the past, but she can't recall exactly why she was reading it that season. She calls it a “crazy coincidence” that Randy had been reading the same book just before he disappeared.

As her season continued, she tried her best to soak in the backcountry: “fields of purple and white,” she wrote, “more gentians than I've ever seen in one place…it's magic.” On August 6, five separate hikers asked Lyness about Randy. “Wonder how long until it doesn't feel like a knife in my stomach whenever someone asks,” she wrote.

On August 12, Lyness headed out on a long patrol to the Upper Kern via Forester Pass, where she cut off the trail, stashed her pack, and started to scramble up Cal Tech Peak. That evening she camped at a favorite ranger patrol site, the little frog pond en route to Lake South America—likely, the same hideaway camp Randy had taken his father to on his last trip into the high country. In the night, Lyness was awakened by
“a nightmare about Randy” and couldn't fall back to sleep. “A blessing in disguise,” she wrote, “as I saw lots of meteors—it being the Perseid time.”

On Lyness's final day in the backcountry, it was a “gorgeous, cool, Fall-ish day. Hard to leave now. But—off to join the rat race.” That was the last entry Lyness made in a station logbook. She never returned to the high country in the uniform of a backcountry ranger.

George Durkee returned to LeConte Canyon, where his wife, Paige Meier, had held down the fort, acting as a radio relay during the search and den mother for searchers passing through.