On the trail through Cooper’s Gap
Barbara’s head was spinning. Her legs were on fire, her lungs burned, but she couldn’t stop, couldn’t let the others stop. Not yet. Her mind was spinning, trying to examine the map of the park, looking for the worry points, danger crossings, long sight lines, where they could be observed from a distance and give away their direction of travel.
She knew they should lay up and move at night, but step one is break contact and get out of the immediate area if possible. The false paper trail was hopefully shifting their focus in the wrong location but they had to make sure to not **** it up and get spotted or heard.
Whoever did it, they weren’t just some vandals. The windows were intact, nothing taken from the inside of the car other than the campsite paperwork. This was a very deliberate, focused disabling of the car with no way to fix it in the field, like flat tires could. Why? What the hell was going on? Her mind kept asking the question until a long dormant part of her told her it didn’t matter right now.
She and her crew were on the ground. There were hostiles out there who may or may not be still actively hunting them. They were obviously not law enforcement. They knew how many they were hunting, but had a false trail and target location. No good reason for them to look north or east of Cooper’s cut and no quick way to get there other than the one she was on, and god knows this ain’t quick!
They kept climbing and climbing until they made it through the gap. This was a long ago destination for the old trail, and there was a small flat spot for picnics, back in the late sixties according to Stephen’s old maps. People would hike up to the gap, picnic, then hike back down the way they came up. This is what she counted on now.
If the people hunting them even figured out they were headed in that direction, when they looked at an old enough map that it was still on, it dead-ended at the gap. No reason to expect them to go that way, or if someone did, they would have to come back the same way. It would put that trail as a very low priority to check, if it got checked at all.
Barbara loved maps. They told her stories. They told her all about the land, and how people moved about on the land. All the V’s and arches and swirling lines painted pictures in her head of what the land looked like, even under all the greenery. It was one of the things that fascinated her when she learned about them, in the before.
Now, with Stephen, she would pour over the maps, looking for where to expect lost hikers to end up, or where were the worrisome places for forest fire, or where the weather would screw you hard unless you paid attention. All of those were happy thoughts in her head, even though they were also echos of before.
She knew the trail dropped down and twisted around after Cooper’s Gap. She and Stephen had been there a few times from that side. It was a faster route to get to the cliffs and falls by Cooper’s Gap. Stephen had to go there several times each summer to scoop up dumbasses who refuse to read the ‘Do Not Climb’ sign near the falls.
When they were up here last, they stayed overnight in a little spot with all the comforts of home, at least that’s what he said. A small seep for water, an overhang to keep most the weather off them, and a huge-ass Himalayan Blackberry thicket in front of it. The berries were huge, the bush was thick and blocked the wind, and the only way to the spot was inching along the cliff face. From below, there was no good way to know the spot existed.
They could hole up for the night and regroup. She needed rest. Hell, they all needed rest.
Wrong. The voice in her head told her forcefully. You want rest. You don’t need it. It’s a good idea to get some rest, reset, and work your next plan of action. You know the SAR Dot. You can get there. You can get them there, as long as they will listen and pay attention.
She turned off the trail next to the cliff face.
“OK, guys, I got a spot we can rest some. Follow me.”