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Fremont County Search and Rescue volunteers lower News&Guide reporter Kelsey Dayton and volunteer Gates Richards down the final 150 feet of Pingora Peak on Aug. 1 in the Cirque of the Towers. Dayton had to descend about 500 feet of the mountain with a broken humerous bone in her left arm after being struck by a boulder that dislodged from the chimney she was climbing while asceding the mountain. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / BRADLY J. BONER

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I have owned my rust-colored sleeping bag, a hand-me-down from my dad, for years.

On Aug. 1, there was something oddly familiar about its musty smell as I shivered underneath while the strong current of high mountain winds tried to pull away its protection. The smell brought back memories of sleep-overs in my parents’ basement, backyard campouts and extended trips in the backcountry. It made my surrounding deep in the wilderness of the Wind River Range all the more surreal.

I lay uncomfortably on my side, the hard rock of Pingora Peak’s south face digging into my thigh to the point it ached. My left arm draped limply over my body, burning with the unfamiliar fire of a bone broken in a climbing accident. I shivered, cried and waited for rescue from a mountain ascent that suddenly turned bad.

The mountains always inspired in me a sense of purpose, calm and adventure. As a child growing up in Montana, I explored trails, searching for fairy homes, scurrying across boulders and up trees.

As I got older, the outdoors was where I found confidence. When I struggled with body image, the mountains centered me. In the hills it wasn’t about how my body looked; it was about what it could do.

I arrived in Jackson, about three years ago, Tetons obsessed. I had never been so immediately and completely enamored. I spent every moment I could in the mountains. I have always loved the feel of rock, the rough texture of a mountain’s hide under my hands.

Last summer, for a story, I attended Exum’s two-day climbing school and ascended the 13,770-foot-high Grand Teton. Climbing provided a new challenge, but more than anything it offered a new relationship between me and the mountains. I loved the puzzle of hand and foot placement and the need to trust the rock and oneself.

This summer I was ready to take off the blinders that locked my eyes on the Tetons. I wanted to explore the Wind River Mountains. I wanted to climb more.

A friend mentioned Joe Kelsey, a veteran climber who has made the Wind River Mountains his home, his life. For many, the Winds and Joe Kelsey are synonymous; he wrote the definitive guidebook on this 100-mile-long Wyoming alpine wilderness that holds the highest peak in the Equality State.

I was, of course, impressed by Joe’s climbing resume. But what interested me most was his passion for this particular range. I wanted to experience that place with one of the people who loved and knew it best. I convinced Joe to let me do a story and to take me to where he first fell in love with the Winds: the Cirque of the Towers.

From the start at the Big Sandy trailhead, I began to understand his attraction to these hills. The terrain was  familiar, yet so strikingly different from any place I had been that I couldn’t help but stop often to gawk.

Eight miles of hiking later, we were there. The Cirque of the Towers seemed ripped straight out of a fantasy novel, its creeks, waterfalls, and green tundra protected by towers of granite.

It wasn’t until dusk, when News&Guide photographer Brad Boner and I were sitting on a boulder looking out across at 11,884-foot Pingora Peak, named with the Shoshone Indian word for high, rocky, inaccessible pinnacle, that I felt nerves, the nerves I always feel. What if I couldn’t keep up? What if I couldn’t climb the 5.6 route? I never worried about my safety.

The first part of the climb is a scramble to the south shoulder. From there our route was to involve three rope lengths, or pitches, of real climbing. Just before reaching those, Joe asked me to rope up for an easy, but exposed, chimney. I didn’t think much of it as I tied the rope through my harness and put on my helmet.

Brad scurried up a different way to get pictures for the story. Joe climbed first. I followed slowly, becoming comfortable on the rock. I tested the boulder just above me. It felt solid and offered a great lip for a hand hold. I pulled and stepped.

Then it happened – at warp speed, yet in slow motion.

The boulder came loose, clipped me in the face, knocking me off. I am not sure when, but at some point the rock and I collided, breaking my arm.

I never thought I’d be a screamer.

When I imagined myself in great pain, I pictured a grit-your-teeth-and-take-it person. When on a terrifying roller coaster, I go silent. The one car accident I was in, all was quiet as we spun on ice and hit a telephone pole. Pain I can usually swallow.

I never knew ...

I screamed. I am not sure how far I fell, but it was a short distance, a matter of a few feet. Joe had me on belay with the rope. I screamed as I fell, the sound of panic escaping my throat, carrying over the clatter of falling rock. I felt the rope at my waist pull tight. My helmet smacked the rock as I landed on my back, head pointing down the mountain. For a second I couldn’t feel my arm.

I screamed another bar of terror. When the searing pain spread through my arm, I screamed the sound of agony.

Brad climbed down a different way to me

I looked up at him through the rims of my empty sunglasses. The fall knocked the lenses out.

“I broke my arm,” I gasped.

I heaved and shook.

“Breathe,” he told me quietly. “It’s OK. You’re OK.

“You did break your arm.”

I craned to look.

“Don’t look.”

He touched it gently.

I screamed.

He helped lift my head to take the coils of our second rope off my neck. I yelped in pain and began to cry.

He had to get the pack off my back. Gently, he slid it off my right shoulder. When he touched my left arm, I howled.

“I have to move you,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s going to hurt.”

“Please don’t touch me,” I whimpered.

“I’m going to do it fast.”

The pain shot through me like electricity as he swung my arm around my head. My vision went red. He moved me to a more secure ledge.

I refused to move farther. I shook, was nauseated.

“I’m going into shock,” I told him.

“I know. Keep talking to me.”

To secure me, Brad clipped my harness to cam anchors he placed in cracks in the rock. He cut me from the rope Joe had held me on from above. Joe came down and built an additional anchor they clipped me to.

“Can you feel your fingers?” Joe asked.

I wiggled them.

“Can you walk?”

“I can’t move.”

“Can you try?”

I took a deep breath and tried to sit up. More screams, panting and sobs.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

In many ways a broken arm is not a serious injury. Yet places as remote as the Cirque of the Towers amplify the slightest impairment. There was no way I could get off that mountain on my own.

Brad took off. Knowing there was no cell service in the cirque, none of us brought phones.

Later I would learn that Brad met hikers with phones, and one mentioned making a call from nearby Jackass Pass on the Continental Divide. Brad ran to the top of the pass searching for a signal. Search and Rescue workers would tell me that when they got the call, they worried I’d been on the mountain for hours. They had never gotten a call only two hours after a fall.

Joe sat by my side, distracted me with stories from his early climbing days and humored me with answers to the questions I peppered him with, trying to think of anything, but what had just happened.

Guilt washed over me. What had I done wrong? What could I have done differently?

Reporter becomes the story

Writing about rescues for the paper,  I often said – only partially joking – that my biggest fear was being the subject of such a story. I have seen how easy it is to question people’s decisions.  Why were they there? Why did they do what they did? It is easier to convince ourselves it won’t happen to us if we can find something the injured or lost did that we are sure we would never do.

Shortly another climber, Heather, who Brad met at camp, arrived with water and supplies, including my faithful rust-colored sleeping bag – my new security blanket.

From under my bag, I stared at the granite walls. If I had to be stuck somewhere, at least I had an incredible view. I worked hard to keep conversation light; we talked about books and our families. I didn’t want to make the situation worse with panic. But every few hours I cried. My legs cramped, but if I tried to stretch them, my arm moved, the pain crippling me. The constant ache of my arm wore on me.

Sometimes I cried because I was overwhelmed by my luck. The rope, Joe and my helmet saved my life. The boulder bounced down hundreds of feet after breaking the bone between my left shoulder and elbow. Brad had been so calm and adept at stabilizing me before running for help.

 I cried because Heather, a stranger, was so kind to stay with me.

I also cried, though, because I was scared. I worried the face of the mountain was too sheer for a helicopter to reach me. How would I ever get off the peak?

When we heard the distant sound of chopper blades cutting the air, I shook. I cried.

Someone had come.

They arrived an hour later, in fluorescent yellow shirts.

Gates Richards reached me first. After checking my injuries he splinted my arm using padded aluminum and towels. More screaming, but afterward my arm felt better. But not so great that fear didn’t choke me when Gates said I was going to climb down Pingora.

Ahead, rescuers scouted the easiest route and moved loose rocks. I held Gates’ hand and walked. In some places, several people held my harness, stabilizing me as I maneuvered around boulders and down ramps. In steep sections they lowered me by rope.

Gates made me laugh whenever the jostling of my throbbing arm ceased enough to allow it. He reminded me to breathe – in through the nose, out the mouth.

The idea of being lowered on a rope, leaning out and walking backward down steep faces, terrified me. I no longer trusted my feet, or the mountain. Gates asked me to keep it together, just to the helicopter. There, he promised, I could cry all I needed.

For now, we had to keep moving. I fell before 10 a.m., but we were already losing daylight.

Rescuers lowered Gates and me side by side down a final steep section. When I landed on the grass at the bottom of Pingora, fear, gratitude and pain collided. I was off the mountain. I wanted to collapse and sob, but I had to keep it together a little longer, as I’d promised. We navigated one more boulder field to the waiting helicopter. On it, dehydrated, exhausted and emotionally drained, I curbed my tears one last time to look out over the mountains as we flew to Lander. The area’s beauty and isolation have never been so apparent.

Questions in the aftermath

As we left the Wind River range behind, the tears I held fell freely, racking my whole body.

Whenever we go into the woods, or off to climb a mountain we know and we acknowledge the risks. For some, risk is part of the draw to the outdoors. Others might not seek the adrenaline or need to court danger. For them the solitude of a rugged landscape is enough.

I have thought a lot about myself as I have justified what happened that day. My friends in cities think the risks of climbing and hiking are obvious and can’t understand why this was one I ever took. Others question my experience, why I grabbed where I did and if I truly needed rescue.

The greatest battle I wage is with myself. I go over the fall daily, wondering what I could have done differently. Most times I conclude nothing. We were cautious, and that saved my life. I have to ask myself if this love affair I have with the sense of freedom, challenge and accomplishment the mountains afford me is worth the risk.

The risks are always there, even if we do everything right. We cannot always control when and how a rock will move. I have always accepted these risks. Every time I take to a trail, I have made a contract between myself and the mountains. I pledge to do my best, be my safest. They promise to offer me the adventure I am seeking, but can’t guarantee my safety.

It has been hard, even for only a week and a half, to be laid up. I had big plans this summer, a tick list of peaks to conquer and areas to explore.

Everything has halted. Nothing seems quite so important, so urgent. Some ask if I’ll climb again.

I think I will. I think next summer I’ll return to Pingora. I think I’ll climb that chimney – now minus a chokestone. I think I’ll summit. But even if I don’t, I think that might be OK, too.