He had told her he was well, that the park was extraordinary, that the light in the late afternoon had turned the canyon walls the color of fire, and that he expected to complete [music] the loop the following day and drive south toward Jackson Hole on Thursday.
She told him to drink enough water. He promised he would. She told him she was proud of him.
He said, “I know, Mom. Get some sleep.” He hung up and walked back across the lobby with his hands in his pockets, nodding at the desk clerk, a college student named Ray Tilman, who was spending the summer working his way through the parks before starting at UCLA in the fall and disappeared up the stairs to his room.
At 6:47 in the morning on August 14th, Daniel Aldrich Voss shouldered his Kelty external frame backpack, approximately 23 pounds loaded, including 2 L of water, a lunch of peanut butter crackers and dried apricots, a first aid kit, a topographic map of the park’s northern sector, a compass, a rain jacket, his field notebook, and the Nikon F2 photo mic with its 50mm f1.4 four lens and four additional rolls of Kodakchrome 64 in a soft vinyl pouch and walked out of the Roosevelt Lodge parking area.
