The blizzard arrived early, battering the hikers’ tents and blowing snow inside that soaked their sleeping bags in the night. They were a group of three who’d met along the Pacific Crest Trail, 2,650 miles of unimaginable beauty, carved into the mountains of California, Oregon, and Washington.
They’d crossed wildflower-covered grasslands and ascended through stands of oak and pine, sometimes trudging through howling winds, ankle-deep in snow that took them by surprise; this was Southern California, after all, where the first 700 miles of the PCT is known as the desert section. Now, in the San Jacinto Mountains, above Palm Desert, they confronted yet another storm.
Over the eight days they had walked together, they often made a pact to set off before 8 a.m., and so they did on the morning of March 27 last year: Trevor Laher, a 22-year-old self-described computer nerd with cropped brown hair and a ready smile, from Fort Worth, Texas, and his two new hiking companions, Cody McMahon, a big, gregarious 26-year-old social worker from Australia, and Jannek Löffler, 23 and slight, an experienced snow hiker from Germany.
“The sun came out, the wind died almost completely, and it was perfect blue skies,” Cody recalls. “There was a very light snow on everything, maybe a quarter of an inch. It was quite a beautiful morning. But that also, I think, lulled us into a false sense of security.”
They climbed hard for four or five miles. Trevor, six foot three and 200 pounds, bounded uphill easily as they headed toward the small town of Idyllwild. There they would rest for a couple of days and pick up the ice axes and the microspikes for their shoes that they had considered too heavy, and unnecessary, to pack thus far.
“We were having a great time,” says Cody, “joking and carrying on about the night before, because the night was so terrible.”
At around 9:30 a.m., as they turned a corner onto Apache Peak, the trail disappeared under what, at this higher altitude, was two to three feet of snow. They checked their maps. If they crossed a small clearing and headed around another corner, they’d be fine. Jannek, about 10 steps in the lead, and the lightest, made it across the precipitous slope to a stand of trees. But as Trevor crossed, he slipped on ice hidden beneath the top layer of powder. He stopped and tried to stabilize his footing, then his feet went out from under him, and he fell onto the snowy trail. For the briefest time, he managed to stay in place. Then, suddenly, he began sliding feet first, gathering momentum until he hit a rock and began cartwheeling into an icy gorge.
“I tried to get to
