The Mystery of the Missing Backpacks

We went climbing yesterday, and it wasn’t a great day to start out with. I was kind of tired and the place we were climbing requires you to belay down into it and climb back out. You could probably get out of there if you got stuck and couldn’t finish the climb, but it would likely require belaying off trees over cliffs, so it was all a bit vomit inducing.

We left our backpacks under a cement picket fence that was there to keep the cows from grazing to their deaths. Most of the pickets are down on the ground now because the cows have, er, come down to roost, if you know what I mean. Probably you don’t. The farmers have herded the cows down from the higher pastures and taken down most of the fences for winter, so they are lying on the grass. They are quite heavy and we put the backpacks under them because it was supposed to be windy later in the day.

We started the climb and it was hard. The grades aren’t hard, but it’s hard, and there are all these yellow patches of rock where things, like the rocks you’re supposed to use to climb higher with, have fallen off. It might have been easier before when there was more rock on the cliff. It might have been harder. In any case, just about every really good hold would come off in your hands, so after the vomit inducing belay into the void, we had a vomit inducing climb on crappy rock.

It is very, very well bolted, though, and that made it possible to finish. After a few attempts to free climb, I just gave up and started using the draws to get up and out. I was kind of fed up.

We arrive on top and there’s lots of wind and…no backpacks.

I really didn’t think they could have blown away, so the other options are 1) a Samaritan who thought we’d left the bags…. or 2) a thief. I went half way down both roads in my head, but the thief option made me very sad about the world. There was a wallet in one of the bags, so the person who took the bags could have just taken the money and left us the car key. Or, and here I’m getting sadder and more paranoid, they could go down to the main parking area and steal the car, too.

We walked back down, leaving the car at the parking area because we no longer had a key (it was still there), and went back to the house by train.

We were cooking dinner when we got a phone call from the police. It was option 1! But the poor, poor man. I’m trying to think of why he wouldn’t just leave the bags there, but thinking about it, you find two bags at the top of a cliff and no one around? The man said he’d waited for an hour up there, and went down to the parking with the bags and discovered that the key opened a Suzuki, and went to the police back in his village with the bags. He must have thought that we’d committed suicide.

He has a Romanian last name but said his nationality is French, and my partner will go pick up the car first, with an extra key, then go get the bags tonight. If we get everything back, it will just be a good story to tell, but it will be two stories. Ours, The Mystery of the Missing Backpacks, and his, The Time I Thought Two People had Jumped Off a Cliff.