Jane and the Bread Crumbs- OctoberFest

A fun little round and round. Background. I asked for partners at the start of my April trip. Someone to do a canyon with on a Thursday afternoon, 5 PMish, after my 8 hour drive. Jane answers the ad. Her third canyon of the day, we do a Boss Hog. She joins my camp at Sandthrax as my partners for the trip, come straggling in. Jane, Roy and the rest of us hit it off. After some refreshments, we invite her to join us for a day out on Lake Powell. We are starting a 13 day trip out on the pool and are setting camp near Bullfrog, so doing a canyon and dropping her off at the dock would be easy. She considers. She declines. I drop the known canyon I was considering doing with her and go to one that looks easy on the map. Eventually we name it Psycho Damage and we bivy hanging from flakes in a flooding canyon, etc., etc. I promise Jane, we would not have been there, if she was with us. Does she believe that? Don't know.

Fast forward to Day 1 of the OctoberFest. I am looking to fit some canyon, or something, in off the drive, to Escalante this time. Then Jud and Murray call. They are going to Arches (2 weeks before we would once again meet there) and want ideas. I got one, I'll meet you guys at 7 AM for an Elephant Butte and I will be on my way in 3 hours, a good climb under the belt. "But Ram, we are a group of 5 adults and 12 kids from a Twin Falls scouting-church group." Ummm, now I feel needed more than ever.

This small army is not only on time, but early. I set the ground rules. We play Matt Moore's game. No footprints and if any, in washes only. Off we go and it is a great bunch of youngsters. Up we go, summit, sign the register and down to the last rap. Off I go and adios. Apparently Jane and her daughter arrive at the parking lot and see the huge group, just back from the climb. They ask some questions and off to the peak they head. They report that the boys did a great job of leaving no evidence of there passing....almost. Seems an offender, half way through the route, left a trail of seed casings. Like the preverbal bread crumbs, the gals picked them up and followed the convoluted path to the summit. Once on the summit, she looks through the register to see my name in the midst of the large group. She Hadn't seen me in the parking lot and was confused. She wrote me note in the book, for the next time I went to the Butte. Fast forward 11 days and I am on the Butte, running from flooding canyons. I note Jane's message and made a mental note to e-mail her later. 3 days later, we roll into Sandthrax and the impromptu rendezvous and Jane comes over to the car. I stun her by telling her I was part of that group and I had gotten her message. How, she asked. Later I explain that I had seen her message just a few days before. She tells me her tale of bread crumbs and right now they are closing in on the Twin Falls seed dropper. An arrest is expected soon. Ram