I’m going to tell you a story

It’s going to involve a missing hiker

And the lengths people will go to get the people they love back

Oh and maybe a hint of time travel

Welcome to the Aurora Wasteland

Time Travel and missing people are notoriously linked in more than one Aurora Wasteland post, but not all instances are as dramatic as a tricked out Delorean. Some are as simple as a snap of the fingers.

Before we get too deep in the temporal weeds, let’s go back to the beginning. Way back to the year 1993, and let’s talk about a man named Danny. (His last name has been redacted as per Aurora Wasteland site rules.)

Danny was a hiking enthusiast. He and his friends loved to go hiking, they’d be in the mountains every week, picking a new trail. Exploring mother nature, and sneaking off into the trees with their girlfriends who loved to tag along for the ride. After a few years, those girlfriends turned to wives, but the woodland intimacy continued.

One of their favorite places in the world to hike was the Brightness Falls Park. Nestled inside the Canadian side of the rocky mountains, the Brightness Falls park is host to a vast mountain range, beautiful lakes, and breathtaking views. But for Danny and his crew, Brightness was their favorite place because of the wide variety of trail types. Mountains, forests, rivers, and pants-wettingly deep lakes.

Everything up until this part of Danny’s life had been normal. Friends, job, wife, love. Everything after was heartbreaking, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

On July 1, 1996, Canada Day, Danny and his group set out on a hike they’d done many times, Old Fort Point. One of Brightness Falls best hidden trails, it starts you off at the base of Mount Tekarra, and brings you up to an amazing panoramic view of the Brightness Falls town and lake.

The hike started off as normal. It’s a steep climb to the peak followed by a gentle decline around the back of the lookout. Overall it’s not a hard hike, but worth it, for all the places you can have some forest fun… the dictionary defines forest fun as rubbing your privates together in the vicinity of trees, not on the tree… don’t be gross… and ouch.

They had completed the hike up to the lookout and took in the view of the town. All was good. When they rounded the mountain well, things got strange. Halfway around the decline, it started to rain. The newspaper forecast had called for clear skies all day, and based on Danny’s police testimony, rain was an understatement. They were caught in a downpour of massive drops. They were very seasoned hikers, and had proper equipment, but the rain-drenched them down to the bone. It became hard to see, it became hard to hear, it became hard to do anything but walk. Even then the ground wasn’t able to keep up the rain and washed out paths forced them off the tail. By the time they reached the end of the trial and ran to their cars, they were just happy to be out of the rain. It was then that they noticed someone was missing. Danny’s wife, Emily. Yes, his wife was missing. He wasn’t sure how it happened. How could he lose track of her? To this day he doesn't know and still blames himself. The group he hiked with were close, they all walked and talked with everyone. Danny just assumed she was with someone else. But she wasn’t, and she was gone.

…I know what you’re thinking. Obviously, she was taken by the fabled blue ghost dick monster of Mount Tekarra. But you’d be wrong, Firstly, that’s Whistlers Mountain. Second, ghost dick monsters of any color tend to find homes in ravines, not mountains. Third, they are incredibly bright and vibrant in their dick colors. So even though the rain, their neons ghost cocks would stand out. That’s just basic monster ghost dick monster knowledge, come on man, keep up because shit is going to get weirder and weirder.

At this point Danny and friends did what you’d expect anyone to do, they went back to try to find her, obviously they didn’t otherwise this whole post wouldn’t exist. After that, they went to the police. They also didn’t find anything, the rain had washed every footprint on the mountain away. With no luck they filed a police report, which led to an investigation, that cleared Danny of any suspicion, and claimed Emily was likely to have wandered into a bear’s cave to take shelter from the rain, a cave that probably had a bear in it. You can fill the rest of the graphic story in with your imagination. But Danny didn’t buy it. He wasn’t ready to let go of her. So he didn’t. Which is when we leave 1996. For years Danny searched every inch of the mountain, searching for Emily but he found nothing.

So what, a lost hiker, eaten by a bear, during a rainstorm, that doesn’t sound that strange or weird, gross yes, weird no. Well, hold onto your panties because things are about to get mildly weirder.

Which brings us up to 2016, Danny’s story had made its way onto the Aurora Wasteland website, but the post had long been buried under other similar stories. Missing people under strange circumstances is more common than you know. But Danny wasn’t willing to give up, 23 years later technology had improved, and Danny made a video asking for help. He wanted a seasoned team of Aurora Wasteland explorers to help him retrace his steps.

Which is where me and my team came into the picture. Danny’s video was forwarded to me one day at work. It was interesting enough, just enough strange with a splash of heartstring tuggage to get me off my ass. My team and I geared up, and met Danny at the base of the hike. He introduced himself and walked us through his story. While we believed him, his passion was undeniable, we didn’t expect to see anything on the hike. Movies have led us to believe that the anniversary of events was somehow important, but from our experience, they rarely yield results. Anniversaries are for survivors, not victims. But we liked Danny, we liked his story, and wanted to help. So we hiked.

With Danny as our guide we did the Old Fort Point hike. He became emotional a few times, most notably where he last remembered seeing her. We all had special people in our lives that we couldn’t imagine just vanishing one day. Danny’s emotions rubbed off on a few of us.

After reaching the overlook, we started down the backside, the part that goes through the forest. That’s when it started to rain. Danny again became emotional. He reminisced how it wasn’t supposed to rain on the day of the hike 23 years ago, much like today. I’m not going to lie, around this point I had flickers of hope on our hike when Danny told us this. If there was ever going to be a resolution it would be now, it had to be right? Rain on the 23 year anniversary, but that was just my imagination and hopes messing with me. I had hoped that we’d run into a woman hiker that had separated from her group. We’d find out she has the same name as the missing hiker from before. Danny and her could have this grand reconnecting. But that didn’t happen. The rain only sprinkled, and lasted no more than a minute. The rest of the hike was done in disappointed silence. A slight disappointment in Danny’s walk.

Now that should be the end of the story. We should have left disappointed, with some kind of moral to the story like. You can’t expect what happens in the movies to happen in real life. Because stories and real-life play by different rules. Shit, that sounds a little too close to a moral.

Frustrated, we threw our gear in the trunks of our vehicles and climbed in for our long ride home. When someone noticed something. While out on the hike and even now in the car, we had no cell signal. No way for our phone to connect to the network. So what happened to our phones happened to us. All but one of our hiking crew had brought their cell phones with them. Only one jackass, he knows who he is, forgot their phone in the car. And that jackasses phone was exactly one minute behind ours.

It took us a few minutes to really figure out what happened. We somehow stepped forward in time by one minute. I know what you’re going to say. Bullshit, time travel isn’t possible, but is it? Humor me for a second, what if we did somehow travel forward in time? What would that mean for the missing hiker? It rained more during the original hike, did that mean anything? What if she somehow ended up further in time? More than a minute.

Our paths split with Danny from there. He left with a newfound hope that maybe one day she’ll return to him, and we left with stupid time traveling grins spread across our stupid faces.