Article from the Idaho Press Tribune.

What happpened to Mike in August 1998 is the stuff of backcountry legend. Bent on solitude and spiritual rejuvenation, Mike and his dog, a Labrador-mix named Andy, headed into the Wind River Mountains from Elkhart Park on a 9-day adventure, planning to meet up later with family and friends.While crossing a boulder field near an unnamed lake below the Brown Cliffs at 11,400 feet in Wyoming’s Fitzpatrick Wilderness, Mike’s legs became trapped between two Mini Cooper-sized boulders. His journal at the time (found in a zip-top plastic bag) recounts the predicament: “About two hours ago a large rock rolled upon me and trapped my legs especially my right one. I don’t know what I face. I was very careful, be sure of that, but I hurt. I don’t think it is broken, but there’s not much blood flow.”Mike’s feet had slipped backward off a shifting boulder, and then fell between another boulder shifting forward. When the dust settled, both Mike’s legs were wedged together tight, right foot over left, suspended in mid-air in a granite vice.There might be some who would blame Mike for hiking solo, for seeking peace in utter solitude, for forgetting to sign his name at the trailhead registry, for altering his pre-determined route, which he had given to his wife Diane. But he had made decisions, as we all do, every day of our lives.In a June 2002 Backpacker magazine article by Jeff Rennicke, Diane explained her understanding of the potential hazard: “We knew an extended solo hike could be dangerous, but I’ve always believed that to live fully sometimes involves risk,” she said. “Our Christian faith points us towards a life of courage.”Mike, then pastor of Boone Memorial Presbyterian Church in Caldwell, had come to the Winds seeking spiritual fulfillment, and at the zenith of a three-month sabbatical, found himself fighting for his life. “I am concerned,” Mike said in his scribbled notations, “about first losing my legs, second running out of snow to melt for water, and fuel, third hypothermia. My biggest concern is water. I have only two quarts left. The irony is that the lake is only 30 feet away ... I am also saving my urine. I wonder how it will taste with Crystal Light?”In search of solutions“I know one of the reasons he didn’t write even more in the journal,” Turner’s friend, Mark Smith, vice president for academic affairs at The College of Idaho, said. “He was busy trying to think of ways to get himself free, or at least survive until someone found him. That’s the kind of person he was.”Mike undoubtedly spent countless hours trying to free himself from the granite trap. The mangled camera, tripod, and tent poles found by rescuers tell a story themselves, a saga of frustration, creativity, and persistence. But the rocks were too big, and the necessary tools too few. “I had dreamed of a special time alone with God, facing the elements, the passes, thinking about my life, the direction of the church, about my family. Indeed this has been all of those things only magnified 100 times” he wrote.When Mike didn’t arrive at Big Sandy trailhead on Aug. 8, family and friends became concerned. The next day he still didn’t show, and they all knew something was wrong. Calls were made, and a huge search-and-rescue operation ensued, which lasted for a couple weeks but was eventually called off Aug. 23.On Aug. 31, more than a month after Mike had set out on his pilgrimage to the Wind Rivers, Jeff Stewart, a solo hiker himself, from San Diego, happened upon his body in the boulder field below the Brown Cliffs. He had seen the posters at the trailhead for the missing hiker. Jeff found a wallet among Mike’s belongings and proceeded, after a few days’ hike, to the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office.

Week of survival

Perhaps most compelling is how Mike survived more than a week after becoming trapped in a standing position, exposed to the elements of Wyoming’s high country. During the day, temperatures in the area reached nearly 100 degrees, and at night the temperatures dipped to the 30s. Through it all, his dog, Andy, stayed nearby, often perched on a rocky ledge above him. Andy was later found alive by backpackers on Aug. 28, 17 miles east of Elkhart Park.“This tragedy could have happened to any hiker,” Jeff Rennicke said. “But the Mike Turner story is compelling because it was the grace and humanness in which he dealt with the predicament that is so remarkable.”There are no laws against hiking alone in the backcountry. “If we put such regulations in place,” Randy Welsh of the U.S. Forest Service said, “it could limit the majority of people wanting to explore and enjoy wilderness on their own terms.”The Turners and a few friends returned to the Wind Rivers a year to the day after the accident with Mike’s ashes, and they were “given to the winds over Island Lake.”

In the years following the tragedy, the Turner family slowly came to grips with their new reality. After the kids graduated from high school Diane moved to Spokane in 2003 to pursue a master’s degree in Social Work at Eastern Washington University. She is a psychiatric social worker now and loves “being a witness to other people’s stories, to hold out hope with and for them.”“I’ve become a grandmother to two amazing granddaughters, and that is a true joy,” Diane said. “And in the last year I have met and fallen in love again. We became engaged on July 4.”Andy, originally named after Andrew’s Hallmark in Boise, where Diane once worked, is graying a little on the chin. Though 11 years old, “he is still quite frisky ... We like to call him Andy the Wonder Dog. And, he is a great companion still,” Diane said.

A decade passesMuch has happened in 10 years to the three Turner children. The kids recall that fateful summer as a time of confusion and stress, but also a time of much love and camaraderie with family, friends and fellow parishioners.

Jill, Mike and Diane’s oldest, often thinks about her father whenever she is praying with her daughter. “My dad would come into my room and pray each night,” she said. Jill remembers him for other reasons as well. ”He used to touch his upper lip with his tongue when he was really concentrating on something, and my husband always asks me if touching my lip with my tongue gives me a special boost of mental power.” Mike was a focused listener and a person always knew he was totally engaged in their conversation, she said.

“When I was little,” Ben, their second oldest said, “I would say I didn’t feel good to avoid going on trips. I didn’t really appreciate the outdoors until after he died and I was able to go camping and backpacking with friends.”

Katie, the youngest, 12 at the time of her father’s passing, learned a lot from him about caring for other people, “and loving them where they are without trying to fix them.”

Jill and Katie graduated from Presbyterian-affiliated Whitworth College in Spokane, have married, and are now pursuing master’s degrees in education. Jill, with two children, lives in Colfax, Wash., and works part time at a library, and Katie lives in Spokane. Ben is a senior at Boise State majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. When he graduates, he is seriously contemplating joining the U.S. Forest Service.

In honor of the Turner family, Boone Memorial named its daycare The Turner Center for Family Development. At Camp Sawtooth, a Presbyterian camp 8 miles north of Ketchum, a cabin has been named in their honor as well — Turner’s Rest.

Really great article from the Idaho Statesman.

BY KRISTIN RODINE - krodine@idahostatesman.com
Edition Date: 09/06/08
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Ten years ago this week, a Caldwell pastor was found dead, his legs wedged between two massive boulders in Wyoming's Wind River Range.
It was a freak accident followed by an ordeal of Biblical proportions, endured by a man who sought out wild, high places to feel close to God.
But it's not the manner of Mike Turner's death that most resonates today.
It's the way he lived and the way he faced that death, trapped alive for about nine days and pouring his thoughts, fears and faith into a journal that brought peace to his family and friends.
Turner's saga drew national attention in 1998, but its impact is undimmed a decade later on those who lived it - including his widow, who plans to remarry next month, and the Wyoming man who led the search.
"It was a very intense search. It changed a lot of people," said Dan Holgate, former search commander for Tip Top Search and Rescue in Sublette County, Wyo.
Turner, the 6-foot-6 pastor of Boone Memorial Presbyterian Church, strode into the Wyoming wilderness on July 30, 1998, with his black Lab mix, Andy. Capping the end of a three-month sabbatical, he planned a 10-day, 60-mile solo hike across the Continental Divide, ending with a family camping trip.
He dubbed his itinerary "Wander in Wonder."
Turner, 48, never emerged from the vast Fitzpatrick Wilderness, and weeks of exhaustive searching turned up nothing. On Sept. 3 his family learned another lone hiker had discovered his body, still trapped by granite, near the shore of an unnamed mountain lake.
The next day they received his journal and an understanding of his experience.
"I had dreamed of a special time alone with God, facing the elements, the passes, thinking about my life, the direction of the church, about my family," Turner wrote. "Indeed, this has been all of those things only magnified 100 times. Thoughts about life, God, people, risk, filling my time. ... God will make a way either earthly or heavenly. My only dread is not seeing my family and being present with them in body."
"So much of the story is beautiful," said College of Idaho Academic Vice President Mark Smith, a close friend who was part of the planned camping trip that was to cap Turner's adventure. "Its beauty is terrible at the same time."
The same could be said of the wild country where Turner sought contemplation and communion.
'I AM THINKING OF YOU'
An avid backpacker, Turner gravitated to "the very highest places, where you can see above the trees," his wife, Diane, said.
Their three children hit the trails as soon as they were able, savoring their time in the backcountry with Dad, said eldest daughter Jill Cocking, now 28.
When Turner's friends talk about him, they use a word not often associated with pastors: "playfulness."
Matt Newton, president of Beniton Construction, describes him as "completely easy to be around," with a knack for making the simplest occasion fun.
Although a pastor, Turner never seemed preachy, Newton said, noting that he joined 500-member Boone Memorial after he met its minister at a Christian retreat.
"He was nonjudgmental, but he made you want to do better and be better."
Mike and Diane Turner met in 1976, when she was on Thanksgiving break from college. He was a new associate pastor in Kansas City, Mo., and planned to take some of the congregation's teenagers on a Christmastime ski trip to Colorado. Diane signed on as an adviser.
Their connection was quick and lasting.
"I came home and told my roommate we'd be married in a year," Diane Turner said. "It was 13 months, so I was pretty close."
On July 29, 1998, the couple's last night together, they attended a James Taylor concert in Nampa with Matt and Lisa Newton. The next morning, before Mike Turner left, he gave Diane a bouquet of flowers.
"It was totally surprising that he did that," she said. "I still have the card."
It reads: "Thank you for letting me live this adventure. Know wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I am thinking of you."
'A PAIR OF GRANITE SHACKLES'
Turner and his dog started their adventure on July 30, hiking to Eklund Lake in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. In his journal, he described a scene "so quiet, so perfect."
"Is it all just as you want it, God? Or, like skeptics say... is it just random events and we are nothing before the beneficence and destructiveness of nature? You send the winds and rain and yet even amidst the deep savagery and destruction of life, I sense your hand. In threatening my comfort, even my life, you challenge me to cope. In beauty and peace, you refresh me."
On Aug. 2, the fourth day of his journey, Turner was traversing a field of boulders along a mountain lake, more than 11,000 feet high and 16 miles from the nearest trailhead.
When a boulder he stepped on teetered, he jumped to the next one.
But he slid off, and the 800-pound rock he had just leapt from rumbled toward him, catching him between boulders.
"Somehow, miraculously, the rock had barely touched Mike," Smith wrote in an article, not yet published, that retraces his friend's journey. "But when he tried to extricate himself, his legs wouldn't move. They weren't broken, barely even injured, but his feet were suspended in air. He couldn't push them down or pull them up. Sideways motion was equally impossible beyond an inch or so. The two boulders had come together in the perfect configuration to form a pair of granite shackles."
'WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS ORDEAL?'
Through Turner's journal and physical evidence at the scene, it is clear he fought mightily to free himself and to stay alive. He used his tripod and anything he could lay his hands on to try to force himself free. His sleeping bag and clothing provided some insulation against the cold granite.
He melted, then drank, the snow he could reach, and used his tent's rain fly to collect dew and rainfall. He tied a water bottle to a rope and tried repeatedly to toss it to the nearby lake. But the bottle, too, got caught between rocks.
"I am concerned about first, losing my legs, second running out of snow to melt for water, and fuel," Turner wrote. "Third, hypothermia. My biggest concern is water. I have only 2 quarts left. The irony is that the lake is only 30 feet away. ... I am also saving my urine. I wonder how it will taste with Crystal Light?"
Turner's journal, carefully protected in a zip-top plastic bag, slipped beyond his reach after about five days on the rocks. Desperate to maintain communication with his family, he began writing on the blank pages at the beginning and end of his Bible. When those filled, he wrote in the margins of the instruction sheet for his camp stove.
As his suffering continued, Turner's mood turned darker, despairing. Smith describes it as "faith on the edge."
Turner wrote:
"God is with me, but I am angry with him. What is the purpose of this ordeal? Will I ever know, or continue to be puzzled, angered, and feel quite abandoned by the one I serve?"
More than a week passed, with daytime temperatures in the 90s and nights dipping into the 30s. Turner's handwriting weakened; a mood of acceptance took over.
"Fill me with peace, Lord," he wrote. "May the conditions not deny my love for you."
'IT REALLY STAYED WITH ME'
No one knows for sure how long Turner survived, wedged between those rocks. The Fremont County coroner reported that he died of hypothermia and dehydration on or around Aug. 11, 1998.
Every year, the Smith and Turner families celebrated Mark Smith's birthday with a joint backpacking trip. But on Aug. 8, 1998, Mike Turner didn't arrive for their planned rendezvous at Big Sandy Trailhead. And he didn't show up at their destination, Dad's Lake. Instead of celebration, the families faced waiting, worry and a fruitless search.
Some 70 friends and parishioners from the Treasure Valley and beyond joined dozens of professionals to look for Turner. They searched on horseback, by foot, by helicopter. They put up posters and scanned trailhead logs to identify people who might have seen him.
The scale of the search was daunting - hundreds of square miles spanning two counties and both sides of the Continental Divide. And Turner had diverted from his planned itinerary, a fact he noted with regret in his journal.
"I feel so foolish taking this longer pass," he wrote on Aug. 5. "So lonely, more than I imagined Who would have guessed that four days would have gone by and no one has come this way?"
Search and rescue workers often deal with tragedy and loss, and Holgate said he generally tried not to get involved with the families of the missing. But, he said, "I could not help but become involved with the Turner family.
"Their strength and their perseverance just the love that they showed for Mike, the common cause that they shared. ... It really stayed with me."
'WE ALL CRIED. WE ALL LAUGHED'
The search was called off after about two weeks, with the understanding that it would resume if there was a break in the case.
That break came five days later, on Aug. 28. Andy the dog walked out of the wilderness, skinny, sore, and accompanied by two hikers.
Family and friends mobilized to resume their search, hoping Turner's trusty dog would lead them to him.
Andy led them in the right direction, Diane Turner said. Searchers were about a mile from where Turner was trapped when a radioed message turned them back: A hiker, who had found Turner's body Aug. 31, made it out of the mountains and into the Sublette County Sheriff's Office, carrying Turner's wallet.
A year later, Diane Turner carried her husband's ashes on her back, following his path into the Wind River Range for a memorial service with family and friends.
They trekked two days to Island Lake, where Mike Turner had described "amazing beauty that fills my soul."
"It was hard. It was good. It was really amazing," Diane Turner recalls. "We had a service, and we scattered his ashes. We all cried. We all laughed."
'IT WAS A GIFT'
Mike Turner's journal comforted his family and friends. The depth of his suffering, and the belief and love that outlasted it, inspired many who never knew him.
"It was a gift," Diane Turner said.
Over the years, she has allowed excerpts of the journal to be printed in several publications, including this one. A Backpacker magazine article by Jeff Rennicke drew widespread attention and was included in the book "Adrenaline 2002: The Year's Best Stories of Adventure and Survival."
But parts of the journal are private, including personal messages Mike Turner wrote to his wife, their three children, and his mother.
"Not being able to say goodbye was hard," Diane Turner said. "But because he was able to, that made it a little easier."
Their daughter Jill said she re-reads the journal every six months or so, drawing inspiration from her father's faith: challenged and battered, but steadfast.
His last, barely legible entries echo Biblical accounts of hardship and devotion.
"I am ready to die, though missing my family. ... I will trust in God though he will slay me, yet will I trust in him."