The Mountain Between Us

Ben walks for an hour, covering what he estimates is a mile. He stops to rest, and Ashley asks him about his recorder. She asks whether Ben talks about her to Rachel. He insists that he only talks about her as her doctor and then plays her his last recording for her to listen to.

Ashley asks Ben about the voicemail she heard in the plane. He admits that he and Rachel are separated because of a mistake that he made. She pressures him for more information, but he refuses to answer. Ashley then takes the recorder and records her own message. She tells Rachel that Ben is a good doctor and has many “wonderful qualities” but struggles to talk about his emotions. She insists that she’ll continue to help him with that and then jokes about how he may be a lost cause. She gives the recorder back to Ben and tells him that he can delete the message, but he says he wants Rachel to hear her voice.

Ashley continues to ask Ben questions. He tells her that he has two children, four-year-old twins named Michael and Hannah. Rachel lives near him, but he rarely sees his children. Ashley again asks why Ben isn’t with her, but he refuses to answer.

Ashley then asks why Ben records his messages if he won’t see Rachel and they aren’t together. By this point, Ben is frustrated, cold, and exhausted from the walk. Annoyed, he tells Ashley that he has to have hope. As a doctor, it’s his most important quality since trying is pointless if one has no hope for success.

Ben then continues walking. They make it a couple more miles, but then snow comes out of nowhere. He realizes that they’ll die in the brewing storm if they don’t make it to shelter. Disheartened, he turns around and goes back to the crash site.

Four hours later, Ben helps Ashley into her sleeping bag. She falls asleep. Ben realizes that he’s still in his wet, cold clothes. The sleeping bag does little to warm him, and he thinks of how a mistake like this could be deadly.

Ben sleeps well into the next day. He wakes to find Ashley staring at him. She needs to go to the bathroom but can’t without his help. Afterward, she asks what his plan for the day is, and he tells her that he wants to try to move again. Then, Ashley asks what time it is. Ben checks his watch and realizes that he broke it. He isn’t sure what day it is either but guesses that they’ve been in the wilderness for 12 days.

Ben uses the seatbelt from the pilot’s seat to make a harness so that pulling Ashley is easier. However, because of the fresh snow, their pace is much slower than the day before. As they go, Ashley grows frustrated. She questions Ben about why he insists on moving and points out that he’s clearly exhausted from the effort. He patiently replies that they have no choice. He isn’t sure if they’ll ever be rescued, but all he can do is take things one step at a time. He’s annoyed at her anger but realizes that she must be frustrated after all these days of relying on him for everything.

When night falls, they stop under a tree to camp. Ben realizes that they’re running low on fuel for the Jetboil, so he makes a bow out of sticks and Grover’s shoestrings that he took before burying him. He uses this to start a fire. Ashley apologizes for being angry that morning. However, Ben insists that he understands her frustration. They both fall asleep under the tree.

The next day, Ben desperately looks at their surroundings. He sees nothing that looks man-made. He sees mountains in the distance and plans to find a way between them. He checks the compass around his neck and realizes that it’s the most valuable item they have.

When Ashley wakes up, she immediately starts asking Ben questions about his marriage. She asks him how he knew he wanted to marry Rachel. He tells her that he wanted to spend every second with her and do everything in life alongside her. When Ashley tries to ask about their separation, Ben changes the subject. He makes her try to put weight on her bad leg.

As she stands, she puts her shoulders on Ben for support. She comments on how it looks like they’re dancing, and Ben tells her that he doesn’t dance well. As he sets her down, she insists that he dance for her. He dances, poorly, and Ashley laughs. He realizes how good it feels to hear her laugh.

Throughout the day, Ben walks about two and a half more miles. He realizes that his clothes are soaked through with sweat and that his feet are wet. He stops and sets up camp, barely conscious enough to start a fire. He passes out immediately.

Several hours later, he jerks awake from the strength of the fire. He realizes that Ashley is tending it—and has been throughout the night. He checks her leg, and for the first time, the swelling is going down and the discoloration is going away. He takes the stitches out of her head.

Ashley asks him what the plan is. He tells her that he wants to make it another mile or so. If he remembers the GPS correctly, there’s a drop-off at that point, hopefully indicating a fresh water source. He plans to camp there for a few days and find food.

As Ben and Ashley start out again, the snow immediately begins to fall. They make it about a mile when Ben guesses that they’re in a valley. He builds a shelter using tree limbs and uses his bow to start a fire. For the first time, he feels as though they’re in a comfortable place.

Ben goes out and surveys the area. He spots something strange up in the trees—a horizontal line in the air. He returns to their shelter and tells Ashley, insisting that she needs to look at it too to see if it’s worth investigating. He estimates that it would take them a few days out of their way to look at it.

Based on his drawing from the GPS, Ben estimates that they’re still about 20 miles from the man-made trail he thought he saw. Their elevation is decreasing, which helps their breathing, but he’s getting nervous about food.

In the middle of the night, Ben hears an animal outside. Ashley wakes up too. They sit in tense silence until Ben realizes that it’s the sound of antlers. The animal runs away. Ashley asks Ben to sleep near her.

Later, Ben wakes up to Ashley’s hair in his face. He breathes in her scent. She places her forehead against his in her sleep. Ben lays there for a long time, inhaling her “aroma,” before he falls asleep feeling “guilty and filled with longing” (187).

The next day, Ben and Ashley go to the edge of the valley. He shows her the thing in the distance that he spotted in the trees, about eight miles away. They wait for the sun to come up to see it better. Ashley comments on how “beautiful” the scene is—or would be, if they weren’t in such a desperate situation. When the sun hits the thing in the trees, it gives off a strange reflection. For Ben, it confirms that it’s likely something man-made.

Ben shows Ashley the map and explains how the object takes them far off their path. She suggests that he go alone and that she stay behind and wait. He agrees that he would get there much faster but refuses to do it. He’s adamant that they go together, even as she argues that one of them should survive if they both can’t.

As they return to their shelter, Ashley comments on how she and Vince wouldn’t have made it this far. Ben asks her if she and Vince are compatible, and she admits that they’re quite different. He asks why she’s marrying him, and she says that Vince makes her happy. She implies that part of her is settling because she fears that she may never find anyone else. She adds that the “good” men like Ben are all taken. He assures her that she’ll find someone and shouldn’t settle.

The next day, Ben and Ashley travel about two miles before midday. When Ben stops to rest, he inadvertently steps into a pile of snow that gives way to a creek. He falls up to his waist in water. As he flails, he knocks over the sled, sending Ashley to the ground. The wet snow and water act as quicksand, pulling Ben deeper as he tries to get out. Using the sled as leverage, he manages to get out after several tries.

He checks over Ashley, and she’s okay despite her pain. He doesn’t think that he rebroke her leg, but it’s quickly swelling. He then checks his snowshoes, which nearly broke in the fall. The sled has a large hole in it.

Ben debates what to do. He’s soaking wet, and there’s nowhere to build a fire. Ashley is on the verge of shock. He decides that he must continue moving. He uses the snowshoes to repair the sled as best he can, though he now must hold part of it in the air to walk.

Ben walks for as long as he can, for the rest of the day and through the night. He remembers only pieces of it, like crawling in the snow and resisting the urge to pass out. Eventually, he stops when he falls over under an evergreen. He realizes that he “did not expect to wake up” (200).

When Ben wakes up, Ashley is looking at him. She gives him food. It confuses him because they ate the last of their food the day before. He asks her where she got it and then realizes that she didn’t eat hers. She insists that he eat it, but he angrily tells her that he won’t let her die. She demands to know why, and he tells her that he won’t “live the rest of [his] life staring at [her] face every time [he] close[s] [his] eyes” (202). She curls up on the ground and cries.

Ben goes out and checks their surroundings. It’s extremely painful on his blistered feet, and he’s exhausted. However, he’s hopeful when he sees that they’re much further into the valley than he thought.

Ben gathers up their belongings and puts Ashley on the sled. He manages to pull her for a few hours and then collapses into the snow. He spins Ashley around so that she can see, and she begins to cry.

Ben tells Rachel that he remembers the day she told him she was pregnant. It was 4:17 pm, and she came to the hospital and asked for him. He found her in his office, looking at paint samples. She asked Ben’s opinion on each one until he finally asked what she was decorating. She told him that they needed a nursery.

Ben and Ashley are looking at several buildings around a lake. They go into the first one, a large A-frame building with two floors. It has a large fireplace with stacks of wood, as well as a kitchen. There are dozens of bunkbeds upstairs. Ben guesses that the area is some kind of camp.

He starts a fire and then finds a large can of vegetable soup. It’s the only food, but he’s optimistic that the other buildings will have more. He then gets one of the mattresses from upstairs, and he and Ashley eat and lie by the fire.

Ashley asks Ben to dance. She struggles to stand, so Ben puts his arms around her waist. She puts her head on his shoulders and leans against him, humming as she sways.

Later, when Ashley is asleep, Ben lays wide awake. He realizes that the entire time he danced with Ashley, he didn’t think about his wife. He goes out into the snow, where he throws up and sits for a long time before taking out his recorder.

Ben recalls the middle of Rachel’s pregnancy. He came home from work one day and found her in the shower. He watched her, thinking about how she was the “most beautiful thing [he’d] ever seen” (218).

Ben checks the other buildings. He discovers that five are dormitories, one is bathrooms, and the other is a cabin for some kind of camp leader. He finds several helpful things, including a recliner, blankets, a pillow, and soap, and takes them back to the cabin they’re staying in. He also finds a map of the entire High Uintas Wilderness area with a sticker marking their location. It says that they’re in Ashley National Forest.

Back at their cabin, Ben takes a bath in the kitchen sink, which is large enough for him to sit in. When Ashley wakes up, he helps her into the sink to bathe as well. When he leaves her, he tells her the name of the forest and is pleased when she laughs.

Ben thinks of the day he and Rachel found out that they were having twins. They went to the doctor and asked her to write down the gender of the baby on a card so that they could open it at dinner. She laughed and then complied, assuring them that everything looked good with the pregnancy.

At dinner, Rachel opened the note. She cried, telling Ben that it was twins. They bought champagne for the entire restaurant. Ben notes that this was one of the last happy moments of their marriage.