An iPhone-X full of great memories visits a nasty gash and sinks into chill mode.

I should start with the iPod.

Being a creative person and a fan of music, I’ve been appreciative of iPods and iPhones since their beginning.

I first laid eyes on an iPod while traveling in 2003. A good friend pulled one out of his backpack at the Bangkok airport. What genius mastermind thought up such a technological and functional piece of art? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that this “MP3” device had the capability of storing so many songs/albums. White on the front, silver aluminum on the back, it was sized nicely to fit in your palm. Below a 1.5” square display screen, it had a little round pad on the front of the device. As you moved your thumb around the circular dial, it switched songs/albums with an addictive light-ticking sound. I was intrigued, to say the least. I had to have one. I know a lot of other people experienced similar sentiments.

In 2007, Apple unveiled the first iPhone, which had a low-resolution camera. A no-brainer, I had to have one. I’ve owned the iPhone 1, 4, 6, 7+, and most recently, an iPhone X, or, iPhone 10 if, like me, you still write in numbers versus Roman numerals. I think they’re up to iPhone 37 now, but I still like the 10 and my bank account agrees.

In 2017, while kayaking and attempting to impress a cute friend, I decided it was a good idea to sneak up on a turtle and jump in the water to catch it. I forgot the iPhone 6 was in the pocket of my shorts. I tried putting it in a bag of rice, along with every other recommended trick in the book to bring it back to life. No such luck. I caught the turtle, not the girl.

In 2019, on the way to the Rocky Mountains to do some snowboarding, I stopped in Chicago and Colorado to see friends. While in Chicago, I worked for a friend and part of my payment was an iPhone 10. A great phone for several reasons, mainly, it had a large storage capacity and the battery seemed never to die. Countless times it’s been dropped on the pavement and had water drops all over it. Takes a licking, and keeps on ticking.

This past February 2023, I was snowboarding at the top of Grand Targhee, Wyoming, and decided to take the same iPhone out for a few photos. It was a bitter cold day where you couldn’t keep your gloves off for long or your hands would go numb. After a few photos, I put the phone in what I thought was the chest pocket of my bib-snow pants and zipped it shut. I began my way down the cat-track-traverse, which was covered in 16” of freshly fallen super light powder. Not thirty seconds down the traverse, I felt something hit the top of the toe of my boot and looked down to see it kick forward. I remember the word “no” repeating over and over in my mind. While I assumed I had put the iPhone in the zippered pocket, it had gone behind my bibs, down through the inside, and eventually out the bottom right pant leg, where I kicked it into the deep, powdery-white abyss. Realizing what had happened almost instantly, I came to a quick stop, unbuckled out of my snowboard bindings, and began hiking back up the traverse to roughly where I thought I had lost it. Breathing cold air like that freezes your nose hairs or your lungs. You choose. Fortunately, the groomed layer underneath all the new snowfall was hard snow, so I could kick aside sections of light powder that lay on top and hopefully win the lottery by kicking my phone, this time on purpose. After spending close to twenty minutes kicking and moving snow around, I eventually connected with something solid. When I did, I could see a small black spot in the snow. A smile crossed my face. Ah-ha! Maybe not one in a million, but I felt lucky to find it back. Blowing and wiping the snow off, I cleaned and zipped it away. I vowed to never make the same mistake and hoped the phone’s water resistance erred more on the side of waterproof. It continued working fine.

On March 26th, another storm cycle coated Targhee Mountain with a deep layer of light white stuff. I was riding with a friend and decided to snowboard ahead to get a short video of him floating his way through all the cold, light, powder. After filming him, it was the same procedure - I returned the iPhone to the chest pocket of my bibs and continued down the steep run making fun turns and throwing light pow sprays aloft. Utter elation went to deep dismay pretty quickly. We had only ridden a little further when I heard the music shut down in my earbuds. This meant either the phone or headphones died, or worse, the earbuds’ bluetooth disconnected because they were too far away from the phone. I put my mitten to my chest to feel my phone. Gone. Not again, I thought to myself. I shouted to my buddy that I had lost the phone and began hiking ten minutes back up the traverse to see if it lay in the open. Highly unlikely, but still a chance. From the traverse, I attempted to hike back up through the bottomless deep snow toward the area we were riding and filming. Given the depth of the snow, there was no way I was going to hike up. With each step, my boots were sinking in over waist deep and I tired quickly. I’d have to head down to catch the lift up and snowboard back down to the general area where it was lost.

I realized I wasn’t going to be lucky this time, with or without the find-my-iPhone app. I made a mental note of the section of trees I was in and the run I had just come down, should I return and look for it another time. The snow wouldn’t melt for two to three months. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack and even if found, the chances it would work again after being submerged in freezing/thawing snow were slim to none. A curiosity and deeper interest in knowing how water-resistant the phone was captivated me. It also contained three years of photos that weren’t backed up. Brilliant, I know. Everyone, and I mean everyone I spoke with about it, didn’t think it would ever work again assuming I could even find it. This fueled my motivation to find and salvage it.

The following day, my friend Susan and I schemed a plan.

Injured and needing her phone for work, I stopped by her house and left a walkie-talkie radio before making my way up to Targhee. It might be the only day I’ve ever been bummed there was another 6” of fresh snow. Returning to the area where the iPhone was lost via lift and snowboard, I attempted to call Susan on the walkie-talkie. We weren’t even sure the walkie-talkie radio signal would work from Driggs to Targhee, roughly ten miles, but it was worth a shot.

“iPhone search and rescue, this is Dan. Do you copy, Susan?”

“Copy. I’m opening the find-my-iPhone app on my iPhone.”

She continued, “Your phone is showing it is still on and has thirty-percent battery life remaining.”

Incredible that it was still even on and functioning after a day in sixteen to twenty inches of snow and temps below fifteen degrees.

“I’m pressing the alert signal so you should hear a high-pitched noise on the lost phone.” Snowflakes lightly falling, I stood still for thirty seconds, turning my head in different directions attempting to pick up the sound. Nothing.

I made my way down the steep slope a little further and we repeated the process a few times.

Nothing.

Who was I kidding? This phone was deep in the white abyss.

I spoke with ski patrol thinking I could borrow their recco device to find it, but with deep snow and avalanche danger all over the mountain, they couldn’t lend out the device. Even with the device, they assured me I wouldn’t find it. They had tried using it to find other phones people had lost and didn’t have a great track record.

I checked in the lost and found at the base area of the mountain once every ten days or so, but my hopes were dashed with each visit. There were plenty of found phones, but mine remained lost. It would have to stand the test of time and the elements.

Losing the phone didn’t bother me as much as the missing photos, memories, recorded interviews, and other content. As usual, the frustrations of technology and dealing with customer service would test my patience. Snowboarding without headphones and music is something I do a lot anyway, but it was nice to be forced to appreciate the sounds, or lack thereof while riding. Sometimes our brains are so full of noise and clutter, technology included, it’s refreshing to surround yourself with peace and quiet. Amazing what solitude and stillness offer; how deafening and enriching the silence can be.

Ironically after six weeks, I purchased another used iPhone 10 and reconnected to the grid. I’m still not sure I’m happy about it, but it does make a lot of things easier and encourages my creativity in photography and writing.

Multiple feet of snow continued coating the mountain through April. It was the never-ending snow season with over fifty feet of total snowfall. Much to the disappointment of many skiers and snowboarders, a lease agreement with the National Forest Service required Targhee to close mountain operations on April 15th. It kept snowing. Even though the lifts were not operating, people continued hiking and riding fresh tracks all over the mountain into May. As April finished and May progressed, the snow did eventually start melting with longer days, more sun, and rising temperatures.

June arrived and with it came temps in the seventies. I decided it was time to take my chances and hike up from the parking lot at Targhee and have a look around. I hoped enough snow melted and I could walk right up on it. Fat chance, but this was the iPhone I had unsuccessfully tried hard to lose before. I loaded up a small backpack with water, snack bars, and bear spray and said a little prayer as I walked toward the base area. I made my way to a traverse trail that slowly climbs the entire mountain. As I began my ascent, the trail crew was busy at work raking dirt and removing snow from sections of the bike trails in preparation for the upcoming summer season. We exchanged head nods. Once I was around the bend and on my own, only a few birds chirped at me. I felt like I was being watched. It took an hour plus to get up to where I had lost the phone. Along the way, I had already come across a half-full fifth of Jägermeister, a Dodge Ram key fob/key-chain, and Michael Marlin’s ski passes from winter 2006-2007. I had hiked the traverse up as far as I could. From there, it would require climbing a steeper pitch near a trail called “nasty gash”. The shrubby slope was thirty percent covered in snow and the rest soft and muddy earth. The phone could’ve been anywhere. After all, it had gone behind my bibs and down and out my pantleg, but this time I never felt it. It might’ve been where I took the video of my friend and it could’ve stayed inside my pantleg for a while before exiting. I fought just to keep my balance using the aggressive traction on the bottom of my hiking boots to dig in the side of the slope to keep moving in a diagonal direction up the mountain. At ten-thousand feet, the air a bit thinner, I could hear and feel my heart thumping. I looked alongside areas where snow still lay, stopping every ten steps to scan the ground. At one point, I paused, closed my eyes, and tried to envision the area where I had stopped to video my friend. Everything looked vastly different without multiple feet of snow. I wasn’t on the slope for more than thirty minutes and walked right up on it. I didn’t even pick it up right away. I wanted to stare at it for a minute, while I laughed and shook my head side-to-side. The case was dirty and spilled ice-cold water when I lifted it off the ground. Tiny water drops inside the iPhone camera were not a good sign. I pulled out my recently purchased used iPhone 10 to document the find. I texted Susan who had helped me unsuccessfully use the find-my-iPhone app two months prior. She responded, “No way. Only you, Dan. Only you.” My hopes now lie in drying it out somehow so it didn’t end up a paperweight like the iPhone 6 I previously drowned kayaking.

The other items I found while looking for my iPhone included Michael Marlin’s two ski passes (with “direct to lift” access. Wow, Michael!), some Jaegermeister, and a set of Dodge Ram keys; what a bummer day it must’ve been for the poor soul who lost those.

While hiking back down the mountain to my car, I was giddy. I had a smile on my face, almost like I already knew the phone was going to work again. Part one of the mission, finding the phone, was a success. I drove straight into town to the Verizon store. The Verizon guy shook his head in disbelief when I told the story and showed him the phone. I asked about putting it in a bag of rice and he pointed to what looked like a printer behind him.

“Let me introduce you to Redux, a machine meant to suck the moisture out of electronics”, he explained. I laughed and reiterated “It was in freezing/thawing snow for eight weeks on the side of a mountain.”

“Last week a gentleman dropped his iPhone in the river while fly-fishing. After running it through an hour cycle in the redux machine, it worked fine,” he responded with a hint of sales pitch in his voice.

“So, you’re sayin’ there’s a chance,” I replied.

At thirty dollars, it was worth a shot and I agreed to leave the phone with him. After all, this was the phone that couldn’t be lost. Surely, it wouldn’t die. I have to admit, I did believe there was a chance it would still work somehow, some way. A cool story it would be if it did work again. Most importantly, I wanted the photos and content from the last three years I hadn’t backed up.

My new-used iPhone 10 rang two hours later. It was the Verizon guy. I asked him, “So, what’s the verdict?” He hesitated, then responded, “Why don’t you just come down and pick it up.” I laughed. He wasn’t giving away anything over the phone. After driving to the store, I walked in the door and looked for any sign of his reaction when he saw me. Straight-faced, he set the phone on the counter. He preferred giving me the honor of trying to switch it on again for the first time after coming out of the redux machine. I clicked the buttons together on either side. This was the moment of truth. Within three seconds the infamous white apple with a bite out of it appeared on the screen. It was as if nothing transpired. It worked fine and all the content was intact. No surprise.