She knows these trails like the back of her hand, the same hand that is finally healing now. Her knees are healing too, covered in brown scabs the size of Idaho potatoes. And her leg is in a cast.
Janet McEntee has walked these foothill trails hundreds of times. Even in the winter she takes her dogs up there. It's a three-minute drive from her house in Salt Lake City's Avenues and an easy enough hike, up past the water tower and then north toward the ridge line.The trail is just a stone's throw from the Avenues. Still, once you've rounded a few bends, past the place where you can look down and see Karl Malone's backyard, it might as well be wilderness. If you get in trouble up there, all by yourself, no one will know you need rescuing.
At 63, McEntee is a sensible woman, a high school teacher who likes to walk her dogs in the foothills in the afternoons. On the afternoon of June 3, though, McEntee goes to a retirement party for a colleague. She doesn't set off on her hike till about 7.
McEntee drives past Malone's house, parks her car in the cul-de-sac at the top of Terrace Hills Drive, and sets off on the trail. The two golden retrievers, Dan and Maxie, and the English setter, Molly, run on ahead, and McEntee moves briskly. She is wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but she knows she'll be home before it gets dark and cold.
She's getting good reception on her headphones, and she listens to Game 1 of the Jazz-Bulls playoffs as she climbs.
It's been a rainy spring along the Wasatch. So the footpath that cuts diagonally across the hill toward the ridgeline trail is overgrown. McEntee doesn't notice the little depression in the path until her foot has already twisted and she hears the crack of her bone.
She sits there for a minute, sizing up the situation. There were a few cars in the parking lot when she drove up to the cul-de-sac, but she hasn't seen any other hikers in the 20 minutes it has taken her to get this far. Chances are there won't be any new hikers coming along this late, especially since everybody will be home watching the playoffs on TV.
It takes a long time to crawl a mile and a half down a mountainside.
McEntee moves along at about a 45-minute-mile pace, over dirt and rocks and ruts. Pretty soon her knees and palms are scraped raw, and of course the broken leg hurts. Then it starts to rain. The wind is blowing. Now it's hailing.
"Come on!" McEntee says to the weather and to the situation in general. She's not flustered, just kind of amazed. She knows what she has to do. If she doesn't keep moving she'll be stuck there. There won't be any hikers till the next morning, maybe the afternoon. Her hair and her T-shirt are soaked and the hail is hitting her face and it's getting dark and she's shivering.
At one point she thinks she might get down the hill faster if she rolls but that hurts too much, so she resumes crawling. At another point she calls out "Help," but the word gets gobbled up by the wind.
Dan and Molly and Maxie are no Lassies, but they do stay close by. Every once in a while, as McEntee moves along on all fours, Dan brings her a stick.
In the beginning of the long crawl back, McEntee listens to her headphones, tracking the Jazz and Bulls running up and down the court at the Delta Center a few miles to the west. But the headphone cord keeps getting in the way. And beside, she thinks, she's got to pay attention to crawling.
It takes McEntee two hours to get to her car, including the last stretch across the asphalt of the parking lot. Her one piece of good luck is that she drives an automatic transmission; with her left foot she steps on the gas pedal and drives home. Her daughter drives her to the hospital, where they wrap her in warm blankets and later put a rod in her tibia. Meanwhile they let her watch the end of the game on TV.
McEntee is a resource teacher at Highland High School, where she has been known to give students extra credit for getting out in the world and doing something - going to a play or taking a hike - because she worries that too many kids are couch potatoes.
Too many kids just watching TV; sitting around watching other people have adventures. A whole town watching 10 men running up and down a floor, creating a drama about a ball going through a basket.
McEntee is not at all impressed by what she did. She just kept moving, she says, the same as anyone would. She hopes to be hiking again by midsummer.