After the fall

Perryman wanted to start looking for Colt immediately, but the rangers told him that it would be too dangerous. Night had fallen, and the search had been called off for the day. A team of rangers had spent the day rappelling down the gully on the mountain's south side -- where students thought they heard a rockslide around the time Colt was last seen -- but they found nothing. More than a dozen rangers and volunteers would again camp out along the trails that night in the hope that Colt would somehow find them. The park service also had called in a helicopter with an infrared device that was to arrive before midnight and could be used to search at night.

Bloomfield met Perryman at ranger headquarters. He told him several times how sorry he was. Then Bloomfield and the rangers took Perryman to his son's tent to retrieve some clothes to be used by dogs that were being brought in for the search in the morning.

As he sat alone in his room in a lodge at the base of the mountains, Perryman stared out at the mountains, watching clouds collect around the peaks. Around midnight the rangers called to say that the helicopter had been canceled because of mechanical difficulties and that no others were available. Perryman was frantic, because he thought the helicopter was his son's last best chance of being found before dying of exposure.

"It just dashed my heart, I was counting on it so much," he recalls.

At 1 a.m., Perryman dressed and headed out alone for the trailhead, but he turned back when he realized he had no idea which way to go. He went to the room and waited by the phone for the rest of the night.

Perryman and ranger Valerie Naylor, a public information officer for the park service, headed out at 7:30 the next morning. They took the Pinnacles Trail -- a direct but steep route -- up to Emory Peak, a 4.5-mile trek that took almost three hours.

The trail ended at the base of a looming rock wall at the summit -- 30 feet straight up and about 70 feet wide. Naylor asked Perryman whether he wanted to climb up to the peak, but he said no.

"I looked up, and a shudder went through me," Perryman recalls. "I told her I didn't want that nightmare." Naylor told him that she also was afraid to climb it.

Suddenly a voice crackled over Naylor's radio. "There he is, 50 feet below the ledge," the voice said. Naylor grabbed the radio, quickly turned the volume down, and put it up to her ear. Perryman saw a helicopter hovering over the north face of the peak. A park ranger hooked ropes to a tree on the right side of the rock face and began to climb down. A man in the helicopter was pointing.

Perryman worked his way to the right edge of the trail, grabbed a tree, and looked down. He saw a sheer drop of some 400 feet. Three helicopters were hovering nearby. Perryman asked Naylor what was going on, and she said they had declared radio silence.

"I'm not stupid, lady," he told her. "They know I'm here with you. That's why they declared radio silence. Please tell me what's going on."

Naylor couldn't help him. Perryman asked whether they would bring his son up or down when they got to him. Naylor said down, so Perryman turned around and started walking furiously down the mountain, purposely getting far enough ahead of Naylor that she would feel comfortable to call in for information without his overhearing it. His plan apparently worked, because she yelled out for him to stop. Rangers had found his son, she said, but they wouldn't tell her whether he was dead or alive.

He raced down the mountain. He remembers being stunned by the overwhelming beauty of the place and by the sick sensation that his son was dead. It took three hours to get down the trail from the mountain. The leader of the group that had been searching for Colt met him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Perryman," he said.

"Is my son dead?" Perryman asked.

"We don't know, but it doesn't look good."

Perryman walked another 50 feet, fell to his knees, and threw up. It took another 45 minutes to drive back to ranger headquarters, where they confirmed that Colt was dead. It appeared that he had slipped as he attempted to descend from the top of Emory Peak and fell 450 feet to his death. Experts felt certain he died almost instantly from the trauma. They told Perryman it was better not to see him. He asked whether he could hold his son's hand, but they advised against it. They identified Colt's body from a picture.

Perryman made the most difficult phone call of his life. "It's not good, babe," he said to his wife. "It's not good. Colt is dead." The trip home was longer and more excruciating than the trip down. No planes had room for the casket, so Perryman hired a hearse to drive his son back to Dallas. Perryman followed behind him with his cousin, who had flown into Midland to meet him.