NATURE'S BARGAIN

In the vein of Into the Wild, the harrowing true story of three families who embark on an overnight ski adventure only to suffer a grave and mysterious loss in the midst of a massive storm.

In January 2017, three families spent the weekend at a nearby backcountry ski cabin in Colorado, seeking quality time with their close friends and the chance to bond with their gaggle of teenagers by soaking up the expanse of glittering, pristine nature. But when two of the skiers decided to head out early one morning to ski a loop through the fresh powder on their own, they disappeared.

One, Brett Beasley, the father of two girls, was a U.S. Forest Ranger and legendary mountain man, the last person you would expect to get lost in the wild. The second was Cole Walters-Schaler, a scrawny 15-year-old boy who had recently lost his mother to cancer and was searching for solace in the great outdoors. The next 30 hours would prove to be the most harrowing this small mountain community had ever endured. A storm moved in swiftly, smothering the region in unprecedented snowfall, and a search was risky and ill-advised for even the most accomplished guides. Tension among the families grew ever thicker with resentment, blame, and fear.

When the storm clears less than two days later, only one person emerged from the mountains alive.

NATURE'S BARGAIN is a taut, riveting narrative of tragedy, survival, and the cost of living on nature's knife's edge. When Devon O'Neil heard about this story five years later, what struck him most was Cole, the boy who survived, and never spoke to anyone about what happened out there. O'Neil himself backcountry skis four days a week, regularly leaving his two sons with the looming question each time of will daddy return? Naturally, then, this tragic story weaseled its way into O'Neil's consciousness and would not let go. Now, the families, and most notably Cole, the lone survivor of that fateful morning, have agreed to talk about their tragic experience for the first time with O'Neil.

NATURE'S BARGAIN is a survival narrative that reverberates with larger human truths and moral questions: What is our contract with nature? What is our responsibility to loved ones when pursuing the thrill of high-risk adventures? Does that calculation change when children are involved? When your way of living gets rattled to its core, do you go on living that way?

Devon O'Neil is a correspondent for Outside whose work has appeared in TIME, Men's Journal, Men's Health, SKI, ESPN.com, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Sports Writing.