Don Capron

As Don Capron set out for a remote trail in the Superstition Mountains last Christmas Eve, he never would have guessed he’d have to put his survival skills – and his dog Petey’s – to the ultimate test.

Stories surrounding the Superstition Mountains are as tall and rugged as her craggy cliffs. Apache warriors and early explorers staged epic clashes among perilous precipices. Nefarious “Dutch hunters” clouded by selfish ambition murdered anyone competing with their search for the fabled Lost Dutchman gold mine. Whether drawn to beauty, riches, seclusion or intrigue, scores of unsuspecting people have plunged to their deaths in the Superstitions.

Against the backdrop of such drama, Don Capron’s Christmas Eve day hike through a remote eastern section of the Superstition Wilderness should have been like a Sunday walk in the park.

Until he made the mountains his adversary.

Six months after his ordeal, the Gilbert man looks back on his harrowing tale of survival from a hike gone terribly wrong. Still nursing pain from a frostbitten foot and a wounded ego, he alternately curses his own hubris and an improperly marked map. With nothing but his dog Petey, a few essential supplies and several bursts of ingenuity, he survived four days and three nights alone in the Superstition Wilderness.

Christmas Eve
A seasoned hiker, Capron has backpacked the Appalachian Trail – all 2,174 miles of it – from Georgia to Maine. He’s traversed California’s 221-mile, spectacularly scenic John Muir Trail. A simple gallery of photographs in his home shows Capron and his Cairn Terrier, Petey, perched atop mountain peaks from Washington to Maine.

He is a self-described “commitment-phobic,” twice-divorced, retired stockbroker who might seek a job teaching college business courses if not for the fact that it would tie him down for 16 weeks. Vietnam gunfire claimed seven toes and part of his colon, but he toughed out his injuries, returned a war hero and promptly ran the Boston Marathon.

The contrarian in him does not like to be challenged, an underlying reason for his thesis selection for his master’s degree in Russian history. “I wrote on the collapse of European diplomacy as the result of the Crimean War. I purposely picked the most obscure topic I could find, knowing no one could challenge me on it. It worked,” he says.

He didn’t purposely embark with this mindset last Christmas Eve, the first day of what would become a nearly fatal foray into a secluded section of the Superstition Mountain Wilderness. In fact, Capron awoke that morning to a forecast of 70 degrees, and the free spirit in him simply decided to take a day hike.

He didn’t want to run into anybody, and he hates to hike the same trail twice, so the more popular Peralta Trail or Dutchman’s Trail were out. “I was looking for something different… a little bit of adventure. I picked a spot on the map in the eastern part of the Superstitions that looked very remote,” he says. He chose Miles Trailhead in the aptly named Haunted Canyon between the towns of Superior and Miami, then pulled together his usual hiking supplies.

“I was totally prepared. I had a map, a compass, a flashlight, a Swiss Army knife, a fleece pullover, a raincoat, a first aid kit and an aluminum space blanket – none of which you would think you need for a day hike.” He packed a foot-long sub sandwich, two quarts of Gatorade, three cans of dog food and a chocolate bar.

Just getting to Miles Trailhead would qualify as a white-knuckle adventure for most. Taking US 60 into Gila County, Capron exited at Pinto Valley Road and crossed back into Pinal County to Forest Road 287A, a treacherous dirt track with numerous drop-offs. Tonto National Forest’s own directions to the jumping-off point warn: “This road is through a mining area and is often confusing.”

Though the road is recommended for high-clearance vehicles, Capron maneuvered his Mercedes to Miles Trailhead, occasionally stopping to shove a boulder from his path. He set out on foot from the trailhead at 11 a.m., which by his estimation left him six hours to hike before going home to make brownies for Christmas dinner at a friend’s house the next day.

He knocked out a three-hour, hand-over-hand scramble up 2,000 craggy feet to the top of a mountain ridge along Bull Basin Trail No. 270. But once atop the ridge, he lost the trail. “Either the switchbacks marked on the map did not exist and the map was wrong, or I simply could not locate them. I was determined to find out,” he says.

He had reached the turnaround time for his hike, and he did have those brownies to bake. But he refused to be beaten. “I didn’t want to admit defeat… it was the idea of giving up, the idea of quitting that I couldn’t stand,” he says.

So Capron continued on, losing daylight and losing confidence in his map. At one point he saw a house and a car, so he tried to forge ahead in that direction. But the mountain terrain forced Capron to yield to its own rough-hewn route, finally depositing him into a canyon where he found an abandoned, dilapidated shack just as the last glimmers of daylight succumbed to the night sky.

Exhausted from the day’s physical strain, Capron stumbled into the shack. Inside, several large pieces of foam rubber and two old tents, along with his own aluminum space blanket, helped him cobble together a makeshift sleeping bag. “It was delightfully warm. Petey climbed in and we slept for 12 hours,” he says. He awoke only once around midnight to the pleasant sound of rain pattering against the shack’s roof. “How nice,” I thought. “Rain on a tin roof.”

What he didn’t realize was he was now trapped in a canyon that was in the process of flooding.

Capron and his dog Petey survived four days and three nights in the Superstitions last winter. Opposite: Capron points out the exact area of Haunted Canyon where they lost their way.

Christmas Day
On Christmas morning, Maggie Barduson, her husband, Steve, and their five kids celebrated the holiday amid the aroma of English popovers in their Ahwatukee Foothills home. Ten-year-old Nate and his little brother Luke relished their Master Replica collectors’ edition lightsabers. Annika, the youngest, squealed over her Hannah Montana doll.

Barduson surveyed the Christmas tree and pondered two presents that remained. One was a bible, the other a $50 gift certificate to REI. They were for her lifelong friend Don Capron, who would be arriving soon for Christmas dinner. “He was supposed to bring brownies – his mother’s recipe,” she says.

Seventy-five miles away, Capron and Petey set out to the east amid an unrelenting Christmas rain. Every quarter mile or so he noticed a trail marker, but he had a growing uncertainty that the trail might only lead him to a headwater. Soaked and exhausted, Capron and his pup retreated to the shack where they’d spent the previous night.

By midday, the Bardusons were passing roast beef, oven-browned potatoes and Caesar salad around the table. Capron’s empty chair and place setting were both hard to miss and easy to ignore amid the excited holiday chatter. “Don stood me up,” Barduson thought to herself, saddened but not totally surprised. “Sometimes Don just does whatever Don wants to do. The fact that he didn’t show up wasn’t a surprise to me. He goes with the wind, and if the wind was blowing to the east that day, he wasn’t here because I’m to the west,” Barduson says.

Back in the shack, Petey wolfed down a can of dog food. Capron opted to conserve his remaining half-sandwich and chocolate bar. They both fell asleep and did not awake until 7 a.m. on December 26.

Merry Christmas.