Have you ever had to search through miles of powdery snow for a lost $400 iPhone that could have fallen anywhere? No? Then I guess you haven’t truly lived. I can now say that I have. Here’s my tale of how our fun weekend turned into a phone search.

January is not my favorite month. It doesn’t have the pleasant weather appeal or holiday enticements that make other months popular; it doesn’t even carry in it the hope of spring like February does. So Jason and I decided that our January needed a little pick-me-up. We therefore made a weekend getaway to Midway with my brother and his family to enjoy the only things splendid about this month: snow and after-Christmas sales.

We started our snow fabulous weekend by tubing at Soldier Hollow. Since the tubing hill wasn’t crowded due to all those that savor sleeping in on Saturdays not being conscious yet, which usually includes me, we were allowed to hook all of our tubes together in one giant mass. Jadon, my brother’s five year old, loved it and wanted our cluster to make choo-choo noises as we cruised down the mountain.

After we spent the morning tubing we went to Park City for some serious shopping at the outlet stores. The frigid temps didn’t stop us from going store to store in search of awesome deals. We definitely found some. My favorite thing about shopping that afternoon was getting Jadon to help me pick out jewelry. He took offering his assistance very seriously and conscientiously evaluated all the available pieces before giving me his recommendation. It was very cute and quite humorous.

That evening, after shopping, we walked through the famous Midway ice castles. I must admit that before this trip I didn’t know that such “famous” structures existed but apparently every year a guy from Midway makes these giant ice sculptures and keeps building them higher and higher through the winter until they are simply monstrous. They were pretty impressive and I guess they deserve their claim to fame since they attract about 40,000 visitors each year. If you feel inclined to view them I would recommend going after dark; all those illuminated icicles look mesmerizing and surreal etched out of a blackened sky. But don’t be surprised if the setting fills you with the desire to sport a furry loincloth or a sword of smiting, such props would seem commonplace among these frosty edifices.

The following morning Jason and I were back at Soldier Hollow for some snowshoeing with Jason’s parents. This is when our phone troubles really began. We decided to climb a trail called Timp View; this path was marked as “most difficult” and it seemed to go up and up endlessly but the views just kept getting better as we crested one hill after another. It was beautiful and we even got to make first tracks since no one had trekked through the upper regions of the trail after it had snowed the night before. It was a refreshing experience and we got back to our cars feeling tired, content, and cold. That’s when Jason realized he was missing his cell phone. Ugh! Although he claimed that he had zipped all of his pockets up, he last remembered having his phone before we started our ascent up the trail, which meant it could be anywhere in the miles of snow we had crossed. With fresh powder everywhere, which a flung phone would just snuggle right down into, we both had very little hope of finding that allusive electronic but we thought we better at least give it a try. So we started backtracking up our path and I began calling his phone in hopes that we would hear it ring if we passed it. This plan only had a shot at working if his phone was set to ring not just vibrate, which was another detail that Jason couldn’t recall. Blast! Trying to dial his number, which required glovelessness, while trudging through snow proved too awkward and freezing so I headed back to the car to concentrate on my calling efforts while Jason continued to cruise back up our route. On my 22^nd call he answered. He had miraculously found his phone near the top of the trail. He would have passed right by it, since it was indeed buried in the snow, but he heard it ring and dug around until he uncovered it. Yes! All that teamwork paid off. Everyone was shocked that we were actually able to locate the phone, including the workers in the lodge that had told us it was a lost cause when we had reported it missing. What can I say; the Rachel and Jason team is a pretty darn good one.

So that is how our fantastic Midway weekend turned into a seemingly futile mobile search and then ended happily ever after after all.