The morning they set out, the world felt wide open.

Mark Delaney, 42, tightened the straps of his pack and looked down at his daughter, Sophie. She was grinning, her braid swinging as she adjusted her helmet.

“You ready, kiddo?” he asked.

“More than ready,” she said. “I’ve been waiting all summer for this.”

It was late August 2012, the last week before Sophie started seventh grade. Mark had promised her one “big climb” — a father-daughter trip that would take them into Wyoming’s remote Wind River Range, up the towering face of Mount Hooker.

To Sophie, climbing wasn’t just a hobby. It was their thing. Weekends at the climbing gym, summer hikes, scrambling over boulders with Mark teaching her knots and rope safety. Her mother, Lisa, used to joke that Sophie could tie a figure-eight knot before she could write her name.

They’d spent weeks planning the route: a multi-day approach through backcountry trails, a night at the base, and then the ascent along the northeast buttress. Mark had climbed parts of it before, but this would be Sophie’s first big wall experience.

They reached the base after two days of hiking through valleys painted with late-summer wildflowers. The granite wall rose above them, impossible and magnificent.

On the morning of the climb, the sky was a perfect blue. They made steady progress, alternating leads. By midafternoon, they’d reached a narrow ledge about 1,500 feet up — just wide enough for their small portaledge camp.

Mark anchored it carefully, checking every strap twice. Sophie helped unpack, her small hands steady on the gear.

That night, they sat side by side, dangling their feet over the abyss, eating freeze-dried pasta and watching the sun sink behind the peaks.

“This is it, huh?” Sophie said softly.

“What’s ‘it’?”

“The place I’ll remember when I’m old. When I think about you.”

Mark smiled, his throat tight. “We’ve got a lot more climbs ahead, kiddo.”

No one knows exactly when the weather turned.

The records show that an unpredicted cold front moved in late the next day — wind gusts over 50 mph, temperatures plummeting, snow sweeping across the range.

Mark’s last radio call to Lisa came at 3:42 p.m. “We’re hunkered down on the ledge,” he’d said, his voice steady. “Just riding it out.”

It was the last anyone heard from them.

When they didn’t return to the trailhead on schedule, the search began. Helicopters scanned the wall. Ground teams approached from multiple sides. But the storm had left ice on the rock, and some sections were too dangerous to cross.

After two weeks, the official search was called off. Unofficially, some climbers returned over the years, hoping to find something. They found nothing.

Lisa kept Sophie’s room exactly as it had been — books on the shelf, climbing shoes by the bed. She told people she knew they were gone, but in private, she sometimes imagined Mark and Sophie living in some remote valley, cut off from the world but safe.

Mark’s younger brother, Daniel, took the opposite approach. He wanted the truth, no matter how hard. He returned to Mount Hooker twice with friends, scouring possible ledges. Each time, he came back empty-handed.

Years passed. Eleven of them.

On August 14, 2023, a trio of experienced climbers — two men from Colorado and a woman from Montana — attempted a rarely used direct variation of the northeast route.

Halfway up, the lead climber, Jake, spotted something that didn’t belong: a strip of faded orange fabric wedged between two cracks in the rock.

They climbed closer. It wasn’t just fabric — it was part of a weathered portaledge, its nylon shredded but still tethered to rusted anchors.

Inside the sheltered corner of the ledge was a small camp, perfectly preserved by the cold and dry air. Two sleeping bags, zipped together. A climbing helmet with a sticker that read “Climb Like a Girl”. A notebook in a waterproof pouch.

And two figures, side by side, as though asleep.

When the recovery team arrived days later, they treated the site with quiet reverence. The position of the bodies told a clear story: Mark had wrapped himself around Sophie, shielding her from the wind. His jacket had been pulled over her head.

The notebook held only a few pages, but they were enough to still the air in the ranger station when they were read aloud.

August 29, 2012: “Storm hit hard. Can’t get off the wall. Sophie’s cold but hanging in. She’s tougher than most grown men I know.”

August 30: “Tried to radio again. Battery low. Rationing food. Singing to keep her spirits up — she likes that old Tom Petty song.”

August 31: “She asked if we’re going to make it. Told her yes, because we will. She believes me. That’s enough.”

The last entry was undated: “If you find this, tell Lisa Sophie climbed like a champion. Tell her I wasn’t scared — not with my girl beside me.”

The news rippled quickly through the climbing community and the small town back home. Lisa flew to Wyoming with Daniel to bring them home. Standing at the base of Mount Hooker, she looked up at the sheer granite wall and whispered, “You kept them safe until we could.”

The memorial service was held outdoors, under a sky as clear as the one they’d climbed beneath that first morning. Friends and family shared stories — Sophie’s competitive streak at the climbing gym, Mark’s habit of double-checking every knot three times.

Daniel spoke last. “They didn’t die on that mountain,” he said. “They lived there — in those last days, in that ledge, in the way they faced the worst with each other. That’s what I’ll remember.”

Today, near the trailhead to Mount Hooker, there’s a bronze plaque set into a boulder. It reads:

“Mark and Sophie Delaney — A father’s promise, a daughter’s courage. Forever on the wall.”

Climbers sometimes leave small tokens there — a carabiner, a scrap of climbing tape, a wildflower tucked into a crack.

And on quiet mornings, when the sun hits the face of the mountain just right, locals swear you can almost see them — two small shapes high on the wall, side by side, still chasing the sky together.