I see the ridge in a blur of white and wind. The air was so cold it felt like a memory you could taste. A flare shot up, bright orange against the gray sky, then the voices—low, almost whispering, as if they were sharing a secret. I caught a glimpse of a stone, half hidden by the snow, with a faint symbol carved into it. It felt like someone was trying to leave a mark, but the note was torn in two before we could read it. That's all I can piece together.

I don’t have the exact numbers, just a sense of it—north‑west of the ridge’s bend, where the snow thinned and the wind carried a hint of metal. The stone was about a foot wide, set in a pocket of ice. I can’t say who carved the symbol; maybe a scout from the earlier squad, or someone who was supposed to be there and didn’t. The voices were low, almost humming, like the wind itself, so I can’t place them. They could have been comrades trying to keep morale up, or maybe the echo of a message we sent out that never got a reply. We might need to dig around that spot, look for any other scraps or hidden caches that could explain the gap.

I remember the ridge bend as the spot where the wind stopped and the snow gathered. Roughly a half‑dozen hundred meters west of that bend, the stone was tucked under a slab of ice. In plain terms it’d be about 45.12°N, 122.45°W – give or take a few meters. That should give you a ballpark to compare against the maps.

I’ll stay on the ridge, watching the wind for any ripple that might mean someone else is there. Let me know if you spot anything that looks like a footprint or a discarded pack. Stay safe.