It’s not your typical precious stone heist. But the foot-high, 70-pound rock that disappeared from the forest floor in Squamish, British Columbia, last September was priceless to scores of rock climbers around the region.
For years, Portable — named for its size — greeted climbers at the entrance of the popular Superfly bouldering area in Squamish, which is about 60 miles north of the U.S. border and whose motto is “hard-wired for adventure.”
Climbers came to love Portable because it was the perfect surface on which to practice balancing and gripping. They also tried to pick up Portable, some with one hand. Many of them expressed their love by making it one of the most Instagrammed rocks in the region.
So it was easily noticeable when, at the tail end of a busy summer season, Portable was no longer at its resting spot.
“Everyone was kind of thinking it would probably just show up elsewhere, or that someone would run into it around the woods one day and bring it back,” said Ethan Salvo, a professional rock climber and Squamish resident.
But one month went by. Then another.
“I, for one, thought it had just been taken for good, and someone was probably jaded toward the Squamish climbing community and just wanted it out of there,” Mr. Salvo said. Threads on Reddit and Facebook were full of social media users hoping for its safe return.
One theory proposed that a long-distance bicyclist had taken Portable. Every year, during the Gran Fondo, an international cycling event, it is carried on the back of a bike for one day, Mr. Salvo said, adding that this seemed to fit the timeline of the heist.
While Portable was gone, many climbers searched the woods for a suitable replacement.
The uninitiated may ask themselves: How can you recognize a rock in a forest full of rocks, anyway? “Nothing ever really came close,” Mr. Salvo said, before listing off superlatives for Portable, including for its angles, its density and the features that make it possible for climbers to grip it with their fingers and toes.
“There’s probably another rock out there like it, but I can imagine why someone thought this rock stood out from the rest,” he said.
Portable also stands out because it’s more of a “dull gray,” Mr. Salvo said, in contrast with most of the other boulders and rocks in Squamish, which are chunky with white shiny quartz and “can almost shimmer in certain light.”
Portable had disappeared before, but it had been found elsewhere in the forest, after much shorter periods, and was easily brought back. Climbers are generally highly conscious about their impact on the environment, and they try not to leave, or take, anything.
For a beloved mini-boulder to be missing for so many months was very unusual.
“I’d imagine whoever did this probably thought it was going to be a really funny joke to have it show up elsewhere, given the name ‘Portable,’” Mr. Salvo said, “and probably didn’t realize how much it was going to blow up and upset people.”
Months after its disappearance, some climbers who missed Portable created memes of the rock. In one, it sat on a bookshelf, holding up books. Another showed a flier posted on a tree, asking: Have you seen him? It was accompanied by a photo of Portable.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Salvo received a new photo of Portable on social media, , dressed in a Canadian drinking toque. “It had a built-in bottle opener on the brim, and there were googly eyes put onto the brim,” Mr. Salvo said. “So it kind of looked like it was alive.”
Portable had been found, and the good news was quickly spread by passersby and Reddit users. Mr. Salvo learned that it was only a few miles from where he was camping, in Bishop, Calif., about halfway between Yosemite National Park and Death Valley National Park.
It had been placed near the Iron Man Traverse, the most popular boulder in the area, just as it had once been under the most popular boulder in Squamish, called Superfly.
“It was clearly done by someone who’s smart and was playing a bit of a joke,” said Mr. Salvo, who recognized Portable immediately, feeling its familiarity as he tried to lift it.
Portable is now buried under a pile of blankets in his 2002 Subaru Outback. “I feel some responsibility to bring it back home,” he said.
He did some sleuthing and determined that the toque that Portable was wearing came from a gift shop in Vancouver. He thinks that someone stole Portable overnight and stopped by the shop in the morning to dress up Portable as a joke, he said.
But he cannot make sense of how it traveled so far — a 19-hour drive from Squamish.
The theft was never reported to the authorities, and Mr. Salvo is quick to acknowledge that there are far more important events in the world than a missing rock.
Mr. Salvo wants to bring Portable home next month, he said, adding that he hoped the climbing community would come together to protect sustainable access to the forest as much as they had united over the loss of Portable.
“None of these rocks actually belong to us,” he said. “We’re just kind of passing through this life, and are lucky enough to interact with these pieces of rock.”
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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