Hikers go missing with frequency; it stands to reason, there are many of them out there. Runners, too. Berry pickers and mushroom hunters. David Paulides, founder of the North America Bigfoot Search, is obsessed with disappeared game hunters. Children, of course, get lost in the woods. Skiers occasionally go missing but are usually found when the snow melts. But cyclists, not so much. Mountain bikers and touring riders vanish about as frequently as golfers.

Long-term mysterious vanishings of touring cyclists with as few clues are so rare that Robert Koester, a.k.a. Professor Rescue, the foremost academic on search and rescue (SAR)听statistics, lists only 鈥渓ost mountain biker鈥� in his seminal 2008 book . Koester is certified as a Type 1 SAR incident commander and holds a Ph.D. in search theory from the University of Portsmouth, in England. 鈥淎ll cases of mountain bikes were resolved out of 189 incidents,鈥� he told me. But mountain bikers did鈥攄o鈥攇o missing, as opposed to missing touring cyclists, who don鈥檛 even get a category.

But of course it happens. Our Amelia Earhart is a cyclist named Frank Lenz, who in 1892, at the age of 24, lit out from Pittsburgh听to circumnavigate the globe on his Victory 鈥�.鈥澨鼿e wouldn鈥檛 be the first to do it, but Outing magazine sponsored his trip so he could chronicle the adventure while demonstrating the high-tech wonders of the newfangled safety听bicycle. Two years into the trip, Lenz fell off the edge of the earth somewhere in the Ottoman Empire. You can imagine how slowly no news traveled then. When his family expressed concern, Outing sent another famous cyclist, William Sachtleben, to Turkey to find him. He didn鈥檛, but came back with the information that his probable fate was Lenz pissed off a Kurdish chief, and the warlord had him killed. At the time, Sachtleben鈥檚 rescue attempt was considered on a par with the famous hunt for David Livingstone: .

Koester鈥檚 statistics missed a 2014 Canadian vanish that is as confounding as any I鈥檝e heard of. It鈥檚 easy to miss the Canadian missing鈥攖he country is huge and quiet. They like to take care of their own and not broadcast their troubles. I only learned about the case because his identical twin brother, Marcel, contacted me after he read the article I鈥檇 written for 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine that focused on a missing runner, Joe Keller. Marty Leger, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, was 30 years old when he went for a routine ride at a popular trail network at Spider Lake. There isn鈥檛 anything extremely remote about the area鈥攖he trailhead is even in a residential area. But it鈥檚 the Canadian Maritimes, so wildlands are never not close.

May 29. Marty was riding a new black Santa Cruz Heckler. He planned to ride singletrack for a couple of hours and return home around four in the afternoon. He didn鈥檛. First his family went looking for him. Then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police鈥擱CMP鈥攎ounted a search that included nearly 500听people. Volunteers, dogs, and helicopters searched a search zone that was 30听square miles. The search for Marty Leger was one of the largest in Canadian history. Not a granola-bar wrapper was found, let alone a fat-tire bicycle.

鈥淲ith a bike, you can cover more ground…听so you can likely get yourself out,鈥� Marcel says. 鈥淎lso, you tend to have to stick to the trails when biking.鈥� Marty almost certainly went off-trail, perhaps in an attempt to take a shortcut. 鈥淚 am not surprised they didn鈥檛 find his bike, because if they would have found it, they would have found him. I cannot imagine him leaving his new bike. It was maybe his third ride on it.鈥� All cyclists will understand that; what鈥檚 harder to understand is not finding a mountain biker.

鈥淎 body ended up being discovered roughly a year after he went missing,鈥� Marcel says. 鈥淚t was someone else who had gone missing before Marty. He was found within the search area, so clearly it would have been very possible for them to simply not see Marty or his bike. They had a lot of people searching, but it only takes one person to miss him and then cross off that area. Everyone who searched for him tried so hard day after day, but they had a radius they needed to look at based on age, weight, time of day, weather, and how long since he鈥檚 been reported missing. And there鈥檚 a good chance Marty was out of that radius when the search started.鈥�

鈥淲hat鈥檚 your theory about what happened?鈥澨齀 asked him. 鈥淢y best guess is that he got off trail and got lost,鈥� Marcel says. 鈥淥nce he realized he was lost, he found the nearest dirt road and tried to follow that until he hit a highway or a neighborhood. He likely went as far as he could and tried to sleep the night off and go back at it in the morning.鈥� This happens a surprising amount in Canada, where logging roads and ATV trails web and spiral and sometimes go for hundreds of miles. 鈥淢y guess is that he tried hard to get out and covered a lot of ground, but unfortunately, that likely put him out of the radius they were searching. It was cold that night, and he was wearing shorts and a听T-shirt. So I鈥檓 thinking he went to bed and hypothermia set in and he simply didn鈥檛 wake up.鈥� Trying to apply logic to a case like this one is painful.

According to Marcel, it鈥檚 possible the trail got too technical for Marty听and he fell hard and succumbed to injuries. That鈥檚 certainly possible, but if he鈥檇 fallen so hard that he was badly injured, it doesn鈥檛 make sense he鈥檇 have stumbled or crawled far from the trail; at least the bike would have been located. 鈥淚 have a hard time believing he got hurt badly鈥攈e rode very conservatively, never did jumps or crazy lines he could not handle,鈥� Marcel says.

Marty had only ridden the area one time previously, and it鈥檚 not believed he intended to ride very far. He brought a map, but it was found in the car, so perhaps he was comfortable enough with his intended route without it. The area is bordered on one side with a highway, but all other directions are dense wooded areas. The army was eventually called in, and, Marcel told me, even the soldiers had a hard time bushwhacking through some of it.

鈥淚 keep telling myself it would be easier if it was a heart attack or car accident鈥攁t least we could be angry at something,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ot knowing if or how much he suffered at the end is what haunts me. It might have been a quick ending, but the thought of him being really hurt and yelling for help will stay with me for a while. I try not to focus too much on the fact that he disappeared and more so just think of him as gone.鈥� The family likely will never know what happened. 鈥淭here is no getting past it or moving on,鈥� Marcel says. 鈥淣o being OK听with it or getting over it. Closure isn鈥檛 an option, unfortunately.鈥�

His is a case of double-negative indemnity. 鈥淭he fact that we are identical twins makes it a bit more complicated. Not only do I see him every time I look in the mirror, but I鈥檓 also a constant reminder to my friends and family that he is gone. Whenever they see me, they most likely see both of us.鈥� In 2018, their father took his own life. 鈥淗e just could not make sense of Marty simply disappearing,鈥� Marcel says. 鈥淗e really needed closure. My dad was not a depressed man before this.鈥�

What people don鈥檛 think of are the social pressures for the family after a loved one disappears. 鈥淔or the first few years, we all lived in fear of leaving the house,鈥� Marcel says. 鈥淲e all knew we would at some point run into someone we know and they would ask, 鈥楬ow鈥檚 it going? Any news? Did they find anything? How did he get lost on a bike ride?鈥欌��

It occurs to me that I asked Marcel those same questions. 鈥淭here鈥檚 also small things people would likely not think about that much,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 have a hard time answering the phone. I never liked the phone much before, but when you get two phone calls鈥擬arty and for my dad鈥攁nd on the other end is panic and news that will crush you and change your life forever, it鈥檚 not easy to answer the phone comfortably anymore. Also, being in the woods alone is almost impossible now unless I鈥檓 very familiar with the trails or with other people. I also overpack now to be sure I鈥檓 OK听if anything happens.鈥�

From the book , by Jon Billman. Copyright 漏 2020 by Jon Billman. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

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Update: On August 2, authorities found a damaged johnboat that they'd听spotted by helicopter along the Nelson River. At 10 A.M.听on August 7, the RCMP found the bodies of two males in thick bush near the river. An autopsy is pending, but they are believed to be Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky. They were found approximately five听miles from the burnt RAV4. The manhunt has been called off.

It started as an idyllic three-week road trip for an adventurous young couple. Chynna Deese, 24, of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Lucas Fowler, 23, of Sydney, Australia set out in early July to drive from the northern Canadian Rockies to Alaska in a faded blue 1986 Chevy van that Fowler had bought from a buffalo and cattle rancher he鈥檇 worked for in British Columbia.听听

On Sunday, July 14, the van broke down on a remote section of Highway 97, known as the Alaska Highway, about 12 miles south of Liard Hot Springs near the Yukon border. Motorists reported that the van was stalled on the shoulder with the hood up, while Deese and Fowler鈥攂oth keen travelers who had met at a hostel in Croatia鈥攃ooked a meal and relaxed in lawn chairs. A mechanic and his wife from Fort Nelson stopped and asked the couple if they needed help, but Fowler seemed confident he could get the vehicle going again.听

On Monday, July 15, the bullet-riddled bodies of Deese and Fowler were discovered by another highway worker. The blue Chevy was parked nearby with a rear window broken out. Northern British Columbia and Yukon locals went on high alert鈥攖he homicides were heinous and appeared to lack motive. Deese鈥檚 brother, British, stated that the bodies were so violated that open-casket funerals were not feasible.听

Then things got even stranger and more upsetting. Four days after the highway worker discovered Deese and Fowler鈥檚 bodies, a burning Dodge pickup with a slide-in camper was found on Highway 37, 31 miles south of Dease Lake, south of the Yukon border and roughly 300 miles west of Liard Hot Springs. (Highway 37 and 97 are the only two highways in the massive northern part of the B.C. province.) Less than a mile from the Dodge, the body of a bearded man in his fifties or sixties was found by a motorist in a highway pullout.听He was later identified as Leonard Dyck of Vancouver. Dyck, a husband and a father, worked as a botanist at the University of British Columbia.听

The Dodge had been driven by Kam McCleod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, according to law enforcement. Both teenagers are reported by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as 6鈥�4鈥� tall and 鈥渁pproximately 169 pounds.鈥� Both have brown hair, while McLeod has a scruffy beard. Family members told law enforcement that the boys had gone to Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory, to look for work, perhaps in the oil and gas fields. The two had worked at Walmart in Port Alberni, on Vancouver Island, together, but were looking to make more money and have an adventure, according to their family. Now they鈥檇 vanished. On Monday, July 22, the RCMP officially declared them missing persons.听

Theories immediately arose that British Columbia had a serial killer at large. Early speculation linked the three corpses and two missing teenagers to the Highway of Tears, Highway 16, the east-west route infamous for the murders and disappearances of over forty women鈥攎ostly First Nations鈥攕ince 1970. But Highway 16 is 620 miles to the south and none of the victims were indigenous women.

McCleod and Schmegelsky, the teens from Port Alberni, didn鈥檛 stay missing persons for long. On Sunday, July 21, the RCMP announced that McCleod and Schmegelsky were seen on surveillance camera footage two provinces away in northern Saskatchewan. They were driving a grey 2011 Toyota RAV4. They were now the main suspects in the deaths of Chynna Deese, Lucas Fowler, and Dyck, according to the RCMP. 鈥淭ake no actions鈥攄o not approach,鈥� warned the RCMP. 鈥淐all 911 immediately.鈥澨�

At 7 P.M. on Monday, July 22, the Toyota RAV4 was reported burning off Provincial Road 290, along the Nelson River in northern Manitoba about 680 miles east of where they were spotted in Saskatchewan. PR 290 terminates halfway between the small Manitoba town of Gillam (population 1,300) and Hudson Bay. It鈥檚 literally the end of the road.听

As of Friday, the RCMP Manitoba as well as the RCMP Special Crimes Unit and the Ontario Provincial Police had highway checkpoints at the intersection of PR 280 and PR 290. Police have deployed dogs and drones as well as armored tactical assault vehicles. Law enforcement believe the teenagers are in the bush鈥攏o vehicles have been reported stolen in the area. It鈥檚 possible they slipped out in a vehicle, but more likely they鈥檙e waist-deep in the听unforgiving subarctic bush of the Hudson Bay Lowlands.听

I spent a week backpacking in the bush of the Arctic Ocean watershed near here last summer researching a missing persons case. This is one of the world鈥檚 largest wetlands: swamps, bogs and fens with dwarf birch and stunted tamarack, waist-deep water and muskeg that is like walking atop miles of used, soaked mattresses. There are wolves and occasionally polar bears, but the biggest threat is being eaten by mosquitoes and a half-dozen varieties of biting flies. Gloves, bug netting, and highly-concentrated DEET are all but mandatory, and considering the way the teenagers were traveling, I鈥檇 be surprised if they were prepared for the bush. Could they have stolen a boat and floated down the Nelson River to the saltwater of Hudson Bay? Possibly, but the Nelson is not an easy river to navigate due to a series of dams and rapids.听听

On Wednesday, McCleod and Schmegelsky were charged with second-degree murder for the killing of Dyck. (They remain suspects in the murders of Deese and Fowler.) If convicted鈥攁nd if they don鈥檛 die from exposure in the bush or a firefight with Mounties鈥攖hey will be sentenced to mandatory life in prison without possibility of parole.听听

Schmegelsky鈥檚 father, Alan, . 鈥淎 normal child doesn鈥檛 travel across the country killing people,鈥� he said. 鈥淎 child in some very serious pain does.鈥� Alan and Bryer鈥檚 mother divorced in 2005. Bryer bounced between homes and was last living with his grandmother in Port Alberni. Alan says his son was consumed by YouTube and video games. A video game user provided photos from last fall showing Bryer in battle fatigues, another in a gas mask, and Nazi memorabilia including a swastika armband and a knife issued to Hitler Youth.听

鈥淭he Mounties are gonna shoot first and ask questions later,鈥� Alan told CTV from his home near Victoria. 鈥淗e鈥檚 going to be dead today or tomorrow, I know that. Rest in peace, Bryer. I love you. I鈥檓 so sorry all this had to happen.鈥澨�

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In the early morning hours of May 29, a helicopter circled Mauna Kahalawai, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, deploying Forward-Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) to detect any sign of life. The searchers were looking for a local hiker who had been missing for nine days.

The missing person was not Amanda Eller, the yoga instructor and physical therapist who now famously survived 17 days in the Hawaiian backcountry in a tank top and capris. It was 35-year-old local man Noah 鈥淜ekai鈥� Mina who, on May 20, set out on the unmarked Kapilau Ridge Trail, also known as the Iao Valley Secret Trail, roughly 20 miles away from the command headquarters for Eller鈥檚 search. 听

But the searchers鈥攁n unemployed arborist, a former听Army Ranger and scuba instructor, and a rappelling guide鈥攚ere the same.

To paraphrase听Robert Koester, a.k.a. Professor Rescue and the听author of , the Bible of search and rescue, a runner tends to run themselves out of the search area pretty fast. That鈥檚 just what Eller, 35, did on May 8. She鈥檇 intended to do a routine three-mile trail run in the Makawao Forest Reserve, a 2,000-acre rainforest that shoulders the massive Haleakala volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Eller, a local, ducked down a little side path for a meditation break. When she stood up to continue on the main trail, she got turned around, forgetting which way she鈥檇 come in. And as outdoor athletes can and sometimes do, she pushed herself swiftly and confidently in the wrong direction, determined not to backtrack, so that her hourlong outing turned into a 17-day bushwhack from hell.

After her boyfriend, Benjamin Konkel, reported her missing to the Maui police department on the morning of May 9, authorities located Eller鈥檚 white 2015 Toyota RAV4 at the Hunter鈥檚 Trail trailhead. Her phone, wallet, and water bottle were locked inside the car. Her car key was found hidden behind a tire. This wasn鈥檛 necessarily unusual鈥攕he wouldn鈥檛 need her phone on a short听familiar route, and the only thing you can do with a car key in the forest is lose it. There was no immediate sign of foul play; Konkel took a lie-detector test and passed.

According to the federal (NamUs), Hawaii ranks eighth in the United States in number of missing persons. (Alaska is far and away number one.)听Whereas in most of the United States the county sheriff is in charge of search and rescue, in Hawaii听the sheriff division of the Hawaii Department of Public Safety acts more like a state police. On Maui, the county fire department is in charge of search and rescue. The Maui police department and the Maui County Department of Fire and听Public Safety were joined by dog teams from the volunteer organization Maui Search and听Rescue. In a matter of hours there were helicopters, drones, dogs, and trained boots on the ground. Dozens of volunteers showed up to help scour the trails.

鈥淲e would take anybody who could walk,鈥� says Sarah Haynes, a friend who was deputized into helping organize the search and taking the role of family spokesperson while Eller鈥檚 parents, John and Julie, were unreachable for the first two days while on a diving trip. 听听

At first听all those searchers were organized under the direction of Maui Fire, who are well versed in incident command. But on听May 11, mandated by a 72-hour limit on rescue-personnel efforts, Maui Fire had to pull the plug on the official search. As of Sunday, May 12, the volunteers were on their own, an army without an officer. That鈥檚 when arborist Chris Berquist, 33, and Javier Cantellops, 37, a former听Special Operations Army Ranger, scuba instructor, and free diver who鈥檇 taught scuba to Eller, stepped in. 听听

I鈥檝e studied myriad missing-person searches while researching my forthcoming book, The Cold Vanish (Grand Central Publishing, 2020). Searches are like snowflakes in that no two are alike, but the hunt for Amanda Eller was special鈥攐nly in part because she survived.

In most cases, after the official search is called off and the incident command goes home, the effort is left to family, friends, and sometimes a handful of locals who want to help. The lost person is at the mercy of familial and demographic privilege; in short, who looks for you when the pros go home is a crapshoot. Some searches get a figurative shot of vitamin B when an incident-command expert steps in to run an intensive two- or three-day ad hoc search. The Jon Francis Foundation, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that helps families of persons missing in the wild, will sometimes organize a skilled search of seven to ten days. Neal Keller, father of runner Joe Keller, who disappeared in the San Luis Valley of Colorado in 2015, would fly out from his home in Tennessee to take lonely hikes and horseback rides in the mountains until Joe鈥檚 body was found in 2016. Professional adventurer Roman Dial utilized his skillset to search for his son Cody, who vanished in 2014 in the Costa Rican jungle; Cody鈥檚 body was found two years later. Randy Gray, a surfer whose son Jacob went missing on his bicycle in Washington鈥檚听Olympic National Park听in 2017, left his contracting job to turn over every rock in the Sol Duc River looking for his son.

But these are exceptions, not the rule. And what made the search for Eller especially unique was the army of fit, motivated islanders and the sacrifices made by Cantellops and Berquist, who didn鈥檛 even know Eller when she vanished. 鈥淲e need people who are comfortable being outside six to eight hours a day,鈥� Berquist told 听from the operations yurt that was erected on site. There were 60 to 150 searchers there every day for two solid weeks. And the spirit was such that they would have stayed longer.

At first, after Maui Fire packed up, things were as DIY as homemade soap. But 鈥淐hris showed up and the next thing you know he鈥檚 on the other side of the table,鈥� Haynes says of Berquist. 鈥淚t quickly exploded and we got a small team of people together who then had hundreds of people under them.鈥�

Soon the camp looked like an aid station at an ultramarathon鈥攖ables lined with energy drinks and piled with nutrition bars听and donated sandwiches from local restaurants. A generator hummed behind the yurt. People shuttled听in the most precious commodity for a tropical emergency like this: ice, to keep searchers cool in the humid 90-degree heat. FAA-certified drone pilots flew cameras over the forest canopy. Experienced hikers and fast packers were able to cross off chunks of map. Rappellers spidered down cliffs; free divers checked ponds and pools. Hunters even killed boars and examined their intestines. Maui Search and听Rescue ran dog teams. A GoFundMe site raised more than $70,000 to help offset private helicopter costs, which can run over $1,000听an hour. And Berquist is quick to point out that members of Maui Fire were still assisting behind the scenes even after they had to officially step down.

Who keeps track of all that activity, all that searching? Berquist and Cantellops started with a flip phone and a legal pad. With the help of Haynes and Elena Pray, 29, a rappelling guide for Rappel Maui, they began by handing out paper 鈥減irate maps鈥濃�擷 marks the spot, with a hairball problem of solving for X. All volunteers had to be checked in, accounted for, and checked out. Their routes and notes had to be logged and added to the map. When needed, Pray would be called to rappel into an area. 鈥淥ne afternoon we assisted a group of searchers out of a deep gulch using technical rope gear just minutes shy of darkness,鈥� she told me. One volunteer, Stephie Garrett, went from yurt ops to being a search-team leader. A Swiss tourist named Susann Schuh spent her vacation organizing data for stacked 12-hour days.

Gradually computers were plugged in and the team utilized apps that allowed coordinators to color in specific areas that had been scoured, aided by the tech expertise of Eller鈥檚 father, John, an executive in telematics, the intersection of communications and information technology. Troy Helmer, a local hunter, scouted the topography and consulted on the battle plan. 鈥淭roy knows that area better than anyone in Maui,鈥� Cantellops told me.

Still, for two weeks听the searchers found nothing. Surveillance cameras at a grocery store in Haiku showed Eller shopping the morning of May 8. A time stamp on a package placed her at the post office. Police reviewed video footage from doorbell security cameras on the road from Haiku to Makawao to see if she had been abducted or followed. 鈥淪he was alone in the car and having a normal day,鈥� Haynes says, 鈥渟o we felt strongly that she took herself to the forest in unsuspicious circumstances.鈥� Hikers reported having seen Eller鈥攖hey听chatted briefly and she听pet their dog.

Still, it was hard to not think of foul play. When Occam鈥檚 razor doesn鈥檛 prove out quickly, the void left by a vanished person is quickly filled with speculation. Armchair investigators on Facebook and Websleuths听figured that if she hadn鈥檛 fallen down a lava tube or been eaten by wild pigs, she鈥檇 surely been abducted. The boyfriend must have offed her, they theorized, and cheated on the polygraph. Or it could have been an ex. A jealous coworker. She probably stumbled across one of many illegal marijuana operations. Maybe there was a serial killer on the loose.

And out came the psychics. The trail of any missing person in the wild is paved with psychics. Most of them saw her dead. They saw men with tattoos. They saw her tied up and being thrown off a cliff. 听听

Eller鈥檚 case reminded me of Amy Bechtel鈥檚 disappearance听in the Wind River Range of Wyoming in 1997. Both women were runners. Both left valuables in their white Toyotas at a place where they presumably parked to run. Both had partners who were suspected of foul play, and tip lines flooded by psychics. As with Bechtel, whose disappearance has never been solved, chances of Eller being found alive were growing increasingly grim.

As all these theories and leads swirled around him, Berquist kept disciplined. He was so dedicated to the search that his employer鈥攁 landscaping company鈥攆ired him. That didn鈥檛 deter him from showing up to look for Eller day after day. 鈥淲e are nowhere close to stopping by any means,鈥� he told Maui Now. 鈥淲e have so much more that we can do out here, we鈥檙e gonna continue to push it.鈥�

Lost persons, mainly deceased, are often found within an original search area. In this case, the computer mapping allowed searchers to see that they鈥檇 fairly saturated the original 1.5-mile radius. On the afternoon of Friday, May 24, Berquist realized he needed to plan for the Memorial Day weekend, when many more volunteers would show up to search. He thought they might need to move the yurt to another location, to push past the radius they鈥檇 been focusing on for the past two weeks. He, Cantellops, and Helmer climbed into pilot Pete Vorhes鈥檚 yellow Hughes 369D for a reconnaissance flight.

This was the breakthrough. 鈥淚 just felt that she was alive, man,鈥� Cantellops would tell The Today Show the following Monday. 鈥淚f we haven鈥檛 found her and we haven鈥檛 smelled her, that鈥檚 because she鈥檚 on the move, she鈥檚 moving out and she鈥檚 way farther out than we think she is.鈥�

With only 15 minutes of fuel remaining, the men on the helicopter prepared to turn around. They were now outside the boundary of Makawao Forest Reserve, about seven miles from where Eller鈥檚 car had been found. That鈥檚 when they saw Eller on the riverbank, between two waterfalls, waving furiously.

Overnight, the story of Eller鈥檚 ordeal would erupt in newspapers and on morning shows. She could see and hear helicopters, she recalled, but they never saw her. Day three听is when she went from panicked, lost-person mode into survival mode, searching for clean water and foraging for food. She fell 20 feet off a cliff, breaking her leg and tearing the meniscus in her knee. She was reduced to crawling. It rained, and her running shoes got swept away in a flash flood. Temperatures at night dipped to near 60, potentially hypothermic conditions when it鈥檚 wet. She had nothing but her yoga pants and a tank top. To keep warm, she covered herself with ferns, leaves, and forest duff. She slept in a boar鈥檚 nest.

She ate听plants she didn鈥檛 know, some strawberries, and guava. For protein听she swallowed an occasional moth. Maui waterfalls look fresh on postcards but can contain Leptospira, a genus of bacteria that causes a whole buffet of problems including meningitis, kidney failure, and death. But to not drink meant certain death.

Eller lost 20 pounds in those 17 days. In addition to her broken leg, she had a severe skin infection from sunburn. But thanks to the determination of friends and strangers, she is expected to make a full recovery.

On Sunday, May 26, not 48 hours after Eller was found, I got a text from Javier Cantellops. He couldn鈥檛 talk, he said; they were getting in a helicopter听to look for another missing person. As with Eller, local authorities had searched for three days for Noah Mina, after he disappeared on May 20 from the Kapilau Ridge Trail. But because the terrain was so technical, Mina鈥檚 father, Vincent, issued a statement advising against ordinary volunteers trying to find him. 听

Searchers did find Mina鈥檚 flip-flops. But, Cantellops told me, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not unusual. A lot of locals here hike barefoot.鈥� 听

I caught up with Cantellops on Tuesday morning, as he and Berquist were gearing up to search. Elena Pray was already in the helicopter. 鈥淭his is a totally technical search,鈥� he said. 鈥淗elicopters with FLIR, drones. It鈥檚 like Mina鈥檚 dad said: No boots on the ground.鈥�

鈥淭his is not a place where people go,鈥� he continued. 鈥淪heer 2,400-foot faces. This is the most primal part of Maui. You鈥檝e seen the mountains in maybe North Carolina or Georgia鈥攕mooth, round? This isn鈥檛 like that. This is Afghanistan, man.鈥�

But with the help of technology, the efforts of Berquist, Cantellops, and Pray paid off. This time, however, the ending was not a happy one. 鈥淚n the early morning hours of Wednesday, May 29,鈥� read a family statement issued on the public Facebook page Bring Kekai Home, 鈥渁 crew of searchers aboard a helicopter spotted the body of missing hiker Noah 鈥楰ekai鈥櫶齅ina. Mina was found about 300 feet below a fall line in the summit region of Mauna Kahalawai. Recovery efforts are currently underway.鈥�

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鈥淓xcept for the time I was digging my own grave at gunpoint on the edge of , I hadn鈥檛 much experience with a shovel.鈥� So begins , the third Jane Bunker Mystery by Linda Greenlaw, the lobster-boat captain made famous in Sebastian Junger鈥檚 . Her heroine is a former Miami homicide detective turned insurance investigator who travels to Acadia Island to check out a mysterious house fire. Bunker discovers a body among the ashes, the victim boiled alive鈥斺�渓ike a lobster鈥濃�攁nd then burned to cover the crime. Meanwhile, a nor鈥檈aster maroons her on the island with the killer.

Shiver Hitch is just one of several new installments in outdoor mystery series worth tossing in your pack. , Erik Storey鈥檚 sophomore release in his Clyde Barr series, finds the tattooed ex-inmate, ex-mercenary riding west from Colorado on his horse to clear his head. When he stumbles into hired-hand work on a ranch on Ute tribal lands in northeastern Utah, he finds that a dangerous motorcycle gang called the Reapers has moved onto the rez, wreaking havoc. What ensues is a Sam Peckinpah via Peter Fonda motorcycle western, but with drones. Storey, who lives in Grand Junction, Colorado, is a former ranch hand and wilderness guide; he gives a high-country nod to the influence of legendary Florida mystery 颅writer when, near the end, the hero reaches for a Travis McGee novel. Barr may be to the mountains what McGee is to the swamps. 鈥淎t night, when the sun dropped below the rocky mesas to the west, the higher hills and mountains to the east would bleed red in the alpenglow.鈥� The mountains most 颅certainly don鈥檛听do all the bleeding before Barr rides off with the sunrise at his back.听

The catalyst for Keith McCafferty鈥檚 鈥攎y favorite of the bunch鈥攊s the true story of the sportsman鈥檚 lost Ark of the Covenant: Ernest Hemingway鈥檚 steamer trunk full of high-end that was either lost or pilfered in 1940 while the novelist was en route to Sun Valley, Idaho. McCafferty鈥檚 hero, Sean Stranahan, is just the man to untangle the lines when a vintage leather fly wallet turns up in a dead woman鈥檚 saddlebag. Strana颅han is a part-time trout guide, water颅colorist, and private investigator who drives a 1976 Land Cruiser, lives in a tepee, and sleeps with most of the women he meets, including a one-armed former rodeo queen.听

This is the sixth Stranahan mystery, but it鈥檚 his intermittent lover, sheriff Martha Ettinger, who the reader wants to drink with. The law woman gets a finger shot off and keeps it in a jar of tequila on her pantry shelf. Bodies keep turning up in her backcountry鈥攐ne was even found in a bear cave鈥攁nd it鈥檚 up to Ettinger to pack them out. 鈥淭he 颅horses鈥� eyes went to disks like they did when you diamond-hitched elk quarters on to a pack saddle. It reminded Martha that in the end a human being was just another kind of meat.鈥� The tackle caper takes Stranahan to Michigan, Wyoming, and Cuba, but it鈥檚 the fictional Hyalite County, Montana, that gives the book such noir terroir.

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July 23, 2015 was the eve of Joseph Lloyd Keller’s 19th听birthday.听The Cleveland, Tennessee, native had been spending the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at Cleveland State Community College on a western road trip with buddies Collin Gwaltney and Christian Fetzner in Gwaltney鈥檚 old Subaru. The boys had seen Las Vegas, San Francisco, and the Grand Canyon before heading to Joe鈥檚 aunt and uncle鈥檚 dude ranch, the , in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado.

The ranch is in Conejos County, which is bigger than Rhode Island, with 8,000 residents and no stoplights. Sheep graze in the sunshine; potatoes and barley are grown here and trucked north to Denver. Three new marijuana dispensaries in the tiny town of Antonito lure New Mexicans across the nearby state line.

Conejos鈥擲panish for 鈥渞abbits鈥濃�攊s one of the poorest counties in Colorado. It鈥檚 also a helluva place to get lost. While its eastern plains stretch across the agricultural San Luis Valley, its western third rises into the 1.8-million-acre Rio Grande National Forest, which sprawls over parts of nine counties. Go missing out here and your fate relies, in no small part, on which of those nine counties you were in when you disappeared.

Joe, a competitive runner, open-颅water swimmer, and obstacle-course racer, and Collin, a member of the varsity cross-颅country team at Division I Tennessee Tech, had been running together often during their trip. Neither was totally acclimatized to the altitude鈥攖he ranch sits just below 9,000 feet. Joe was a bit slower than his friend. He suffered from asthma as a three-year-old but had kicked it by age 12. The workout would be routine: an hourlong run, likely along Forest Road 250, which bisects the ranch and continues into the national forest, following the Conejos River upstream.

Joe left his phone and wallet at the ranch house. He wore only red running shorts, blue trail shoes, and an Ironman watch. Shirtless, with blond anime hair and ripped muscles, he looked more like a California lifeguard than a Tennessee farm kid.

4:30 p.m. The friends started out to颅gether. Neither runner knew the area, but old-timers will tell you that even a blind man could find his way out of Conejos Canyon: on the south side, runner鈥檚 left, cattle graze in open meadows along the river. On the north side, 颅ponderosa pines birthday-颅candle the steep tuff until they hit sheer basalt cliffs, a massive canyon wall rising 2,000 feet above the gravel road toward 11,210-foot .

As the two young men jogged by the corral, one of the female wranglers yelled, 鈥淧ick it up!鈥� They smiled and Joe sprinted up the road before the two settled into their respective paces, with Collin surging ahead.

The GPS track on Collin鈥檚 watch shows him turning right off Forest Road 250 onto the ranch drive and snaking up behind the lodge, trying to check out three geologic outcroppings鈥擣aith, Hope, and Charity鈥攖hat loom over the ranch. But the run became a scramble, so he cut back down toward the road and headed upriver. A fly-fisherman says he saw Collin 2.5 miles up the road but not Joe. Collin never encountered his friend; he timed out his run at a pace that led to puking due to the altitude.

No Joe. Collin moseyed back to the ranch house and waited. An hour later, he started to worry.

When Joe didn鈥檛 show up to get ready for dinner, Collin and Christian drove up the road, honking and waiting for Joe to come limping toward the road like a lost steer. At 7:30, a small patrol of ranch hands hiked up the rocks toward Faith, the closest formation. By 9:30 there were 35 people out looking. 鈥淚f he was hurt, he would have heard us,鈥� recalled Joe鈥檚 uncle, David Van Berkum, 47. 鈥淗e was either not conscious or not there.鈥�

鈥淭he first 24 hours are key,鈥� says Robert Koester, a.k.a. Professor Rescue, author of the search and rescue guidebook . Koester was consulted on the Keller case and noted that, like most missing runners, Joe wasn鈥檛 dressed for a night outside. Plus, he says, it wouldn鈥檛 have been unusual for a young athlete like Joe to switch from run to scramble mode. 鈥淗eading for higher ground is a known strategy for a lost person,鈥� he says. 鈥淢aybe you can get a better vista. And based on his age, it might just have been a fun thing to do.鈥�

Around 10 p.m., the Van Berkums called the Conejos County Sheriff鈥檚 Department, and sheriff Howard Galvez and two deputies showed up around midnight. It was now Joe鈥檚 birthday. At this point, the effort was still what pros call a hasty search鈥攓uick and dirty, focusing on the most logical areas.

It was a warm night, and everyone still expected Joe to find his way back at daybreak, wild story in tow. That morning, as ranch employees and guests continued the search, Jane Van Berkum, 48, alerted Joe鈥檚 parents鈥擹oe, 56, and Neal, 59. Zoe and Jane are sisters, originally from Kenya; their family, British expats, left the country in the 1970s. It took the Kellers and their 17-year-old daughter, Hannah, less than 24 hours to get to the ranch from Tennessee, flying into Albuquerque, New Mexico, and renting a car for the three-and-a-half-hour drive north.

The family arrived at 2 a.m. In the morning, at 6 a.m., the professional search began: starting at what searchers call the point last seen, the ranch鈥檚 big ponderosa pine gate, a deputy fire chief from La Plata County named Roy Vreeland, 64, and his Belgian malinois scent dog, Cayenne, picked up a direction of 颅travel, which pointed up Forest Road 250. More dogs arrived from Albuquerque鈥攁nd identified different directions of travel or none at all. Additional firefighters drove over from La Plata 颅County. Everyone on the ground鈥攁s is largely the case with search and rescue鈥攚ere volunteers.

There was nothing to go on. In that first week, the search engaged about 15 dogs and 200 people on foot, horseback, and ATV. An infrared-equipped airplane from the flew over the area. Collin鈥檚 brother Tanner set up a GoFundMe site that paid for a helicopter to search for five hours, and a volunteer flew his fixed-wing aircraft in the canyon multiple times. A guy with a drone buzzed the steep embankments along听Highway 17, the closest paved road, and the rock formation Faith, which has a cross on top. A $10,000 reward was posted for information. How far could a shirtless kid in running shoes get?

But after several days, volunteers began going home, pulled by other obligations. The few who remained did interviews, followed up on leads, and worked teams and dogs. But the search was already winding down. 鈥淲e had a very lim颅ited number of people,鈥� one volunteer told me. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 fairly typical in Colorado. You put out calls and people say, 鈥榃ell, if he hasn鈥檛 been found in that time, I have to go to work.鈥� 鈥�

The absence of clues left a vacuum that quickly filled with anger, resentment, false hopes, and conspiracy theories. A tourist with a time-stamped receipt from a little gift shop in nearby Horca swore she saw two men on the road but later changed her story. A psychic reached out on Facebook to report a vision that Joe was west of Sedona, Arizona. There was even a theory that he鈥檇 been kidnapped in order to have his organs harvested and sold on the black market. 鈥淲e feel like he鈥檚 not in that area, he鈥檚 been taken from there,鈥� Neal Keller would tell me months later.

鈥淚鈥檓 a scientist,鈥� Koester says. 鈥淚鈥檓 fond of Occam鈥檚 razor.鈥� That鈥檚 the principle that the simplest explanation usually holds true. 鈥淵ou could have a band of terrorists tie him to a tree and interrogate him. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No.鈥�

Joe Keller had just joined the foggy stratum of the hundreds or maybe thousands of people who鈥檝e gone missing on our federal public lands. Thing is, nobody knows how many. The National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, calls unidentified remains and missing persons 鈥渢he nation鈥檚 silent mass disaster,鈥� estimating that on any given day there are between 80,000 and 90,000 people ac颅tively listed with law enforcement as missing. The majority of those, of course, disappear in populated areas.

What I wanted to know was how many people are missing in our wild places, the roughly 640 million acres of federal lands鈥攊ncluding national parks, national forests, and Bureau of Land Management prop颅erty. Cases like 51-year-old , who, in 2013, vanished from a short petroglyph-viewing trail near the gift shop at Colorado鈥檚 Mesa Verde National Park. , a 22-year-old rafting guide, who was wearing a professional-grade personal flotation device when he disappeared in 2015 in Grand Canyon National Park during a hike after setting up camp. Ohioan , who vanished from the Pa颅cific Crest Trail last fall. At least two people have recently gone missing outside the national forest where I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There are scores more stories like this.

The Department of the Interior knows how many wolves and grizzly bears roam its wilds鈥攃an鈥檛 it keep track of visitors who disappear? But the government does not actively aggregate such statistics. The Department of Justice keeps a database, the 颅, but reporting missing persons is voluntary in all but ten states, and law-enforcement and coroner participation is voluntary as well. So a lot of the missing are also missing from the database.

After the September 11 颅attacks, In颅terior tried to build its own data颅base to track law-enforcement actions across lands managed by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. (The Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture.) The result, the 颅Incident Management Analysis and听Reporting System, is a 鈥攍ast year, only 14 percent of the听several hundred reportable incidents were entered into it. The system is so flawed that Fish and Wildlife has said no thanks and听refuses to use it.

That leaves the only estimates to civilians and conspiracy theorists. Aficionados of the vanished believe that at least 1,600 people, and perhaps many times that number, 颅remain missing on public lands under circumstances that defy easy explanation.

Numbers aside, it matters tremen颅dously where you happen to disappear. If you vanish in a 颅municipality, the local police department is likely to look for you. The police can obtain 颅assistance from the county sheriff or, in other cases, state police or university law enforcement. If foul play is 颅suspected, your state鈥檚 bureau of investigation can 颅decide to get involved. Atop that is the FBI. With the exception of the sheriff, however, these 颅organizations don鈥檛 tend to go rifling through the woods unless your case turns into a criminal one.

But all those bets are off when you disappear in the wild. While big national parks like Yosemite operate almost as sovereign states, with their own crack search and rescue teams, go missing in most western states and, with the exception of New Mexico and Alaska, statutes that date back to the Old West stipulate that you鈥檙e now the responsibility of the county sheriff.

鈥淭here are no federal standards for terrestrial search and rescue,鈥� Koester says. 鈥淰ery few states have standards. A missing person is a local problem. It鈥檚 a historical institution from when the sheriff was the only organized government.鈥� And when it comes to the locals riding to your rescue, Koester says, 鈥淭here鈥檚 a vast spectrum of capability.鈥�

Take : it has just one full-time law-颅enforcement officer, who wasn鈥檛 given clearance to talk to 国产吃瓜黑料. Ranger Andrea Jones of the 377,314-acre Conejos Peak district, where Joe disappeared, did lament to me that sometimes she discovers cases in the 颅weekly newspaper. 鈥淥n occasions when we initially learn about a search and rescue in the forest from the 颅local media,鈥� she explained, 鈥渋t鈥檚 difficult for us to properly engage, communicate, and offer available knowledge or resources.鈥�

But wherever you are, once a search goes from rescue to recovery, most of those resources dry up.

On August 4, 2015, after Joe had been missing for 13 days, Sheriff Galvez pulled the plug on the official search. What had 颅begun as a barnyard musical was now a ghost story. The river鈥攁lready dropping quickly鈥攈ad been searched and ruled out. Dog teams had scratched up nothing. Abandoned 颅cabins had been searched and searched again. 鈥淚 mean, we checked the pit toilets at the 颅campgrounds鈥攚e did everything,鈥� Galvez said. 鈥淲e even collected bear crap. We still have it in the evidence freezer.鈥�

Galvez had been elected sheriff only nine months earlier, and while he had years of law-颅enforcement experience, he had no background leading search and rescue operations. One responder told me that by the time he arrived on the second day of searching, tension was already rising between Keller and Sheriff Galvez. Keller felt that Galvez wasn鈥檛 doing enough; Galvez felt that Keller was in the way, barking orders and criticizing his crew.

When dogs and volunteers start to go back to their lives and the aircraft return to the hangar, a missing-persons search can look eerily quiet. 鈥淔or a lost person, the response is limited to five days on average,鈥� Keller told me. 鈥淭here needs to be a plan for applying resources for a little bit longer.鈥�

The Keller family hired two private investigators, who turned up nothing. Zoe Keller told me that it was a waste of $800 a day; one of the investigators told me he鈥檇 never had a case with less to go on. The reward was raised from $10,000 to $25,000 and then to $50,000, but as David Van Berkum said, 鈥淭here just isn鈥檛 a sniff of anything.鈥�

Two weeks after Joe鈥檚 cold vanish, Alamosa County undersheriff Shawn Woods, who had been called in to assist by the Colo颅rado Bureau of Investigation, told Keller about a tracker he knew named Alan Duffy. A 71-year-old surgical assistant, Duffy became interested in bloodhounds when his 21-year-old brother, David, disappeared in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1978; he was found dead of gunshot wounds six weeks later. Duffy has since taken his dogs to search JonBen茅t Ramsey鈥檚 neighborhood and to track stolen horses in Wyoming. Calling in Duffy was a wild card, as are so many things in a case like this.

On August 15, Duffy loaded three-year-old R.C.鈥攏amed after Royal Crown Cola, on account of his black and tan coat鈥攊nto his Jeep and drove 300 miles from Broomfield, Colorado, to the Rainbow Trout Ranch. A deputy gave him a scent item, one of Joe鈥檚 used sock liners. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 as good as underwear,鈥� Duffy said.

Duffy will tell you that bloodhounds are out of fashion. 鈥淭hey fart and they drool,鈥� he said. They鈥檙e susceptible to disease, they die young, and you can鈥檛 let them off a lead 颅under any circumstances. 鈥淓verybody wants a shepherd,鈥� he says. But going old-school has its advantages. 鈥淲ho鈥檚 gonna find you? It鈥檚 not a shepherd. It鈥檚 not a Mexican Chihuahua. It鈥檚 not a pig. You know how they say a great white shark can smell a drop of blood in 颅water five miles away? That鈥檚 a bloodhound.鈥�

R.C.鈥檚 trigger word to sniff for a living person, as opposed to human remains, is find. For search and rescue assignments, R.C. wears his orange harness, with Duffy holding the lead. After four hours of searching, Duffy switched R.C.鈥檚 harness to his black collar and told him, 鈥淲e鈥檙e gonna go gizmo,鈥� the dog鈥檚 cue for cadaver mode.

Four and a half miles up Forest Road 250, at Spectacle Lake鈥攁 murky pond, really鈥擱.C. circled, tugged at vegetation on the bank, bit at the water, then jumped in and sat in the shallows. 鈥淗e wouldn鈥檛 leave,鈥� Duffy said.

Duffy wasn鈥檛 convinced, necessarily, that a body was in the lake, and he explained that scent is drawn toward water and believed that there was a corpse somewhere nearby. Rain or critters could have depos颅ited cadaver material in the lake, enough to set off alarms in R.C.鈥檚 snout. But at four and a half miles听from Joe鈥檚 point last seen, the lake was at the far end of the ground game鈥檚 probabilities. Duffy offered up a few more scenarios, some of which upset the Van Berkums鈥攕uch as when he told them that R.C. had picked up human-remains scents under buildings on the ranch. But with few other sources of help, desperation had led to Duffy. 鈥淎t least he was trying,鈥� Joe鈥檚 mom, Zoe, told me. 鈥淗e could have been right.鈥�

Continued searches in August turned up nothing. Neal Keller was commuting back and forth between Tennessee and Conejos County, searching every moment he could. In October 2015, when he and the sheriff were no longer on speaking terms, he urged the county commissioners for more help, including a dive team to search Spectacle Lake. 鈥淚, as the father of a missing boy鈥攎y only son, actually鈥攚ould like to have as much resources as could possibly be made available,鈥� he told the officials.

Keller was feeling the stress. He lost 15 pounds from hiking and scrambling in the altitude. Just before Thanksgiving, he, 颅David Van Berkum, and a small posse spent two days searching the snow-covered scree west of the ranch. It was the area that seemed most logical, but it鈥檚 mean terrain. 鈥淲e went in there because that area was likely the least searched,鈥� he told me. No Joe. Keller would have to spend the long Colo颅rado winter still not knowing.

The canyon now belonged to the snowmobilers and coyotes. Next season鈥檚 fly-fishers and ranch guests wouldn鈥檛 show up in any numbers until the snow melted in spring.

I first stepped through the missing-颅persons portal back in 1997, when researching updates on Amy Wroe Bechtel, a runner who鈥檇 vanished in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, where I lived.

My intrigue only grew. I tend toward insomnia and the analog, and each night in bed I listen with earbuds to Coast to Coast AM on a tiny radio. The program, which explores all sorts of mysteries of the paranormal, airs from 1 to 5 a.m. in my time zone. It鈥檚 syndicated on over 600 stations and boasts 颅nearly three million listeners each week. Most of the time, the talk of space aliens and ghosts lulls me to sleep, but not when my favorite guest, David Paulides, is at the mic.

Paulides, an ex-cop from San Jose, California, is the founder of the . His obsession shifted from Sasquatch to missing persons when, he says, he was visited at his motel near an unnamed national park by two out-of-颅uniform rangers who claimed that something strange was going on with the number of people missing in America鈥檚 national parks. (He wouldn鈥檛 tell me the place or even the year, 鈥渇or fear the Park Service will try to put the pieces together and ID them.鈥�) So in 2011, Paulides launched the , which catalogs cases of people who disappear鈥攐r are found鈥攐n wildlands across North America under what he calls mysterious circumstances. He has self-published six volumes in his popular , most recently Missing 411 Hunters: Unexplained Disappearances. Paulides expects , a 颅documentary codirected by his son, Ben, and featuring Survivorman Les Stroud, to be released this year.

Last May, I met him at a pizza joint in downtown 颅Golden. The gym-fit Paulides, who moved from California to Colorado in part for the skiing, is right out of central casting for a detective film.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 put any theories in the books鈥擨 just connect facts,鈥� he told me. Under 鈥渦nique factors of disappearances,鈥� he lists such 颅recurring characteristics as dogs unable to track scents, the time (late afternoon is a popular window to vanish), and that many victims are found with clothing and footwear removed. Bodies are also discovered in previously searched areas with odd fre颅quency, 颅sometimes right along the trail. Children鈥攁nd remains鈥攁re occasionally found improbable 颅distances from the point last seen, in improbable 颅terrain.

It鈥檚 tempting to dismiss Paulides as a crypto-kook鈥攁nd some search and rescue professionals do鈥攂ut his books are extensively researched. On a large map of North America on his office wall,

Paulides has identified 59 clusters of people missing on federal wildlands in the U.S. and southern Canada. To qualify as a cluster, there must be at least four cases; according to his pins, you want to watch your step in Yosemite, Crater Lake, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Parks. But then, it would seem you want to watch your step everywhere in the wild. The map resembles a game of pin the tail on the donkey at an amphetamine-fueled birthday party.

Paulides has spent hundreds of hours writing letters and Freedom of Information Act requests in an attempt to break through National Park Service red tape. He believes the Park Service in particular for fear that the sheer numbers鈥攁nd the ways in which people went missing鈥攚ould shock the public so badly that visitor numbers would go down.

Paulides brought along a missing-persons activist named Heidi Streetman, an affiliate faculty member at Denver鈥檚 Regis University who teaches research methods. After reading the Missing 411 series, she became frustrated that there was no searchable 颅database for families of the disappeared. In 2014, she floated a petition titled It now has over 7,000 signers, with a goal of 10,000.

Streetman, a spirited 56-year-old who spent her childhood camping all over Colorado, is beset with the case of Dale 颅Stehling, a 51-year-old Texan who vanished on on a 100-颅degree Sunday afternoon in June 2013. The trail is rated moderate, but it was hot and Stehling didn鈥檛 have water. At the petroglyphs, where he was last seen, there is an intersection with an old access trail, where his wife, Denean, believes he may have left the main trail. 鈥淚f there was a way to get lost, Dale would find it,鈥� she says.

But even if Stehling had taken the wrong, overgrown path, he surely would have realized his mistake and backtracked. Maybe he collapsed in the heat. But rangers searched that area extensively on foot, with dogs, and in helicopters with firefighting crews. They sent climbers rappelling down cliffy areas and collected a whole trunk鈥檚 worth of knapsacks, cameras, purses, wallets, 颅water bottles, and binoculars鈥攏one of them Stehling鈥檚. The park superintendent, , a 32-year Park Service veteran, still holds search and rescue training exercises in the area, just in case they come across a clue. 鈥淭he thing that gets me,鈥� he told me, 鈥渋s in all my years with the Park Service, I don鈥檛 recall five cases like this.鈥�

It鈥檚 not likely that legislation would help the Stehling family, but an amendment to an existing law recently made it easier for volunteer search and rescue outfits to access federal wildlands with less red tape. The issue of permit approval is largely one of liability insurance, but the expedited access for qualified volunteers to 颅national parks and forests, and now they can search within 48 hours of filing the paperwork. More such laws would make things easier for experts like , 63, a retired Michigan State Police detective who now specializes in backcountry search and recovery. Neiger lauds Streetman鈥檚 database and wants to take it further. He鈥檇 like to see a searchable resource that gives volunteers like himself the same information that government officials have鈥攊ncluding case profiles, topo maps, dog tracks, and weather.

On February 4, 2016, Keller went to Denver to attend a ceremony for the inaugural . With families of the missing gathered around them, legislators passed resolutions creating the annual event. Keller stood in the capitol, listening as his son鈥檚 name was read aloud. It was one of 300.

In late May 2016, I visited Conejos 颅County. A month earlier, two Antonito men had been reported overdue from a camping trip to Duck Lake, less than three miles southwest of the Rainbow Trout Ranch, during a spring storm that dumped two feet of wet snow. Teams were called in from Min颅eral and Archuleta Counties, along with the ski patrol, based 100 miles west on Highway 17. One of the men managed to struggle back to Horca; the ski patrol eventually found the frozen remains of the other.

The search had also resumed for Joe. Earlier in May, more than 30 volunteers, including Keller, Collin, and 11 dogs from the nonprofit , had spent about a week crisscrossing Conejos Canyon. The mission was to either find a needle in a haystack or to significantly reduce the probability that the youth was in a 2.9-mile 颅ra颅dius of the point last seen.

The search was organized by the , a Minnesota nonprofit that, since 2007, has helped more than 40 families with loved ones missing on public land. It was created by David Francis, a retired Naval Reserve captain, after his 24-year-old son, Jon, disappeared in Idaho鈥檚 Custer County in 2006. in a deep ravine the next year by paid members of the Sawtooth Mountain Guides. 鈥淐uster County is the size of Connecticut,鈥� Francis says. 鈥淭he search and rescue budget was $5,000. If you go missing in a poor county, you鈥檙e gonna get a short, somewhat sloppy search. In my mind, that鈥檚 the national disgrace. Everybody knows someone with cancer. But it鈥檚 a minority who know someone gone missing.鈥�

The May search for Joe turned up no sign. But bushwacking off the Duck Lake Trail, about three and a half miles southwest of the ranch, Keller and Gwaltney came upon a sleeping bag, a cook pot, a tarp, and some bug spray鈥攖he gear of the lost campers.

One sunny afternoon, I went looking for Sheriff Galvez and found him outside the Conejos County Jail, on the north side of Antonito, directing inmates in orange jumpsuits as they planted flowers. He wore jeans and a gray canvas shirt, with a pistol on his belt and reading glasses propped on thick salt-and-pepper hair. It was clear that he鈥檇 rather orchestrate landscaping details than talk with the press, but who can blame him? The department has taken a beating on Facebook, Websleuths.com, Dateline, and the . It would be one of our only conversations鈥攁s this article went to press, Galvez didn鈥檛 return repeated calls and e-mails from 国产吃瓜黑料.

鈥淚t鈥檚 been a rough year and a half,鈥� he told me. After the Keller search and the hunt for the Duck Lake campers, he said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 agree that I should be in charge of search and rescue on federal lands. I鈥檓 thinking of going to the state senators and saying I鈥檇 like to be backed out of that, because I don鈥檛 have a $90 million budget.鈥� The starting salary for his five deputies is $27,000. 鈥淚t鈥檇 be more 颅effective, I think,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a small department, a small community. I hear stuff like, 鈥業 can鈥檛 go, my equipment broke down.鈥� 鈥�

Frustration between Galvez and Keller had continued to roil. 鈥淲e had dogs, hikers, aircraft,鈥� the sheriff said. 鈥淗orseback, drones, scent dogs, 颅cadaver dogs. We had so many resources, it was un颅real. When searchers took a break, he criticized all the resources. Cut everybody down.鈥�

鈥淭his is an ongoing investigation for a missing person,鈥� he continued. 鈥淲e have no evidence鈥攈e鈥檚 just missing. It looks more like that than anything else. Over 18, you can run away all you want. If Joe was to call us, show me some proof he鈥檚 OK, I鈥檇 close it up.鈥�

Before I left Conejos County, I took a run up Forest Road 250. I parked at a turnout in front of a massive ponderosa pine with Joe鈥檚 missing-person poster stapled to it, then jogged down to the point last seen and tried to retrace his run. Based on the varying sniffer-dog evidence, some figure that he ran up the road a ways, rounded the first or second bend, then got into trouble. I 颅slowly shuffled upriver. A truck or SUV passed every three minutes or so. Locals told me that in July, the traffic on Forest Road 250 is even heavier. Wouldn鈥檛 someone have听recalled seeing Joe if he鈥檇 stayed on the road? After my run, I rinsed my face in Spectacle Lake; according to Duffy, R.C. could tell him I鈥檇 been here.

On Wednesday, July 6, John Rienstra, 54, a search and rescue hobbyist and endurance runner鈥攁nd a former offensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers鈥� in a boulder field below the cliff band.

鈥淚 heard there had been a lot of searching for two and a half miles,鈥� Rienstra said. 鈥淚 started looking for rapids, caves鈥攃liffs, of course鈥攁nd right at two and half miles, there is a place to pull off the road, and there were cliffs close by. It took me about an hour to get up there to the base of the cliff, and I went left until I ran out of room. Then I turned around and went back toward the ranch on the base of the cliffs and found him.鈥� The area was too rugged for horses or dog teams. When the Colorado Bureau of Investigations came to retrieve the remains, they packed horses in as far as they could, then had to reach Keller on foot.

Joe鈥檚 body was 1.7 miles as the crow flies from the ranch. Searchers had been close. In November 2015, Keller and David Van Berkum had come within several hundred yards. 鈥淚 regret not searching there on the 25th of July,鈥� Keller told me. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where I wish I鈥檇 started. What part of here would take a life? It鈥檚 not the meadow on top; it鈥檚 the cliff.鈥�

鈥淗indsight is always 20/20,鈥� Jane Van Berkum wrote me recently. 鈥淏ut since there was a blanket of snow, I am not sure they would have found him even if they had chosen to go higher. But it is painful to think that they were that close.鈥� Every day, she said, she and her husband had searched for Joe as part of their ranch activities. 鈥淚 have sat on the cliffs many times since he went missing and scanned below over and over, and I never saw him,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat tortures me.鈥�

The preliminary cause of death, according to David Francis, was 鈥渂lunt force trauma to the head.鈥� Jane told me he also suffered a broken ankle. It appears that Joe scrambled up and then fell鈥攑erhaps the lost-person behavior laid out by Professor Rescue, Robert Koester. Occam鈥檚 razor wasn鈥檛 as dull as it had seemed for most of a year.

Still, Joe鈥檚 death remains a mystery to his mother. 鈥淭he events do not fit for a one-hour run before dinner,鈥� Zoe says, 鈥渁fter they had just driven 24 hours straight to get to Rainbow Trout Ranch.鈥� The boys hadn鈥檛 slept in over a day. Joe had just split wood with his uncle David鈥檚 75-year-old father, Doug Van Berkum. She can鈥檛 see her son running up to the canyon rim鈥攕he insists that he did not like heights and was not a 颅climber. 鈥淭here is something we still do not know about what happened, is how I feel about it.鈥�

It鈥檚 hard to put your hunches and suspicions to rest. We鈥檒l never know for certain what happened to Joe Keller. We鈥檒l know even less about what happened to a lot of other people missing in the wild.

One question I had early on was, Are you better or worse off going missing in a national forest than from a Walmart parking lot? I thought I knew the answer. You can see an aerial view of my firewood pile from space on your smartphone. I thought that in the wild, someone would send in the National Guard, the Army Rangers, the A-Team, and that they wouldn鈥檛 rest until they found you. Now I鈥檓 not so sure.

Correspondent Jon Billman () wrote about mountain-biking legend Ned Overend in March 2016.

The post How 1,600 People Went Missing from Our Public Lands Without a Trace appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

It鈥檚 two days after Ned Overend鈥檚 60th birthday, his back hurts, and he鈥檚 staring into the weeds at Suicide Six鈥攂illed as one of the oldest ski areas in the East鈥攑uzzling out how to avoid a broken hip. He pushes his gray carbon cyclocross bike up a 30-degree slope, noting ruts, loose dirt, a toad, and the keen left curve that tomorrow he鈥檒l be taking at considerable velocity during the finishing sprint of the . Overend鈥攌nown to his fans simply as Ned, 脿 la Sting or Prince鈥攕tands five foot eight, weighs 140 pounds, and walks slightly bowlegged, like a cowboy who has forked a horse every day for six decades.听

鈥淭his isn鈥檛 good,鈥� he says.听

Ned is concerned about the myriad loose-gravel descents throughout the 52-mile grinder, essentially a cyclocross race on non-maintained roads. Event director Peter Vollers calls it a gentleman鈥檚 race, since the purse is a faux-plaid-flannel jersey and bragging rights. 鈥淵ou do stupid shit when you鈥檙e racing,鈥� Ned says. It鈥檚 August now. He doesn鈥檛 want an injury to jeopardize his fall season, which would upset his winter fat-bike season鈥攚ith a new national title to defend.听

Ned鈥檚 backache was inflamed by the flight from California, where he spends part of the year working as a brand ambassador for Specialized. He arrived three days early to adjust for jet lag and check out the course. Vollers can鈥檛 believe Ned has come to his race in only its second year. Like gravel-grinder racing in general, the Vermont Overland is swelling in popularity, and there are license plates in the parking lot from all over New England. A racer himself, Vollers shakes Ned鈥檚 hand and asks if he鈥檒l roll through to meet some riders. Ned obliges, but he鈥檚 anxious to recon the course, then get an IPA and hit the sack.听

Watch: The 10 Commandments of Lifelong Fitness

Champion cyclist Ned Overend shares his secrets to crushing racers a third his age

The next morning at the starting line, a field of nearly 500, including six-time national cyclocross champion Tim Johnson and pro roadie Jesse Anthony, fiddle with their Garmins as Vollers runs through announcements. When he lists Ned鈥檚 greatest hits鈥攖he 1990 UCI Mountain Bike World Championship, his place in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, the recent 2015 USA Cycling National Fat Bike Championships title鈥攖here鈥檚 an eruption: We get to ride with Ned!听

But make no mistake, this is no ceremonial lap. 鈥淵ou gotta do more than schmooze and be an ex-racer,鈥� Ned says. And it鈥檚 no comeback; he never went away. Nor does he race with a handicap. 鈥淚f you think, 鈥榃ell, I鈥檓 doing pretty good for an old guy,鈥� then you鈥檙e not trying to stay at the front,鈥� he told me. 鈥淵ou might be in the front of the old guys. But that鈥檚 not enough.鈥澨�

The course climbs 5,900 feet over tarmac, ski slope, and 鈥減av茅,鈥� Vermont-speak for crumbly granite and rooty two-track. Ned is in the running most of the way, chasing a breakaway of three. He drops the steep line to the finish, coming in sixth, eight minutes behind winner Jesse Anthony. He鈥檚 all smiles. Everyone wants to shake his hand.听

Later I check on him at his motel, and he鈥檚 got the shades closed; his laptop is glowing, and his reading glasses are on. For 25 years, he鈥檚 been asked his secret. How does he cheat time, beat the clock? Finally, I鈥檓 gonna see Ned Overend鈥檚 Dark Web, the ass-numbing training plans and age-reversing nostrums he buys on the secret Internet. Instead he shows me the Overland course, mapped out on Strava, with the excitement of a kid demonstrating his favorite video game. He went 48.5 miles per hour down the Cox District Descent. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 pretty crazy speed on a dirt road,鈥� he says. On the Oxbow Road Climb he鈥檚 got a King of the Mountain鈥攖he fastest time on a segment of trail or road鈥攁nd tiny golden trophies are scattered across the screen. Ned鈥檚 geeking out over all the little races, 22 of them, within the big race. Strava is his New York Times crossword, his sudoku.听

How can it be that a man who started riding when mountain-biking shoes were hiking boots is still relevant, still a threat, still a champion in the age of electronic shifting? Back in 1985, when I was in high school, I saved enough summer pay to buy my first mountain bike. The shop smelled of new tires, and Ned鈥檚 poster was on the wall. My ride was a champagne gold steel Schwinn Sierra, and I鈥檇 fantasize that I was Ned when I whizzed through the woods. Young gun John Tomac was a hero of mine, too, and fat-tire legend Tinker Juarez from his BMX days, but Ned had the Magnum P.I. mustache. I was certain he never used his granny gear.听

One of six kids, Ned was the only athletic bird in the family tree. His father, Edmund, was a fighter pilot turned diplomat, and Ned was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1955. The family moved back and forth between Bethesda, Maryland, and posts abroad, including Ethiopia and Iran, until he was in tenth grade, in 1971, when they settled in Marin County, California. Two years later, Edmund died of a second heart attack, at 56.听

Ned credits his running coach in high school, Doug Basham, for emphasizing high-intensity, low-volume workout programs. In junior college, Ned was selected for the 1976 California all-state team in cross country. But then he stopped running and moved to San Francisco to wrench motorcycles before working his way through San Diego State University. There he shared an apartment with future Ironman Hall of Famer Bob Babbitt and began competing again鈥�10Ks at first, then adding swimming and cycling with the goal of doing the 1980 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. He and Babbitt trained in a 15-meter apartment pool, thousands of laps. Ned鈥攁 2:28 marathoner鈥攃ompleted Hawaii twice.听

In San Diego he met Pam Moog, a registered nurse, at a disco. They got married and settled in Durango, Colorado, where Ned took a job working on Volkswagen engines. They had two kids鈥擜llison and Rhyler, now in their twenties and living in California. 鈥淧am鈥檚 life is not being a Ned fan,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 can go to an important World Cup event, and I鈥檒l be back home for a week before she鈥檒l ask me how I did.鈥� Pam still works part-time and spends some of the year in their second home in San Diego.听

Ned was winning mountain runs until he injured his hip in 1981, which pushed him into road cycling. But the next year, he started riding a Schwinn Sidewinder in the dirt. He tried a mountain-bike race, won it, and was hooked. In 1984, at age 29, he got a contract with Schwinn and proceeded to dominate the National Off Road Bicycle Association circuit throughout the eighties; in 1988, he jumped to Specialized and won the , held in Durango in 1990.听

But even at 35, Ned was considered old. In 1991, he told a Sports Illustrated reporter, 鈥淚 crashed my road bike this spring and I ached for days. That didn鈥檛 happen when I was 25.鈥� In the same article, John Tomac, then 24, said, 鈥淎ge is really a state of mind. I think Ned can go until he鈥檚 40.鈥澨�

At 41, Ned finally retired from World Cup racing. He鈥檇 chosen mountain biking in part because doping wasn鈥檛 prevalent in the sport. But by the mid-nineties, drugs had bled into the European mountain-bike scene, and he decided to get out. He鈥檚 been outspoken ever since, going so far as to propose that future dopers be prosecuted as criminals. 鈥淚t鈥檚 theft,鈥� he says, 鈥渙f millions of dollars in contracts.鈥�

People thought that was the end. But Ned, incognito without his mustache, was quietly kicking ass in different mediums: off-road triathlon, singlespeed racing, cyclocross, hill climbing, even cross-country skiing. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 retire,鈥� he says. He retooled and stayed on at Specialized to work in product development and marketing. In 1998, at 43, he raced his way to an Xterra World Championship off-road triathlon.听

Pedal your time machine forward almost 20 years and Ned is dominating in the snow. He won the 2014 in Cable, Wisconsin鈥攁 race billing itself as the fat-bike national championships鈥攁nd last year won the inaugural USA Cycling Fat Bike Nationals, at Powder Mountain, Utah, by 32 seconds. He trained by doing intervals on a snow-covered fire road above Durango. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not often a win is a surprise,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 just there to experience Fat Bike Nationals鈥擨 went there to win.鈥澨�

If there鈥檚 another athlete in another sport who has pushed success as far into their dotage, I don鈥檛 know who it is. Diana Nyad is still out there at 66, performing remarkable feats of endurance in the water. But while Ned gets older, his competition gets younger.听

鈥淣ed lives what I preach,鈥� says Joe Friel, 72, masters coach and author of Fast After 50. 鈥淗e鈥檚 always been a fan of short workouts with high intensity.鈥� Whittled down, the recipe for success as a geezer is this: 1) Decrease volume and increase intensity. 2) Recover, recover, recover. 3) Don鈥檛 stop training, ever; you can retain much of your VO2 max as you age, but once you lose it, it鈥檚 a lot harder to get it back. 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e 60, you can鈥檛 take a month off at the end of the season, have a good time like younger athletes can,鈥� Friel says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 an accelerated loss of fitness. Take Greg LeMond, for example鈥攈e just quit. Hung it up. Ned never did that.鈥澨�

鈥淔orce times time,鈥� says Northern Michigan University鈥檚 Scott Drum, an exercise physiologist who previously codirected the High Altitude Performance Lab at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison. 鈥淭he least amount of time with a lot of force equals longevity. After 30, we lose 1 percent a year in VO2 max, unless you continue to train at a high intensity.鈥� Another benefit, Drum says, is that 鈥渉igh-intensity exercise can elicit greater concentrations of growth hormone and epinephrine, leading to greater metabolic and muscular adaptations.鈥澨�

Drum suggests training 10 to 15 hours per week, tops, for athletes over 40. With that recipe, Ned鈥檚 at no risk for overtraining syndrome. He pedals hard for an hour and a half, rarely much more, three or four times a week, and does easy rides on off days. In the winter, he mixes in nordic skiing and weight lifting, although the fat-biking season has taken time away from cross-training. 鈥淚 tried yoga, but I didn鈥檛 have the focus for it,鈥� Ned says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing how little discipline I have for simple stretching and strengthening exercises.鈥�

With the exception of Specialized lunch rides when he鈥檚 in California and his weekly group rides in Durango鈥攖he Tuesday Night World Championships鈥擭ed trains solo. 鈥淚 do a lot of things by myself,鈥� he says. But the Tuesday rides are more than his bridge club; they鈥檙e his weekly check-up. You can鈥檛 be too upset about getting dropped when the regulars include current national mountain-bike champion Howard Grotts, Israeli national champion Rotem Ishay, and pros Ian Burnett and Keegan Swensen. National cyclocross stars Todd and Troy Wells regularly come to hammer. All but the Wells brothers are under 30; none are over 40.听

Ned has never had a cycling coach. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 like structure,鈥� he says. He doesn鈥檛 wear a heart-rate monitor or use a power meter. He relies on what he calls 鈥減erceived effort鈥濃�攅ssentially going by feel. He does not appear to have a VO2 max that鈥檚 off the charts; he just knows how to train smart.听

鈥淭here are people as talented as me,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hat I鈥檝e done is put together a few good races in a season, then manage to put a bunch of good years together.鈥� Tinker Juarez, 54, one of the last old-schoolers still in the saddle, broke his hip in June at a race in Mexico. Bike racing is a bone game, and for nearly 40 years Ned has managed to avoid a serious injury.听

Sounds simple. But the man isn鈥檛 rustproof. 鈥淪hit wears out,鈥� he says. He pinches his forearm. 鈥淵our skin wears out.鈥� Did he mention his back is aching?听

Durango, late September, and Ned鈥檚 just gotten off the mountain, a demanding 42-mile solo over Coal Bank Pass on Highway 550. He鈥檚 training for the Mount Diablo Challenge hill climb in California in October; now he鈥檚 gonna soak away his inflammation in the Animas River, as he does after hard rides.听

The water has cleared up, but rocks along the bank are still yellow and orange from the Gold King Mine spill in August. 鈥淛ust don鈥檛 eat the mud,鈥� Ned says. No one else is swimming. He walks out into the current, chest deep, slips, and is carried ten yards downriver. He pops up laughing and spits out a mouthful of the 60-degree Animas.听

The next afternoon, we ride the flowy singletrack at Overend Mountain Park. Ned stashes his reading glasses in his jersey pocket, in case he needs to adjust something small, like derailleur screws, or study the fine print on the Garmin. He鈥檚 bashful about the park being named for him. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 need to be any more famous in this town,鈥� he says. The trails follow the natural contours of the Mancos Shale and are lined with burr oak, juniper, and pi帽on. Back in town a guy hollers, 鈥淪low down, old man!鈥� Even without the mustache, everyone recognizes him.听

Durango is Ned鈥檚 town. He swaps his trail bike for a step-through Globe with a wicker basket and a sticker on the frame: THIS BIKE CLIMBED MT. WASHINGTON. (Ned won the famous hill climb in 2011, on his 56th birthday.) He鈥檚 known for his love of American IPAs; on a wild night he鈥檒l have two. At Carver Brewing on Main Street, there鈥檚 a beer on tap called Ned鈥檚 Nitro Pale Ale. An aluminum Fat Boy鈥攍ucky race number 13, his winning ride from last year鈥檚 fat-bike championships鈥攊s displayed in the window of Mountain Bike Specialists.听

鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty cool when you鈥檙e 60 and improving your time from a couple years ago,鈥� Ned says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 always a good indicator, right? I had the KOM on Rafter J until I made the mistake of telling my neighbor, then he went out and took it.鈥� You live and you learn.听

Ned had skipped the Tuesday-night group to ride Coal Bank, sneaking out early between rain showers to get in some intervals. 鈥淲here were ya?鈥� asks Todd Wells when we see him at his house. But Ned鈥檚 just as happy riding solo with Strava.听

鈥淚鈥檓 getting old one day at a time,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 only know how age affects you based on my own experiences. Otherwise you base it on what everyone else tells you. When my dad died at 56, I remember thinking, Dad died of old age. I mean, he had gray hair. People shouldn鈥檛 just assume it should be so hard to hold onto your fitness.鈥澨�

When will he hang it up for good? Never, says Ned. But he can foresee a time when he switches from elite to master-class competition. 鈥淲hen I鈥檓 midpack,鈥� he says. 鈥淎ll it would take is to back off on my training.鈥澨�

Ned podiums on Mount Diablo, placing third. He broke away with the top three, but the leaders dropped him with a half-mile to go. 鈥淚 was OK with the result,鈥� he says. 鈥淢y back felt OK, but I think it had an effect on my preparation and maybe my motivation leading up to it. I noticed on Strava that my volume was down in September.鈥澨�

I got a text from him on the Sunday evening after the race: 鈥淭he guy who won was 18!鈥� He was referring to Jason Saltzman.听

But Ned got it wrong: the kid was 17. 听听 听听

Correspondent Jon Billman () is the author of . He teaches at Northern Michigan University.

The post Ned Overend Is the Champion Cyclist Who Never Grows Old appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Peter Clyde鈥檚 three-hour round-trip听from Seattle to his day job in the Bellevue tech district isn鈥檛 smooth bike-path commuting. Rain, fog, snow, and choking traffic combine to make a hair-raising, often death-defying, trip.

To boost his visibility on the road, Clyde鈥攚ho holds an electrical engineering degree from Seattle Pacific University鈥攖ried all the top-of-the-line taillights from the industry鈥檚 biggest players, but he still felt vulnerable. Though they had plenty of wattage and state-of-the-art LED bulbs, all were too focused, like a flashlight, limiting their range of visibility. Others succumbed to constant exposure to moisture. Some ran through a charge far too quickly.

So, three years ago, the 23-year-old decided to invent his own bike light company, Orfos, a transliteration of the Greek and Hebrew words for light that 鈥渓oosely translates to 鈥榓 light to become light.鈥欌��

鈥淚t took about six months to get from the idea to proof of concept,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hile the first prototype was fully functional as a safety light, the aesthetics, optical efficiency, and durability increased substantially with each revision.鈥�

Clyde took cues from automotive illumination when designing the Orfos Flare, his first and still only product. With nine superefficient half-watt LEDs, the red light casts 300 lumens that match the intensity and light dispersion of a modern car鈥檚 taillight.

A reflective interior surrounds the LEDs to boost the beam鈥檚 range. The whole package is ensconced in a clear, low-viscosity-silicone case that鈥檚 as waterproof as a silicone spatula. (To test this, the Flares underwent extensive scuba trials at saltwater depths below 50 feet.) The light diffuses throughout the lenslike polycarbonate case and emits a muscular red 360-degree shroud behind a rider.

鈥淢y first night ride with the final prototype was an exhilarating feeling,鈥� Clyde says. 鈥淚 actually felt equally safe as I did in my car. That鈥檚 when I knew they were finished.鈥�

Turns out, designing the world鈥檚 best rear cycling light was the easy part. Obtaining patents and funding was much more difficult. Clyde turned to Kickstarter for capital, with great success. Last November, at the end of Orfos鈥� 30-day campaign, the company had raised $157,323, nearly 800 percent of its initial goal.

When commuting like the mailman, you trust a rear light with your life, and I see the Flare as the most important Monday-though-Friday piece of gear I own. I鈥檝e been running the red Flare (there鈥檚 also a white Flare for the handlebars) on my daily 25-mile commute since January. The unit looks utilitarian, industrial, and a little erector-set DIY, and at 112 grams mounted, it鈥檚 about the size and weight of a roll of quarters.

But it works damn well. The Flare mounts pretty much anywhere thanks to badass neodymium magnets that attach through your pack or via zip ties to your seatpost. And it鈥檚 eye-wateringly bright, with two steady modes (bright and brighter) and a strobe.

A 90-minute charge of the LiFePO4 lithium iron phosphate cell battery gives me 24 hours of run time on the low setting, even in temperatures below zero. (Battery drain in cold temperatures is one of the biggest issues I have with other manufacturers鈥� lights, which use cheaper lithium ion batteries.) The Flare鈥檚 battery lifespan is also three times longer than that of typical lithium ion models.

The Flare鈥檚 internal components aren鈥檛 cheap, and Orfos鈥� profit margins can鈥檛 compete with the already established players: The Flare sells for $119鈥攄ouble the price of most of its competitors.

But it may be the last rear light you ever need. And why wouldn鈥檛 you spend as much on your rear light as you do on a decent helmet? The Flare听is available through the Orfos website and Amazon.

The post Let There Be (a Better Rear Bike) Light appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Claustrophobics beware: John Vaillant鈥檚 novel ($26, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) takes place almost entirely inside the 10,000-gallon tank of a Dina water truck stranded near the Arizona-颅Mexico border. Hector Gonzalez and his friend Cesar decide to leave Oaxaca for the United States; Hector for family reasons, and Cesar, a plant geneticist, because a Mexican Big Ag corn cartel wants him dead for exposing a sprawling conspiracy involving GMOs. The two buy in with coyotes, who seal them鈥攁long with 13 other immigrants鈥攊nside the sand-colored truck with AGUA PARA USO HUMANO inscribed on the tank. (Someone has tagged it with a J and an R, so that AGUA now reads JAGUAR.) Once safely across the border, the plan goes, the coyotes will cut a hole in the tank and free the passengers.

Though the geog颅raphy of the story is that of Cormac McCarthy, the plot shares more ter颅ritory with Edgar 颅Allen Poe, and it soon becomes clear that the Dina truck is not a jaguar but a Trojan horse from hell. Cesar is critically injured when a jounce on the road knocks his head into a sharp pipe. Then the truck breaks down a mile inside Arizona and the drivers flee like, well, coyotes, leaving the passengers trapped. 鈥淭he screen on 颅Cesar鈥檚 phone makes everything look cold and blue like we are underwater, or dead already,鈥� Hector says as he uses it to record an audio file. The story is told mostly through these files鈥攚hich Hector hopes to eventually send to a woman named AnniMac, the lone American contact in the phone, once he regains service.

Eventually, though, the other travelers grow tired of Hector鈥檚 constant yammering and violence erupts鈥攖hink Lord of the Flies in a drum. 鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 hear the coyotes any颅more, only one bird outside warning the others, because the sound in here was terrible, a frenzy,鈥� Hector says. 鈥淚 was trying to get them off, shouting, pushing and kicking them away, but we were like a bucket of crabs with the lid on and no place to go.鈥�

In the wrong hands, this story could come off as overbaked or schlocky. But Vaillant, the author of the 2011 award-winning nonfiction book The Tiger, guides us to an ending that is improbable, dripping with irony, and entirely satisfying. Border fiction has a new top-shelf title.

Book Reviews in 30 Words or Less

Two other debut novels on our nightstands:

, by Daniel Galera
$27, The Penguin Press

After his father鈥檚 murder, a triathlete with face blindness moves to a Brazilian surf town to swim, fall in love, and find the killer. Brilliant prose from a big-deal translator.

, by Tim Johnston
$26, Algonquin

A young girl disappears in the Rocky Mountains on a morning run, and her family sets out to discover why. An original and psychologically deep thriller.

The post The Darkest of Border Passages appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

My wife got the Subaru. We鈥檙e still married and still live in the same house鈥攁 drafty wreck of a beach house built for the eight-week summer鈥攂ut the Faustian bargain was that if I took a teaching job in Marquette, on Michigan鈥檚 Upper Peninsula, she鈥檇 get a new all-wheel drive with heated seats and mirror defrosters, and鈥攚hen we could afford it鈥擨 could get a fat bike. But hey, I lobbied: a fat bike isn鈥檛 a toy, it鈥檚 a tool. A carpenter needs a hammer, I said. You need another bike like a hole in the head, she said.

听

I鈥檇 never been to the U.P. and hadn鈥檛 given it much thought outside of Hemingway鈥檚 Nick Adams stories and the novels of Jim Harrison (who, oddly, lives in Arizona during the winter). We鈥檇 been living in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which gets its share of weather but nothing like the Upper Midwest. The U.P. is a little Alaska鈥攚e have wolves and whitefish and logging trucks鈥攂ut better since it鈥檚 only four hours to Green Bay! It鈥檚 been colder than a tin toilet seat on the Edmund Fitzgerald since late November. I wear ski goggles to take out the trash, walk the dog, and shovel the driveway.

Most people have to bring their own job to the UP because there aren鈥檛 many jobs here. There are iron miners and lumberjacks and stevedores and fisherman. I have the least North Country around鈥擨鈥檓 an English professor. When I interviewed almost exactly one year ago, I stepped off the tiny jet in a sideways snowstorm. But it was warm, in the 20s! From my hotel room I saw a lime green creature roll through the whiteout down Front Street. Then a pylon-orange streak. This is how people got around on this frozen outpost, atop fat bikes! I could be a fat bike commuter. Since I loved to ride it鈥檇 be fun and maybe I could skip the gym.

This is my kind of place, I thought. Marquette is a type of Whoville. Spirited zipping and zapping. There鈥檚 a world-class ski jump called Suicide Hill, and the UP 200 dog sled race runs through in February. There鈥檚 an Olympic speed-skating training center here, along with the North American Skiing Hall of Fame. There鈥檚 a manicured skating rink in the center of town. They groom 20 miles of snow-covered singletrack specifically for fat bikes. And in the evening you can watch fat bikers spin up and down the hills of the old downtown district; fat bike bar hops are an evening ritual here. It鈥檚 this simple: You love outdoor winter pursuits or you move away.

MOVING AWAY ISN'T an ill-considered idea. As I write this, in late February, the 鈥渞eal feel鈥� temperature is minus 39 degrees. I鈥檝e lost count which Polar Vortex we鈥檙e on, but the deep freezes have neutered the normally moderating effect the big water has on Marquette winters. Lake Superior resembles a Frank Hurley photo of Shackleton鈥檚 Antarctica as it swallowed the Endurance. My route to work is 12.5 miles each way. I didn鈥檛 get off the bike last night until 8:30 p.m., when I ate some aspirin and shellacked my entire body with Tiger Balm.

In the summer and fall, it took me a pleasant hour on my 29er. Then the snow fell and didn鈥檛 melt. I garaged my 29er and harnessed up a new Specialized Fat Boy. The bike had arrived on a truck and I assembled it in our living room and pumped up the tires. It looked like a cartoon come to life. There鈥檚 nothing high tech about the bike, it鈥檚 just mathematically smart, well-balanced, and pragmatic. It sports an aluminum frame, to resist corrosion. Lake Superior may be unsalted, but the Department of Transportation uses oceans of salt each winter. There鈥檚 a carbon-fiber fork. Wide cranks, hubs and rims to accept the widest tires made. Hydraulic disc brakes, though I rarely reach speeds where they鈥檙e necessary. That鈥檚 about it. Not much more evolved than 1984.

Fatter is the future, Specialized said. And certainly around here, they鈥檙e right. The Fat Boy comes with 4.6-inch Ground Control knobbies, nearly the fattest tire available. I鈥檓 gonna go on record that the tires are only going to get wider and tubeless and that the narrow-hubbed frames with less clearance are headed the way of the 26er.

鈥淚t鈥檚 just blown up,鈥� says Greg Herrman, the man in charge of dealer support at Borealis, a Colorado-based company that builds high-end carbon fiber (sure, carbon fiber resists corrosion, too) bikes that can weigh as little as 23 pounds complete. He says that fat bikes are the fastest-growing segment of the cycling industry. Last fall parts suppliers had trouble keeping up with demand. 鈥淲hen it started they appealed to guys who wanted a fourth bike in the garage,鈥� he told me. 鈥淣ow it鈥檚 gotten to the point of mass adoption.鈥�

HILARY TOOK ME to the big-box craft store in her Subaru and I bought three 99-cent hobby-foam panels, cut them to shape with scissors, grabbed a handful of zip-ties and voila鈥攆enders. The Fat Boy weighed in right at 30 pounds with my heavy clipless platform pedals; my office pack, by comparison, weights forty by the time I load it with my antique laptop, a pump, a spare tube, a soup Thermos, a coffee flask, various books, office clothes, and protein bars.

The best way to get your glasses broken in Marquette is to step off your new Fat Boy, amble into the Black Rocks Brewery on 3rd Street, and start bragging about your little ride to the office. There鈥檚 a shortage of fatties and parts nationwide鈥攅specially tires and rims鈥攁nd some of these guys had put a down payment on the Fat Boy sight-unseen in August and still hadn鈥檛 seen it by December. Now the English professor wrangles one straight from the factory? In an attempt at stealth, I replaced the Fat Boy decal with a sticker of the U.P., which resembles a Seussian dogfish.

Some fun! In the videos it looks like skiing on wheels. Cold smoke, face shots, and float. Why, rolling to work would be a type of cheating, I thought. I鈥檇 fairly cane it! The popular documentary Cold Rolled was filmed in Marquette. The video shows locals trialing over natural ice sculptures and flowing along singletrack manicured with a proprietary groomer invented in the U.P. The bike-specific winter trail is called the NTN SBR鈥擲nowbike Route鈥攊n the UP they call them snowbikes, as if to ignore non-winter altogether; I prefer the term fat bike so as not to confuse the rigs with those silly sleds the Beatles ride in the 鈥淭icket To Ride鈥� video. Nothing like some fat bike porn to get you fired up to ride; but the reality of the fat bike was not as YouTubey as I鈥檇 imagined.

Fat bikes don鈥檛 coast. Ever. At least on any amount of snow. It鈥檚 like riding a fixie through a swimming pool. The difference is that you have 20 fixed gears to choose from, but you鈥檙e either spinning or standing. In fresh snow you have to pedal down hill. The fattie has made me realize how much I cheated on my 29er in the dry鈥擨 hella coasted. My friend and go-to fat bike guru Yook, who has flames tattooed on his calves, said, 鈥淲hat did you expect? You gotta earn every inch.鈥�

Yook is a mountain biker, cyclo-crosser, and 鈥渘ot a skier鈥�; I was noticing a pattern and a line in the snow鈥攕kiers don鈥檛 fat bike and vice-versa. There鈥檚 a lot of non-flow on a fat bike that no one talks about.

On my first ride, I headed into the jackpine woods. Three pedal strokes in I found myself doing a reverse snow angel after a header into the powder. I was moist and winded by the time I made the quarter-mile to where I鈥檇 tie in to the old railroad grade that is now called the Iron Ore Heritage Trail鈥攎y ice road to work. An old woman on cross-country skis glided past me. The next morning I woke up with a half dozen bruises on my thighs from whacking the top tube in that many falls.

I had to carve out an extra two hours in my day if I wanted to ride to work and back. More fresh snow and, even riding atop snowmobile tracks, the going was slow. I tried to figure out how I could engineer one of those magazine racks you see affixed to the exer-cycles in the gym so I could prep for work as I spun. Before the first test ride I thought for sure I鈥檇 want a cycle computer to gauge my speed, time, and mileage, but soon found that idea to be depressing. One night on my way home, a porcupine ran in front of, then alongside me. Then he pulled away, leaving me alone, crunching over the snow.

TIRE PRESSURE IS the paradox of the fat bike. Fatties talk tire pressure like roadies talk wattage and heartrates. How low can you go? I learned the hard way that it鈥檚 much easier to let air out than to add air on the trail when it鈥檚 -15 degrees.

I accompanied Yook to the Noquemanon 24-kilometer snowbike race and at the start racers mingled around in the sub-zero cold grabbing each other鈥檚 tires like they were shopping for grapefruit. Except for Yook, who has a cool brass low-pressure presta gauge. But while it means extra floatation and grip, low is slow. And yes, there can be such a thing as too low, wherein your rear tire doesn鈥檛 bite. In extreme polar cold, the tire can freeze in the deflated stance and, like a frozen flat basketball, not rebound to the round so that it clears the bike鈥檚 frame as it revolves.

Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian who, in 1911, was the first to reach the South Pole, was a bicycle geek. In 1899, in part as a training trek, he and his brother Leon set off from Oslo and pedaled south to the southern coast of Spain. Two years ago my friend Edward and I reenacted the ride. But that was in shorts in summer, with all the spoils Europe has to offer.

That trip鈥攁nd my daily trek to-and-from work鈥攑ales in comparison to Daniel Burton. Burton, who turned 50 in Antarctica this winter, rode his carbon-fiber Borealis Yampa with five-inch-wide fatties 750 miles from Hercules Inlet on the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and became the first person to do so entirely by bicycle. He pulled two sleds鈥攚eighing nearly 200 pounds鈥攂ehind the fat bike, over crevasses, through sastrugi, and into 40-mile-per-hour katabatic winds. His tire pressure was low (at times less than 1 psi!) and his speed was slow: some days he only covered between two and three miles (all day, not per hour). His longest day was just over 24 miles.

I spoke to Dan, who lives in Saratoga Springs, Utah, while he wrenched a bike in his shop, Epic Biking. I tried to brag about my ride to work, which is a little like telling Roald Amundsen you made a snowman in your front yard. Sweat mitigation was his biggest challenge (and this is on a trip where he was forced to cut outer-mittens from spare fat bike tubes). Daniel validated that it wasn鈥檛 just me who had to work harder on a fat bike than on skis. 鈥淥n skis you can ease off,鈥� he says. 鈥淥n a bike you have to work to keep moving and stay upright.鈥� Much of the time, he says, he was struggling just to make 鈥渢wo to three knots.鈥� He admits that the trek from the coast to the pole can, in certain segments of the route from the Ronne Ice Shelf, be done faster on skis. 鈥淚f you want to get to the South Pole fast,鈥� he told me, 鈥渢ake an airplane. It鈥檚 not about being more efficient鈥擨 was trying to find out, Can you bike to the South Pole?鈥�

I TEACH A NIGHT class on Thursdays. I can see it dumping in the security lights out the window. I leave campus at 10 p.m. It鈥檇 been snowing most of the evening鈥攕ki goggles mandatory, but I can tell by my feet (they鈥檙e comfortable) that it鈥檚 warmer. I鈥檝e got Neil Young鈥檚 Dead Man soundtrack on the iPod鈥攁ppropriate music for a solo mission. My breath makes fog in my headlight. I roll down slushy Seventh Street鈥攖he only section where I really test my brakes, which honk louder the colder it is, but tonight are quiet and don鈥檛 fade, telling me it鈥檚 warmer鈥攁nd onto the bike trail system. The trail along the lake is soft with fresh snow, which my tires push. I bleed two or three pounds of air from the tires which helps with float and grip, but costs me a couple gears. The snowmobiles have not been out and I鈥檓 spinning fast and going slow. I can see my rear Blinder reflecting red in the fat falling flakes like an airplane light.

I need to tell you that I鈥檓 hooked; far worse than a bleak forecast is the thought of having to catch a car ride to work. I鈥檓 not that excited to be at work, and the people I work with who are cranky鈥擨 promise you this鈥攁ll drove themselves there. To fat bike in winter is to make your own fun, which is what you have to do in the U.P. And on the SBR there is a section of chicanes where you can rail perfectly bermed curves and the air-hockey feeling of super-fat tires on snow makes for a pretty good definition of flow. So in that sense, I tell myself, all those miles to and from work are training in order to make the climb up Benson Hill to get to the fun singletrack stuff.

I鈥檓 hooked on the fattie for the same reason I鈥檓 hooked on the literature of polar exploration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Movement鈥攖ransportion鈥攊s a constant puzzle in a wild, inhospitable environment. It鈥檚 strategy. Equipment, calories, time, and air pressure. And I don鈥檛 have to kill any dogs. If I had to have only one bike it鈥檇 be a fat bike (and the fat bike has me thinking this isn鈥檛 a bad idea). I鈥檓 going to hear from the studded-tire cyclocross townie set here, but I鈥檒l argue that, out where I live, it鈥檚 literally the only machine that will let you ride every day, all year long.

Has spending three to four hours a day on the bike gotten me into the shape of my life? I鈥檒l let you know in spring, if it ever arrives. The commute makes the fat biking mandatory in my life. But more than that the commute has become the highlight of my workweek. It鈥檚 a great view of the world: the one through foggy goggles, atop the big rig. Sometimes, as I rolled along at my porcupine pace, I鈥檇 think of something Daniel Burton told me, and to which I could relate: 鈥淚 had gotten to where I just hated winter, but the fat bike has made it not so bad anymore.鈥�

The post Fat Bikes Vs. the Polar Vortex appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Credit the Labrador and the horn hunters that , 45, the infamous Mountain Man of southern Utah, is currently cooling his heels in the Sanpete County Jail in Manti. On March 29, Good Friday, Dale Fuller and his 15-year-old son, Jordan, were scouting for shed elk antlers below Skyline Ridge on the eastern side of the 10,000-foot Wasatch Plateau in Emery County. Walking down the narrow Dairy Trail, they came across a man loaded for bear and headed upcountry. He was scruffy, in his mid-forties, with a gray-and-blond beard. He carried a fully loaded pack. His sidearm was not unusual in Utah, but what was noticeable was the assault rifle slung over one shoulder. Jordan鈥檚 two-year-old brown Lab, Duke, growled鈥攁nd continued growling for the whole encounter, even after Jordan tried to quiet him.

One of the camps Knapp left behind.

The first confirmed image of Knapp, captured by a wildlife cam.

鈥淭he guy seemed way friendly,鈥� Jordan told me. They talked about snowpack levels鈥攖his area was at 60 percent of normal, and the trail was an Easter succotash of mud, corn snow and vegetation鈥攁nd whether or not they鈥檇 seen anyone else in the area. Dale asked what he was doing headed into the high country. 鈥淕oing camping,鈥� Knapp responded. 鈥淚鈥檓 a mountain man.鈥� Either that or, 鈥淚鈥檓 the Mountain Man鈥濃�攖he Fullers couldn鈥檛 tell.

听鈥淚 don鈥檛 plan on shooting you guys,鈥� Knapp continued when Duke would not stop growling.

Nobody had mentioned shooting anyone. But of course, the Fullers鈥攚ho were armed themselves, but lightly in comparison to the assault rifle鈥攈ad heard of the Mountain Man, and when they got within cell service, they called a friend who is married to an Emery County sheriff鈥檚 deputy; the deputy forwarded them photos.

It was him all right. For nearly seven years, the , breaking into cabins, stealing firearms, and roaming on foot between 3,000 and 10,000 feet in a nine-county area the size of Delaware鈥攚ild country made wilder by winter mountain weather. South to north, his territory covered 180 miles. In the southwestern counties of Iron, Kane, and Garfield鈥攈is main range for much of that time鈥擪napp was suspected of dozens of cabin burglaries. He faced 19 felony charges and ten misdemeanor burglary and theft charges in those three counties alone.

That was before he shot at the helicopter.

Over the Easter weekend several residents opening up their cabins after the winter discovered evidence of an unwanted guest. Investigators fingered Knapp for a break-in near Joe鈥檚 Valley Reservoir鈥攁bout 15 miles north of the Fullers鈥� encounter, near the border with Sanpete County鈥攚here a crowbar was left at the scene. On Easter Sunday, they responded to another break-in report in the same area; this time guns had been taken.

The Fullers鈥� sighting gave authorities the fresh lead they needed. Officers on snowshoes slowly tracked Knapp over three days and 15 miles; his bear paws led into Sanpete County and to a cluster of 13 cabins near 9,000 feet at Ferron Reservoir, on the shoulder of Ferron Mountain.

On Monday, April Fool鈥檚 Day, a 50-person task force that included members of seven county sheriff departments, the (DPS), Adult Probation and Parole, and a half-dozen federal agents from the U.S. Marshals Service, gathered at the Sanpete County Sheriff鈥檚 Department to strategize. Emery County detective Garrett Conover told me that they discussed the February cabin standoff in California that ended with the death of ex鈥揕os Angeles policeman-turned-murderer Christopher Dorner. When authorities located Dorner in a cabin near Big Bear Lake, a firefight ensued; tear-gas canisters caused a fire that burned the structure to the ground. Dorner was found dead. That鈥檚 the scenario the Utah team most wanted to avoid.

The next morning, April 2, just after midnight, the lawmen headed into Ferron Canyon in snowcats and on snowmobiles with two Utah DPS helicopters at the ready, then quietly took position on snowshoes in the frozen dark, even though they weren鈥檛 yet sure which of the cabins Knapp was inhabiting.

It was part of the plan that the racket from one of the helicopters would alert Knapp. It did. The first helicopter came in from the east; they could see Knapp on a cabin鈥檚 porch. 鈥淎t about nine in the morning, Knapp is out chopping wood for his morning fire when this big-ass bird comes in over the trees,鈥� U.S. Marshal Michael Wingert, the lead federal agent assigned to Knapp鈥檚 case, told me. 鈥淗e grabs his rifle and shoots at the bird.鈥�

Knapp, who was also armed with a handgun, squeezed off several rifle rounds. The men in the helicopter saw him reload. The fugitive strapped into his snowshoes, grabbed his rifle, and took off running to the south. After an exhausting 100-yard dash, he encountered Emery County Sheriff Greg Funk. Knapp raised his rifle. Funk fired and missed. Knapp broke back to the north and ran into a line of lawmen. Knapp realized he was heavily outgunned鈥攁nd surrendered.

鈥淵ou got me,鈥� Knapp told arresting officers. 鈥淣ice job.鈥�

The high-country cat-and-mouse game was finally over. But for seven years, Knapp had had an incredible run in the wilderness. Here was a lone man on snowshoes running circles around sheriffs and marshals with little but his physical fitness and backcountry savvy鈥攁n alpine athlete living on rabbit and Dinty Moore stew. He鈥檇 earned a sort of grudging admiration from the men on his tail; Knapp seemed to understand that you didn鈥檛 have to outrun the dogs, you merely had to outrun the handlers. He was good at staying ahead of the handlers.

FROM MEDIA COVEREAGE AND REACTION IN UTAH, you might have thought the authorities had captured Bigfoot. Wanted posters had been tacked up in gas stations from Kanab to Payson. Hikers and hunters grew leery of heading into the high country, and families became shy about visiting their weekend cabins. The fugitive had even acquired a Facebook page, set up by an admirer, filled with mountain-man poetry and clumsy odes to outlaws and Waylon Jennings. The name Unabomber was bandied about. Some recalled the Olympic Park Bomber, 46-year-old Eric Rudolph, who hid for five years in the North Carolina woods, dumpster diving and swiping vegetables from gardens. Or fellow Utah fugitive Lance Leeroy Arellano, who disappeared into the desert in his silver Pontiac after shooting a state ranger in 2010.

Knapp didn鈥檛 have a known history of that kind of violence, but he commanded respect. 鈥淚 could take every cop in Utah who鈥檚 comfortable on a pair of snowshoes up there right now and not find him,鈥� U.S. Marshal Wingert told me last year. In a year and a half of tailing Knapp, Wingert became the Pat Garrett to his . 鈥淵ou give this guy a day and he鈥檚 15 or 20 miles away. There鈥檚 people who can survive a night out鈥攕ay they break a snowshoe binding or lose the track on a snowmobile,鈥� Wingert said, 鈥渂ut to actually stay out there for months and months and years on end鈥攖his guy is as close to Jim Bridger as we鈥檙e ever gonna see.鈥�

In summer, Knapp lived in his own homemade camps; over the years deputies found bivouacs, usually with a blue tarp, in the aspen trees, stocked with guns and, in one, a copy of Jon Krakauer鈥檚 . Several of his high camps were discovered by cougar hunters, who hunt in high, rocky terrain. As far up as 9,000 feet, they were relatively sophisticated shelters with framed doors and rocks and wood and earth.

In winter, the Mountain Man made himself at home. His usual mode of entry was to break a window or door pane, twist the lock, and let himself in. Sometimes he鈥檇 wipe his boots, sometimes he wouldn鈥檛. He made soup from cans and helped himself to coffee. Knapp liked sardines, mayonnaise, and especially liquor: if there was a bottle of spirits, he might drink it and rend the place with bullet holes. He might replace the firewood he burned. Sometimes he did his dishes, but he never put them away. He liked to steal radios, listening on local AM stations to erroneous reports of his own whereabouts.

For much of that time, the Mountain Man behaved in a Robin Hood-esque manner. He took from the relatively wealthy cabin owners and gave to鈥攚ell, he gave to himself, a poor guy living by his wits and fitness on the land. Then, in early 2012, when Knapp鈥檚 identity was verified by investigators and reported by local media, his reputation as a harmless survivalist began to slide. In the cabin of a former Las Vegas police officer, he made a crucifix with knives on the bed. At times he appeared angry at Mormons鈥攈e shot holes in a portrait of Joseph Smith and ripped up the . He cost one cabin owner thousands of dollars in smoke damage when he closed the flue before vamoosing. He traded guns with another鈥攍eaving his old .303 British and taking a sexier Remington. He crowbarred into a gun safe, laid all the arms on a table, and took none. In another cabin, he removed the grips from all the guns, but left them. He placed food cans behind kitchen drawers so they wouldn鈥檛 close. He defecated on a porch; he also shat in a pan and left it on somebody鈥檚 kitchen floor.

Authorities labeled him 鈥榓rmed and dangerous鈥� in January 2012, reporting that the Mountain Man had been leaving threatening notes in cabins or outside scrawled in the dirt. The tune was always the same: 鈥淕et off my mountain.鈥�

FOR MOST OF THOSE SEVEN YEARS, lawmen were hunting a ghost. As early as 2007, they suspected that one man was breaking into properties over a big area, but damned if they knew who. 鈥淓ven when we got a tip, we were always one week behind,鈥� Kane County Chief Deputy Tracy Glover told me. The Mountain Man stuck to ridge tops, avoiding established trails. He walked on vegetation to avoid leaving an easy track. He slipped from heavy hunting boots into size-10 sneakers to minimize his footprints.

Up until last year, Knapp mainly roamed 1,000 square miles of southwestern Utah, from the Arizona border north into Zion National Park and onto Cedar Mountain above Cedar City. His habitat ranged from alpine forests to the sparsely populated desert. He was known to walk to town鈥擲t. George and Cedar City鈥攁nd hang out with the homeless population and make phone calls to his mother in Moscow, Idaho, then head back into the wild.

Then investigators got a break in December 2011, when a motion-activated camera outside a cabin in Kane County captured the image of a man with neck and hand tattoos and a ginger goatee. The man wore forest-camo hunting outerwear that hung on him. A camo fleece beanie. A Remington 600 bolt-action rifle. A long hunting knife in a leather sheath. Purple aluminum snowshoes.

A month later, fingerprints obtained from a broken window pane in 2009 matched with then-44-year-old Troy James Knapp, five feet ten inches tall, approximately 150 pounds, with hazel eyes. This led the cops to mug shots taken in Inyo County, California, in 2000. Knapp鈥檚 hand and chain-link neck tattoos matched the Mountain Man鈥檚.

Knapp had been in trouble since his high-school-dropout days in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where in 1986 he was incarcerated for four years for breaking and entering and receiving stolen property. After that, he drifted, working odd jobs and living for a time with one girlfriend and then fathering a daughter with another in 1995. He was charged with harassment in Seattle in 1997 (that charge was eventually dismissed with prejudice). He lived briefly in Salt Lake City in 1999.

His stepdad, Bruce Knapp, a sportsman, had taught young Troy wilderness skills鈥攈unting, trapping鈥攁nd that became Knapp鈥檚 M.O. In September 2000, he began living the outlaw life in Inyo County, camping near the town of Bishop. There he was arrested on charges of felony burglary for stealing from the Inyo County Solid Waste facility and the Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery in Independence. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Knapp stole a pair of boots from a game warden鈥檚 pickup near the hatchery, even as they were looking for him. A deputy鈥檚 report from 2000 quotes Knapp: 鈥淚 did not want to hurt anyone.鈥� Then, in 2004, after spending four years in jail, Knapp broke parole.

Southern Utah, his next stop, is a lot like : It is high alpine, but also full of slot canyons and rock chicanery and deserts side by side. One day it鈥檚 sunburn, the next, frostbite. In Inyo County, the Sierras quickly drop to Death Valley. And the county had its own backcountry badass: the Ballarat Bandit, George Robert Johnston, who eluded law enforcement for years while camping and squatting in remote southeastern California and western Nevada before he shot himself in the head with a .22 in July 2004.

Utah authorities thought they were hot on Knapp鈥檚 trail in late February 2012, when a resident shoveling snow spotted a camo-clad man with a large-caliber rifle slung over his shoulder. A two-day manhunt went down above Cedar City, including Iron County Sheriff鈥檚 deputies, Cedar City Police, and even the campus cops from . A helicopter scoured a ten-mile radius.

In the end, the manhunt only fueled the myth. Locals were left wondering how anyone could have eluded a helicopter with infrared technology and 30 men on foot.

By this time, I鈥檇 become obsessed with the Mountain Man myself. I grew up on stories of the Mad Trapper of Rat River, a legendary Canadian survivalist fugitive from the 1930s, and Claude Dallas, the poacher who evaded capture for over a year after killing two game wardens in 1981 on the Idaho鈥揘evada border. Fifteen years ago, my wife and I lived in a remote cabin in northern Utah, where we鈥檇 ski up to and peer into the fancy vacation cabins that hibernated over winter. What a resource, I thought, for a homeless person with just a little wilderness savvy. That鈥檚 where I鈥檇 head, I figured, if a private apocalypse got bad enough. I didn鈥檛 see it as survivalist prepping, rather temporary existing. You could escape the grid there, go analog, at least for a while.

So this past April, I traveled to Knapp country. At that point, I鈥檇 been tracking him鈥攙ia wire stories and local knowledge鈥攆or nearly four months. I had a wall map full of enough Knapp-sighting pins it looked like a game of Battleship. One thing was for certain: the guy was in fighting shape. I watched him grow thinner from mug shot to moose camera to security surveillance digital images. But still he was capable of humping a heavy pack over mountains for twenty miles a day, many days in a row.

KANE COUNTY IS 4,000 square miles, the size of , but there are just over 7,000 people living there, half of them in the county seat of Kanab. The sheriff鈥檚 department boasts 13 sworn officers, not including the uniformed mannequins in the marked SUVs parked at the city limits of Mount Carmel and Orderville to discourage speeders. This part of the state has become Mexican cartel marijuana country, and I was reminded of what Marshal Wingert had told me before I arrived: 鈥淚f we have trouble finding cartel-size grow operations in that country, imagine trying to find one camouflaged guy on foot who doesn鈥檛 want to be caught.鈥�

The bull鈥檚-eye of Knapp country seemed to be the Cedar Mountain area above Cedar City, where hundreds of seasonal cabins are tightly surrounded by Dixie National Forest land. The area includes 11,307-foot Brian Head Peak, the Brian Head ski resort, and Duck Creek, a little village where you can hire four-wheelers or snowmobiles and a guide.

Since the first WANTED posters went up in Duck Creek in January 2012, the Mountain Man had become something of a cross between Sasquatch and Jeremiah Johnson. Cougar hunters saw him walking a ridgetop before he vanished. A cowboy reported running into a 鈥渟uspicious鈥� mountain man packing his gear on a pair of mules. Strange campfires were seen on the mountain above Cedar City at night. Dozens of people saw the Mountain Man riding his mountain bike through town. Kids liked to spot him in trees. My favorite was a dog let outside at 4:30 every morning that returned at 6:30 reeking of campfire smoke.

In Duck Creek, a sledhead at a snowmobile shop told me that I needed to find Rosey Canyon, up the North Fork of the Virgin River, because that鈥檚 where I鈥檇 find a guy named Ken Moffett, the caretaker for several cabins. Back in February, he said, Moffett had tracked the Mountain Man in the snow, on foot, for seven miles. This would make Moffett, at the time, the guy with the closest encounter with Knapp. 鈥淏ut honk your horn at the mouth of the canyon,鈥� I was warned, 鈥渙therwise he might think you鈥檙e the Mountain Man and shoot ya.鈥�

The road led through Springdale, the gateway village to Zion National Park. At a bar and restaurant called The Spotted Dog, I met two cabin owners, Robert 鈥淩oberto鈥� Dennis, 40, and his sister Wendy Dennis, 41. Like many of the locals, they were curious and a little anxious and wanted to check the family hunting cabin to see if anyone had broken in. 鈥淲e keep guns up there,鈥� Wendy told me. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e our shitguns, but still.鈥�

We climbed into Roberto鈥檚 1994 GMC pickup. Wendy took the jump seat; Duke, the Lab-pit mix, got the middle, where he slobbered on my maps. Southern Utes do not leave home without some kind of firearm, but Roberto packed light鈥攁 toy-size .22 caliber short-barrel Beretta he called a hooker gun. We were headed 25 miles higher up, toward Cedar Mountain. It was drier than a Mormon wedding and the truck left a veil of dust.

Roberto and Wendy had found something odd in the forest the hunting season before: a Hefty bag hanging in a 40-foot ponderosa pine. They thought it was trash, but the bag contained a knit beanie. Felt boot liners. A camo sleeping bag. A pair of nearly-new size-10 sneakers. Matches and chainsaw sharpeners. This didn鈥檛 say hunter or Boy Scout. It said transient鈥攁lpine homeless. But why up here, so far from Interstate 15?

Many of the cabins we passed were homogenous: attractive, clean, and new. The Dennis cabin was different, a cobbled utilitarian compound with a generator shed where they hang the venison and an antique propane refrigerator that sealed the silverware and some warm Budweisers from the mice.

Something had been inside the Dennis cabin for certain, but it wasn鈥檛 human. There were rifle cartridges and Tammy Wynette eight-track-tape cartridges strung from hell to breakfast. Turds the size of licorice snaps were strewn all over the kitchen table, like a taunt. Wendy located a dusty green bottle of J盲germeister. 鈥淕otta take a shot at the cabin,鈥� she said and did. The mood was one of light relief, but mostly disappointment鈥攄isappointment that a varmint had ransacked the place, but also that the infamous Mountain Man had skipped it for a stay-over.

We got back in the truck and turned upcountry to Rosey Canyon, driving 15 more miles, over dirty snow drifts and through braided streams, until we came upon a man standing in the middle of the two-track road.

鈥淎re you Moffett?鈥� I said through the truck window.

鈥淵es I am,鈥� he said.

Moffett, 61, was clean-shaven with long gray hair. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had a problem now for seven years,鈥� he said. His encounter had taken place six weeks prior, in mid-February, a week before Knapp was fingered by name. 鈥淚 caught these weird tracks,鈥� Moffett said. 鈥淭his guy was sneakin鈥� around bushes,鈥� he said as he pointed up the road toward the neighbor鈥檚 place. 鈥淪ure enough,鈥� Moffett said, 鈥渢here鈥檚 these tracks going around all their windows.鈥�

Moffett had hopped on his four-wheeler and motored up the road. 鈥淲ent up to check on the Stuckers鈥� place,鈥� he said. He鈥檇 walked the property and circled back. Then Moffett told us the strange thing. 鈥淚 noticed there were carefully placed snowshoe tracks on top of my boot tracks.鈥� The mountain man had sent Moffett a message in the snow.

Moffett is the kind of Abbey-esque new-western character who might have appreciated Knapp鈥檚 gift at surviving solo, but he too had tired of the Mountain Man鈥檚 antics. 鈥淕ive him a can of soup, who cares,鈥� Moffett said. 鈥淏ut I think he鈥檚 getting more and more disturbed. He鈥檚 progressively upped the ante here. It鈥檚 like he鈥檚 getting paranoid now. I don鈥檛 wanna walk up on him and I don鈥檛 want one of my neighbors getting shot.鈥�

THAT’S WHAT IT SEEMED LIKE was going to happen, as Knapp got angrier and messier. After he was ID鈥檇, he left several seemingly drunken notes, including this one from a cabin in Kane County: 鈥淗ey sheriff; fuck you! Gonna put you in the ground! It鈥檚 better, these times, to be a ditch digger, septic cleaner than a pig.鈥�

Authorities were unsure, however, how violent Knapp was. Marshal Wingert told me about a homeless man in , along the Virgin River, who in 2010 said that he was brutally beaten by Knapp with a rock over some camping gear. The man declined to press charges.

Knapp鈥檚 time on Cedar Mountain also coincided with a strange, cold-case homicide straight out of a Coen brothers鈥� movie. In 2007, during hunting season, the partially buried body of 69-year-old Kennard Martin Honore of San Clemente, California鈥攚ho鈥檇 leased a cabin from the Forest Service鈥攚as found in the cinder pits near Navajo Lake, west of Duck Creek. Honore had died from a single gunshot wound from a small-caliber rifle and been hastily buried. Kane County deputies could find no motive and no sign of robbery. There were a lot of hunters in the area, so it could have been a stray round. But the small caliber doesn鈥檛 make sense for deer, and the quick gravework doesn鈥檛 make stray-shot sense. No evidence connects Knapp to the case except that he is believed to have been in the area at the time. Still, Wingert told me, 鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of an unusual coincidence.鈥�

Last April, I spoke to criminal psychologist Eric Hickey, dean of the California School of Forensic Studies at Alliant International University in Fresno. 鈥淭he isolation is probably costing him,鈥� said Hickey, who worked as a consultant on the Unabomber case. I told him about how Knapp鈥檚 bad behavior had seemed to escalate, about his threatening note to the sheriff and the pan of scat in the kitchen. 鈥淢ost people are not good at being isolated like that. He鈥檚 acting out. I suspect he has no control.鈥� Hickey said the scat in the pan was a signal. 鈥淭his is a signature.鈥�

听鈥淭he truth is,鈥� said Hickey, 鈥渋f law enforcement decides to go after him, they can track him. I guarantee, if he hurts somebody they鈥檒l go after him.鈥� But he didn鈥檛, and Knapp鈥檚 trail was cold all last summer.

Then, in October, he resurfaced. Knapp had moved north鈥攁lmost 120 miles north. He was seen near Fish Lake Reservoir, a high-alpine lake on the Fishlake National Forest in southern Sevier County, and again north of there in Sanpete County, which borders on the Wasatch Front, the mountain playground for Salt Lake City. Gaunt and clean-shaven, he appeared on another security camera, this time at night, waving his arms to feel out an alarm; he broke in, but took nothing. Then, in November, an elk hunter reported seeing Knapp in Sevier County. That sighting mustered a 40-officer cabin-to-cabin manhunt that again turned up goose eggs. What followed was a long, cold winter of no news until the horn-hunting Fullers encountered the Mountain Man on the Dairy Trail.

KNAPP IS LUCKY HE WASN’T GUNNED DOWN in the shadow of the Wasatch Plateau when he opened fire at the helicopter, an outcome detective Conover attributes to 鈥渄umb luck.鈥�

Shooting at a law-enforcement helicopter certainly amplified his woes. Now, in addition to the six felonies and five misdemeanors he was charged with on April 4 in Sanpete County鈥攊ncluding assorted counts of burglary, theft, criminal mischief, and unauthorized use of a firearm鈥攈e could face charges of assault on law-enforcement officers and discharging a weapon at an aircraft. 鈥淭he cabin burglaries,鈥� Wingert said, 鈥渨ill turn out to be the least of his worries.鈥�

But Knapp seemed at peace with his capture. In wire photos he appeared relieved, even grinning slightly at times. He told deputies he was tired of the elements鈥攖hat he was getting older and the winters were getting colder鈥攁nd that he didn鈥檛 hate people, but he didn鈥檛 especially like them either. He mentioned Robin Hood by name, pointing out that he鈥檇 simply tapped resources鈥攆ood, firewood, guns鈥攖hat weren鈥檛 being used.

Sanpete County authorities got him a shower, a new striped jumpsuit, and some pizza, then got out the maps and let Knapp draw lines between all the places he鈥檚 been. When you haven鈥檛 talked to many people for nearly seven years, apparently it builds up. Knapp didn鈥檛 appear concerned about lawyering up; he sang to officers like a proud jailbird.

Troy James Knapp had a closet full of baggage, I know, and I wish he was more Robin Hood and less just hood. I wish he鈥檇 only left thank-you notes instead of threats, and never shat in a pan. But his capture last week made me a little sad. Utah needs, as the Grateful Dead song goes, its friends of the devil spending the night in a cave鈥攐r cabin鈥攗p in the hills.

Some of the lawmen who participated in the manhunt don鈥檛 think Knapp was trying to hit the chopper with his rifle鈥攋ust deter it. Why do you say that, I asked detective Conover. Because that鈥檚 what he told us, he said. I get the sense that they enjoyed talking with the Mountain Man, too鈥攖hat though he鈥檇 become southern Utah鈥檚 public enemy number one, part of them admired something in his pluck.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a good thing you got me when you did,鈥� Knapp told the men on the ground. 鈥淚 was gonna move tomorrow.鈥�

听

Correspondent Jon Billman () is the author of the short-story collection When We Were Wolves. He has written about diamond mining, the Great Divide Race, and the search for Steve Fossett鈥檚 plane for 国产吃瓜黑料.

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