She Climbed Where No Shoes Could Reach: The Boot on Casner Wall

She Climbed Where No Shoes Could Reach: The Boot on Casner Wall

A single women's hiking boot, size seven and a half, sat upright on an inaccessible ledge forty feet below a cliff rim - placed heel to wall, toe over a river gorge - and Rhonda Johnson, a careful 26-year-old hiker, was unaccounted for; how did an unequipped woman end up with a GPS track that shows a 42-foot vertical ascent on a five-point-eleven technical slab at 9:47 p.m.? What happened in the dark between the trail register and that impossible ledge?

In this episode, we follow the sixty-hour search that began after Rhonda failed to send her evening satellite check-in and her sister reported her missing, tracing bloodhound trails that abruptly stopped, GPS data that inexplicably logs a technical ascent, and the moments rescuers pieced together from gear notes, witnesses, and field logs to ask whether the record can be reconciled with the woman they knew.

Person: Rhonda Johnson Age: 26 Occupation: Dental hygienist Date: September 11-14 Location: Galena Basin, Casner Wall

- Rhonda signed the Piñon Meadow trailhead register at 8:52 a.m, on a Tuesday morning in September. - A grooming salon worker found a single pink-and-gray hiking boot upright on a ledge forty feet below a cliff rim three days later. - The boot was women's size seven and a half, with laces double-knotted and positioned heel to wall, toe hanging over the gorge. - A bloodhound named Cass followed Rhonda's scent east from the trailhead then stopped abruptly about a quarter mile east of the Casner Wall access point. - Rhonda's GPS recorded a 42-foot vertical ascent in approximately 11 minutes at 9:47 p.m. on September 13, ending at the rim of Casner Wall despite her carrying no climbing hardware.

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