Left Ankle, One Boot in a Tree: He Walked Away Broken

Left Ankle, One Boot in a Tree: He Walked Away Broken

A single double-knotted hiking boot was found lodged four and a half feet up a red fir, forty yards off the trail-no sock, no second boot, no gear, no sign of camp. The boot was deliberately wedged and the scent trail from the trailhead stopped on bare granite; how did a moderately experienced hiker with a fractured left ankle simply disappear into the woods?

In this episode, we tell what happened when a routine day hike turned into a multi-day search and an inexplicable set of clues in the Coleville National Forest; what the search teams found and what remained missing raises the question: how far can exhaustion and terrain reshape a trail of evidence?

Person: Melvin Young Date: June 11, 2019 Location: Coleville National Forest, Ridgeback Trailhead area Event: Found single double-knotted hiking boot wedged in a red fir four and a half feet off the ground Status: Pack and some gear recovered; person not found in initial search area

- Melvin signed the Ridgeback Trailhead log at 9:14 AM on June 9, 2019 with destination Copperhead Lake, seven miles in. - The lone boot was found at 7:40 AM on June 11, 2019, forty yards off the marked trail and four and a half feet up in a red fir. - Search dogs tracked north along the drainage past the two-mile granite crossing and the scent trail abruptly ended on bare granite. - By June 12, a searcher found Melvin’s external-frame pack wedged in manzanita with his rain jacket, headlamp, and water filter inside. - Melvin was moving at roughly half a mile per hour after fracturing his left ankle approximately two miles from the trailhead.

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