Missing Yellowstone Hiker's Note A Clue For Volunteer Search Teams Now Mobilizing

With one last week of balmy weather forecast for Wyoming, the father of a hiker who vanished last month near Yellowstone National Park’s tallest peak is organizing experienced mountaineers and hikers to conduct a widescale search in rugged, harrowing terrain.

Austin King, 22, summitted Eagle Peak at 11,361 feet on Sept. 17.

He left a note in the registry describing the blinding weather he endured to get there. King’s father shared a copy of the note with Cowboy State Daily.

“I can’t feel my fingers and my glasses are so fogged from the ruthless weather of the mountains,” says King in a handwritten, smudged entry dated Sept. 17. “I truly cannot believe I am here after what it took to be here. I endured rain, sleet, hail and the most wind I have ever felt(.)”

He couldn’t see Eagle Peak for most of the day from the densest fog he’d ever seen, he added.

“I free soloed too many cliffs to get here and walked up to the peak from the connecting peak – AKA not the right path. I am 22 years old and I will never forget today (for) the rest of my life.”

He concluded: “Life is beautiful, got out and LIVE IT!” before signing his name and sketching a smiley face.

That was at about 6 p.m. It had taken him all day to climb the mountain, and the darkness was encroaching. The sun set at 7:07 that evening.

Three days later, he failed to show for a scheduled boat ride back toward his RV at Grant Village, where he lived while working as a Xanterra concessionaire employee in Yellowstone.

The Clues We Grasp

For avid hiker John Lamb, who has volunteered his services coordinating and leading a volunteer team of himself and six others, King’s note and the voicemails he left for loved ones that day are sparse and precious clues.

King left a voicemail for his father Brian King-Henke from the summit as well. The voicemail didn’t ping to King-Henke’s phone until a week later, Lamb said. But it roughly mirrors the language of King’s note.

“We can tell by that voicemail that he was disoriented,” Lamb told Cowboy State Daily on Friday. “He admits he came up the wrong path … he possibly didn’t know the right path to take down, to head back down to the lake.”

The side of the mountain facing the city of Cody features crumbling descents, cliffs, ravines and other pitfalls.

“You can tell he’s scared (in the voicemail), he’s cold — he doesn’t really know where he’s at,” said Lamb. “It took him all day to get there, so you can just imagine trying to come down a mountain not seeing at all, and not knowing where you’re at up there and which direction to go.”

Gathering

Lamb spoke to Cowboy State Daily after leaving the convention center at the Holiday Inn in Cody, which he’s been using as a makeshift command center to lay out his plan for the next six days.

He’s in touch with Yellowstone authorities still involved in the search. Yellowstone announced Oct. 2 it was scaling back search efforts and switching from “rescue” mode to “recovery” mode. The latter refers to a search for a dead body.

But Lamb said the park authorities are planning another large aerial search Sunday while the weather is still fair.

Yellowstone National Park confirmed Friday that Superintendent Cam Sholly has asked for another “extensive aerial search for Sunday” and the deployment of several ground teams to search more areas of the mountain that were under snow weeks ago.

“The park has continued limited search efforts since scaling back,” says an email Yellowstone’s public affairs office sent Friday to Cowboy State Daily. “We are aware that the father is attempting to coordinate additional search efforts for the upcoming days and have provided him information on the search efforts to date. We are also cautioning any of these additional searchers to be aware of the dangerous terrain and predicted inclement weather for next week.”

Snow is forecast for Oct. 17 in the park.

On Thursday and again Friday, volunteers working under Lamb’s direction hiked the 14 miles into the Eagle Peak area. They’re scheduled to camp overnight Friday, and possibly for days continuously after that, said Lamb.

They’re setting up a base camp on the Cody side of the peak.  

“We’ve been told to be careful. Some of the guys working on that — there’s rocks falling,” said Lamb. “We’re very aware of that.”

These days also mark the feverish end of grizzly bears’ wakeful feeding season. Lamb said bears, weather and terrain all are constantly on the minds of searchers.

Another Team Of Six

Bill Dohse, a private search and rescue coordinator based in Cody, is also sending his team of six into the wilderness, he told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.

Dohse said he’s deploying four teams of search dogs, including scent and cadaver dogs, and at least two drone teams.

Dohse runs a for-hire outfit but so far, has been donating his efforts in the King search, he said.

In his own interview, King-Henke said he hopes to compensate the searchers from his GoFundMe campaign. As of midday Friday the page had raised $6,495. King-Henke’s narrative on the page also urges people to pray for his son.

Dohse, who is a retired law enforcement agent, a longtime search and rescue operative and a lifelong mountaineer, has been running private searches since about 2015, he said. Sometimes his work is meant to compensate for authorities scaling back their efforts; sometimes it’s to help authorities cover more ground, he said.

In this case, he said he hopes to help the Yellowstone crews fan out more.

Like Lamb, Dohse was mindful of the predicted snowfall, saying he wants to accomplish a lot before Thursday.

More Welcome

King-Henke told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that he’d welcome still more volunteers.

He reached out to the private and volunteer hiking teams because he wanted to do more for his son. 

“As a dad, I need to be out here searching for my kid,” he said, speaking from a federal ranger station in Cody.

King-Henke described the coordinators sending a couple hikers to do a reconnaissance journey Friday, and a plan to send out both search crews Saturday morning.

So far King-Henke and Lamb are coordinating from their base in Cody. But King-Henke hopes to join the search himself, probably early next week, he said.

He’s planning to ride a horse furnished by Dohse’s operation. The searchers are still looking for people to stay with the horses during the searchers’ foot expeditions. King-Henke is also still seeking people who can keep the base camp supplied with food and water, he said.

Sunlight Sports in Cody has been letting searchers borrow gear. Store co-owner Wes Allen told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that he has contributed some of his own gear; some rental pieces, and that others at the store have also contributed gear to the effort.

Allen is a long-distance hiker himself, he said.

“That’s obviously somebody’s son and friend that’s out there still,” said Allen, who lauded both the volunteer search efforts and the work of Yellowstone and surrounding agencies’ search and rescue crews.

“I think the park and Park County search and rescue, and the folks from Bridger-Teton (National Forest) and everybody else that helped, they really went above and beyond,” said Allen. “It’s just a huge, wild place. It’s going to take a lot to find somebody who’s out there.”  

King-Henke said he has turned away services that weren’t feasible, such as a private helicopter flight quoted at about $10,000.

The father has described feeling numb and exhausted in his Facebook posts of recent days. But one bright spot, he told Cowboy State Daily, has been discovering the generosity of Cody residents.

“My true thanks to everybody here in Cody,” he said. “This town has opened their hearts to any resource they can possibly give us. It’s been truly amazing. And everybody else who has donated and, you know, sent prayers and all that. I truly appreciate everything.”

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.