Hello Friends!
Welcome to our latest video.
Today we're going to be talking about missing hikers who were found years later.
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In the world of the missing many times the family of the victims never get any answers
and sometimes the answers they get haunt them for the rest of their days.
There are times though, when the answers suddenly appear, years later, out of the clear blue sky.
Here are just some of those cases where a loved one went out for a hike or a walk
and seemed to vanish right off the face of the earth
only to leave behind no clue as to where they may have gone.
Years later, however, suddenly there were answers.
Someone else walking along somewhere in the woods came across something horrifying; human remains.
First case... Rudi Moder
Skeletal remains found on the west side of the Rocky Mountain National Park
are believed to be those of a man who disappeared 38 years ago.
On February 13th, 1983, 38 year old Rudi Moder departed the
Zimmerman Lake Trailhead on Colorado Highway 17 near Cameron Pass for a two-to-three-night
ski mountaineering trip over Thunder Pass and into Rocky Mountain National Park.
Rudi was originally from West Germany but living in Fort Collins at the time of his disappearance.
He was described as an experienced winter mountaineer and was said
to be very knowledgeable of the trails he somehow ended up lost in.
This is what made it all the more baffling when on February 19th, 6 days after he had initially
set out on a three-night trip over Thunder Pass and into Rocky Mountain National Park, he was
said to be overdue by his roommate who immediately reported him as missing to the proper authorities.
Further investigation and search operations started the very next day,
early in the morning on the 20th.
Over a foot of snow fell in the Never Summer Mountains on February 19th,
hampering search efforts in finding tracks and other clues.
A food cache belonging to Moder was found at the mouth of Box Canyon,
in the northwest corner of the park.
A snow cave, with Moder’s sleeping bag and other gear and items, was found near the food cache.
These were the only major clues discovered during the four-day extensive search.
Because Rudi’s point last seen was outside of Rocky Mountain National Park at the Zimmerman
Lake Trailhead, the extensive search efforts were coordinated with Larimer County Search and Rescue
and Rocky Mountain National Park Search and Rescue Teams.
Search efforts occurred mainly in the Box Canyon and Skeleton Gulch areas,
including Mount Richthofen.
This included ground searchers on skis and snowshoes as well as aerial search operations.
There was even an avalanche dog and his handler there to bring a
more professional focus to the avalanche terrain in the area.
The extensive search efforts continued for four days and ended on February 23rd, however there
were numerous search efforts by ground and air that occurred later that spring and summer.
In the decades following Rudi Moder’s disappearance, search efforts continued
periodically by Rocky Mountain National Park staff and Larimer County Search and Rescue Teams.
In mid-August of 2020, skeletal remains were discovered by a hiker in the Skeleton Gulch area,
near avalanche debris.
The area where the remains were found were part of the initial search area.
An investigation was initially conducted but it seems the rangers and authorities involved got a
bit sidetracked and their priorities shifted to the Cameron Peak Fire closing the area,
followed by the East Troublesome Fire.
Snow then covered this high elevation area above 11,000 feet.
In the summer of 2021 park rangers further searched the scene and found skis, poles
and boots, along with remains of personal items believed to belong to Rudi Morder.
The FBI Evidence Response Team assisted park rangers with the recovery of remains.
The Grand County Coroner’s office attempted to confirm identification
through dental records however, the results were inconclusive.
Officials have worked extensively with the German government for repatriation,
family notification and dental record analysis.
The discovery and recovery of Rudi Moder’s remains closes out a nearly four decade long cold case
at Rocky Mountain National Park.
Rachel Lakoduk
28 year old Rachel Lakoduk of Moses Lake went missing on October 17th,
2019 after telling her family she planned to hike the Hidden Lake Trail to a lookout cabin
and spend the night to celebrate her birthday.
During the initial search Rachel’s car was found at the trailhead
but search crews reported that it didn't appear she had made it to the lookout tower.
According to a GoFundMe created by her family, the weather turned inclement
while Rachel was out for her hike and she wasn’t able to make it off the mountain.
Over the weekend of August 14th, 2021
her remains were found by a large search group who were still out searching for her two years later.
Her mother, Elizabeth Tripp posted to her facebook the Monday after the discovery,
“Our beloved Rachel's remains arrived off the mountain yesterday."
Geraldine Largay
66 year old Geraldine Largay from Brentwood,Tennessee
started her journey in April of 2013 at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. She had committed to a “thru
hike” of the 2,168-mile Appalachian trail, and had already traversed more than 1,000 miles.
She gained the trail name “inchworm” due to her perpetually slow pace.
She was last seen on July 22nd where she talked with two women at a lean-to,
a sheltered stopping point.
She planned to hike 8.4 miles north that day and then continue the next
day to a point where the trail crossed a road.
Geraldine was a retired air force nurse who had hiked long trails near her home in Tennessee,
and had taken a course on doing this particular trail.
She easily made friends both on and off the trail.
Her husband was supposed to meet her there as he was meeting her weekly to restock her supplies.
He waited and waited but unfortunately Geraldine never showed.
Hundreds of people and several dogs searched for her.
There were few clues.
The only clear clue investigators had was a photo of her, taken early the morning she went missing,
near a log lean-to whose three walls are covered by a corrugated tin roof, a fire pit nearby.
She was last seen by two hikers, and her cell phone pinged a tower the afternoon she got lost.
She was initially traveling with a friend named Jane Lee but Jane had to leave the
trip early and go home due to what was only described as “a family emergency.”
She immediately had some concerns however about
leaving Geraldine to hike by herself the rest of the way.
Geraldine was known to have a terrible sense of
direction and had already taken several wrong turns.
Because she moved at a much faster pac than Geraldine, several times Jane Lee
had to double back for her friend; who at least once had wandered off and gotten lost.
Jane found her trying to find someone to set her back on course.
It’s said that Jane admitted she felt that Geraldine was in “over
her head'' in trying to complete the rest of the journey solo.
It turns out though that Geraldine Largay had been writing in her journal every day
of her trip and continued to do so right up until the very end.
Her final entries showed her to be resigned to her inevitable fate.
Her last journal entry read, “When you find my body
please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry. It will be the greatest kindness for
them to know that I am dead and where you found me – no matter how many years from now.
Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them.”
She wrote this entry 15 days after she left the Appalachian trail to use the restrooms
and never returned.
Her journal entries and the following texts proved to investigators that
Geraldine was alive for almost an entire month after the last time she was seen.
Investigators released documents and photos relevant to the case after her body was found.
The texts and calls from Geraldine’s phone were as follows: She tried to text her husband on
July 22nd, it read, “In somm trouble. Got off trail to go to br. Now lost.
Can u call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. Xox.”
The text didn’t go through though, most likely due to her having been in a no service area.
It seems she continued walking westward and tried, twelve more times, to send the message.
The last attempt was at 12:25pm that same day.
Two hours later she tried to send another message that didn't go through
but this one was completely blank. She tried another message the next day,
writing, “Lost since yesterday. Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls. Xox.”
It also failed and she tried one more time to no avail.
By the next day, George Largay was concerned and the official search began.
Over the next few weeks it expanded past the warden service to include search aircraft,
state police, national park rangers and fire departments.
They pursued hikers’ tips, scoured side trails and set dogs to searching – to no avail.
Heavy rains that week obscured the trail,
and Geraldine remained lost, a face on trail signposts for other hikers to look for.
By this time Geraldine had set up her tent nearly two miles from the trail.
She had some food, water and other camping supplies, along with her journal.
One of the Maine wardens who compiled the evidence wrote
that Geraldine’s writings were personal letters to her family.
There were entries through August 10th then nothing until the 18th.
It was the last entry, 27 days after she got lost.
There were also messages from the afternoon of July 30th.
Two texts were deleted on August 6th, which was the same date of her hopeless journal entry.
The report wasn’t clear as to whether or not
she tried to actually make any calls during her almost month long ordeal.
Geraldine’s husband reported to investigators that she only used her phone sparingly,
depending on the circumstances of the situation.
More than two years after she wrote that last entry,
Geraldine Largay’s body was found lying in her sleeping bag which was inside of a zipped up tent.
A forester on contract named Kevin Adam who was also a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy
found her campsite on October 11th, 2015.
He later described the first thoughts that came to his mind when he saw it, “The possibilities were:
it was a human body; it was animal bones, or if it was a human body, was it Gerry Largay?” When
he arrived at the site, his doubts evaporated. “I saw a flattened tent, with a green backpack
outside of it and a human skull with what I believed to be a sleeping bag around it.
I was 99% certain that this was Gerry Largay’s.”
The campsite was “difficult to see unless you were right next to it”, he wrote,
noting that the tent was under several large trees whose branches obstructed the sky.
The site was in dense woods near the border of the navy and public properties,
and Geraldine had built bedding area out of “small trees, pine needles and possibly some dirt
in an attempt to keep her tent out of any water,” Lt Adam wrote.
She also had tied a space blanket between branches to provide some cover.
There was also evidence of lost opportunities:
an open canopy nearby where she could have been seen from the sky, had her tent been under it.
Largay had also tried to set fires, Adam suggested,
noting nearby trees that had been charred black, seemingly not from lightning but by human hands.
In the camp they found the basics for hiking such as maps a rain jacket, a space blanket, string,
Ziploc bags, and a flashlight that still worked.
A blue baseball cap, dental floss,
a homemade necklace with white stone wrapped in string were also found in the area.
They found her notebook with moss growing on it. It was titled: “George Please Read XOXO”.
The medical examiner ruled that Geraldine Largay had died of exposure.
Eric Robinson
63 year old Eric Robinson disappeared in July of 2011.
The Australian native was hiking the 100-mile High Line trail through the Uinta Mountains, in Utah.
He set out on July 28th, 2011 on the hike,
which was scheduled to take 10 days, and was reported missing on Aug. 7th, 2011.
The Duchesne County Sheriff's Office deployed a search and rescue team to find him the next day,
but the search was unsuccessful.
On August 19th, 2016 a man from Coalville and his two sons were camping near Allsop Lake
in the Uinta Mountains and found the remains with a backpack and tent, police said.
Eric was reported as an experienced outdoorsman who had recreated in the Himalayan Mountains.
Mr. Robinson had been dropped off at the Chepeta Lake Trailhead on July 28th,
2011 and was scheduled to arrive at Mirror Lake on July 7th 2011 at 1200 hours.
Summit County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrived in the area
and recovered human remains and several personal items.
The remains were transported to the Office of the Medical Examiner and were confirmed to be human.
Further DNA testing is required to confirm the identity of the remains.
Due to the proximity to the personal belongings,
the human remains are believed to be those of Eric Robinson.
Riley Zickel
21 year old Hiker Riley Zickel, of California, was reported missing July 30th, 2016 after he
didn't return from Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area in what was intended to be an overnight hike.
He left from Breitenbush Lake Road at the Pacific Crest Trailhead
where he planned to hike for one day and return the following day to visit friends in Seattle.
He was last seen on the Pacific Crest Trail just north of Jefferson Park where
he visited with another hiker along the trail.
Riley’s family reported him missing and Marion County deputies found
his vehicle parked at a Jefferson Park trailhead.
He was an experienced hiker, had the appropriate equipment
and an adequate amount of food for his trip.
Search and rescue teams from multiple agencies spent
seven days searching for Riley before efforts were suspended on Aug. 6th, 2016.
Areas of snow complicated the search and, in spite
of the snow, daytime temperatures occasionally reached 90 degrees.
The elevation of the search area varied from 5,000 to 7,500 feet above sea level.
More than 340 people spent about 5,000 hours and covered over 350 square miles
in the Willamette National Forest around Mount Jefferson in efforts to find him.
Salem-based helicopters from the Oregon Army National Guard and Cessna 182 aircraft from
the Civil Air Patrol flew daily above the search area, but never found any sign of him.
Officials from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office were contacted by climbers who believed
they located his body in a glacial area above Jefferson Park on Mt. Jefferson, according to Sgt.
Jeremy Landers of the Marion County Sheriff's Office. The
recovery of the remains proved to be challenging as the area where they
were found is extremely steep with loose rocks and rock avalanches.
The recovery was conducted by the sheriff's office's Search and Rescue,
Corvallis Mountain Rescue, the Civil Air Patrol and the United States Forest Service.
Riley Zickel was found within the 350 square miles that were initially searched, Landers said.
But with portions of the initial search done by air and the area where he was located,
it would have been difficult to see him.
Crews used the coordinates given by the group of hikers to fly overhead and "preview" the terrain.
Members of Corvallis Mountain Rescue then recovered the body.
Riley’s father, Robin Zickel, traveled to Oregon from California and was at the
trailhead when searchers brought his son out of the Jefferson Wilderness Area, Sgt. Landers said.
“We are grateful to the many organizations that helped make today’s recovery of Mr.
Zickel possible," said Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast in a statement.
"Without their contributions, we would not have been able to bring closure to the Zickel family
after these three long years.”
Well there you have it folks! These incredible stories of people found years after they went
missing look forward your comments but please keep it friendly and respectful
In the meanwhile be good to yourselves and each other i'll see you just a
little farther on down the trail! I'm Steve Stockton and i'll talk to you next time...