He went out for a day, came back, said your son is dead, and left. Better late than never, amiright?? Carr, at the time 19, started dating a girl and became friends with her dad, a crazy backwoods hillbilly who was convinced society would collapse in 2000. She was most likely taking a selfie and fell. Why? Learning to, if not love, at least tolerate the mountains. Kevin was expecting a call from Sam, his live-in girlfriend, by 6pm. Its hard to say how many deep mine shafts and ventilation corridors, called adits, are dug into the mountainoften hidden in the underbrush. Spreadsheets tracked every time a viewer thought they saw something. The two men sit together, uphill from the remnants of a life. Jun 2004 - Mar 20138 years 10 months. WA hiker Samantha Sayers went missing on 8/1 a solo day hike to Vesper's Peak. Everyone had a theory. All rights reserved. Sam Sayers, described by her family and friends as an experienced hiker, set out on the morning of Aug. 1 for a solo hike in the North Cascades. Finally, in mid-October, Kevin and Bud Carr made the decision to pack up their camp and come down the mountain. Toppled trees covered in moss. But since moving to Seattle in 2012, and spending months of his life living on Vesper Peak, hes accustomed himself to the Pacific Northwest lifestyle. Amid conifers and half-frozen lakes, we can feel free from our modern tangle of surveillance, even as tenuous threads still leash us to the world below: ever-pinging cell phones, footsteps on an established trail. The two ended up searching together. There are the obvious theories including wild animal attacks, getting lost or falling. All issues Carr talked about, sometimes without prompting. See how those goats move? She's into that Arbonne pyramid scheme as well. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Carr posted a 30-minute live YouTube video during which someone called him ridiculous. He responded by calling them a weak ass fool and challenged them to meet him on the mountain. Near 2 p.m. she was hiking. I know many of you have reached this point already, but there are some serious problems with what's going on now, and with how it's being presented. Theyd planned to do it together in 2018 but hed worried they werent in good enough shape, and they pushed it a year. Kevin made several more solo trips through November 14. Well come up to you, the rogue search and rescue employee says. PM me and I'll add y'all. Hearing that, Kevin can only give a scornful laugh. If you have information about Sayers, call the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office at (425) 388-3393. So, when they stop, its relaxed. Kevin Dares with Sam at a New Orleans wedding in 2017. Kevin Dares. Early on he told deputy Peter Teske, who would also play a huge role in the search, he had a feeling we better throw everything weve got at this one, at least for a couple of days.. Sam was raised in the Erie, Pennsylvania area where her parents Ron and Lisa still live. Been trying for a week now I thought it was shut down (I'm social media challenged). You know. They parsed Kevins 911 callcould you hear someone in the background?and claimed to have hacked his email. This was on the last day of the search before they stopped for the season. Where did she go? As of Monday, more than $35,000 has been raised. I went to high school with Sam, and her mom was always that uber-intense type. There the route passes across the south fork of the Stillaguamish River; hikers hop across boulders while the knee-deep creek rushes beneath. People made YouTube videos. Allison Williams He couldn't accompany Sam because he was working. Someone claimed she was on an episode of The Bachelorette. Her mother posted daily updates that were parsed for clues. Amateur sleuths followed the case like the podcast Serial or a season of True Detective. Theres no official count; when the U.S. Department of the Interior tried to build a database of such events, the effort drew criticism as an expensive, malfunctioning boondoggle. Next to a log and up against a rock is an orange Therm-a-Rest folded as if used as a cushion to sit on. In his Facebook videos, hes intense and combative. Life had narrowed to a singular purpose, to comb a few square miles of earth for a trace. Seattle friends, the 27-year-old wrote in 2018, Im going hiking this Wednesday and tackling Vesper Peak Message me if you want to tag along.. So we go to the woods, the mountains, the thin air of the alpine. The two compromised. A man that dresses in military camo but, being a felon, cant legally own a gun. A hiker remembers seeing Sam veer down toward the peaks southwest side around 3pm. Later, her husband Jamie, will receive a bag of her gear from the coroner and place the items on the floor of an empty room in the house they used to share. Another saw her descending the south side of summit. Samantha "Sam" Sayers, 28, went missing whilst on a solo hike on the Vesper Peak trail in the North Cascades mountains in Washington on Wednesday, August 1st, 2018. Approvals quickly followed. The elder Dares prepared hot meals of rice and meat and anything else on hand, calling it all jambalaya. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Om mani padme hum, a Tibetan prayer for compassion. Shortly after her brief encounter, the trail takes a hard turn to the hikers left. It lasted 22 days. Local drone pilots launched flights, passing along footage that Sams Belltown crew posted online for anyone to scour for clues. But also an education in wilderness survival. In regular live videos, she implied that the Sayers family was undergoing its own investigation; the Dares family interpreted cryptic statements as accusations against Kevin and sent a cease and desist letter. Originally from New Orleans, his leisurely drawl belying a sharp wit and quick tongue. Bud Carr, with his drive and determination, was a godsend for a grief-stricken Dares when his girlfriend went missing in 2018. It really is. Samantha "Sam" Sayers, a former Girard resident, remains among the 43% still missing. Finally, the last push to Vesper: a short traverse from Headlee to tiny Lake Elan, still partially frozen, and the triangular peak half-covered in snow. I dont ever go out and think Oh Im going to find Rachel. Today is a day where we clear ground where they are not.. Thats when two hikers coming down saw her. This one was different. What happened next is educated speculation. Sayers' family has started a GoFundMe campaignto purchase food and survival gear that rescuers have been dropping in 20 one-pound bags in various locations so Sayers might stumble across them. Late on that August day, a few hours after Sam wandered down Vesper, Kevin Dares sat inside Roccos, an upscale pizza restaurant in Belltown with Victorian wallpaper and novelty banh mi slices. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. What color is Lakoduks pad, backpack and sleeping bag, he asks, his voice tight with urgency. Carr stepped into this mess several days after Sayers went missing. The staff checks on him every 10 minutes, more motherly than waiterly. In a crowded restaurant you must lean in to hear him speak. Do you know how its going to look if you die out here with an ice ax to your head and its just me and you? Kevin asked him, grasping at dark humor. One night in July 1997, Carr and six other guys dressed in all black smashed their way into the store and stole between 80 and 100 guns. The Hidden Lake trek is 8 miles round trip and steep, gaining 3,300 feet in 4 miles. It was a total shit show from what I've read from people who live out there or have experience with this type of hiking. It was easy for fellow hikers to remember the young woman with the bald, tattooed head. Kevin and Sam on a Mt. Just one of those feelings. Samantha Sayers was last seen Aug. 1, 2018, while on a solo day-hike up Vesper Peak in the North Cascades. That will be nice for them.. Samantha Sayers, 28, has been missing from a solo hike on Vesper Peak, Wash., since Aug. 1, 2018. The happiest situation I can think of is shes on that mountain and it was something quick and she didnt suffer for too long., Only a fraction of missing persons cases are truly without a trace, truly unsolved. Search-and-rescue teams, assisted by dog teams and drones, searchedthe area for three weeks before suspending operations. Interactive Map in Progress as of August 31, 2018. Last summer, Tripp found remnants of a small campfire while searching with Carr, with whom hes become friends. There was nothing down there, he says. On forums like NWHikers.net, locals offered likely scenarios, stories of their own misadventures around Vesper, their own accidental wanderings down to Spada Lake or the Sultan River. According to Strange Outdoors, she had expected to check in on her boyfriend by 6, since he had work and could not join her. Jamie hoped theyd repair the marriage. The system is so broke, they dont even track it, says David Francis, whose son Jon disappeared in Idaho in 2006. The longest in state history. His girlfriend, Samantha Sayers, also disappeared while hiking. (Courtesy of Julie Newberry) . Hes accused of being a Nazi, a white supremacist, a misogynist, a charlatan. Kevin was still at the Verlot station when Sergeant John Q. Adams arrived around 1:30am. In late July, the Tacoma Mountain Rescue Unit Facebook page posted a photo (clearly photoshopped) of a bearded man with a Pinocchio-length nose, wearing a do-rag and smoking a cigarette. "Please take a moment to look at their faces and read and share their stories. He knows he should be angling left, to meet up with the group, but for some reason he wants to trend right a bit more. At some point, she realized things were bad and turned around. Samantha Sayers is still missing. The easy banter of men and women who work together often. Two years later as Kevin Dares hikes uphill searching for Lakoduk, snow is a distant memory. Below the steep north face of Vesper Peak, the edge of a glacier formed a moat at the base of the cliff, its bottom impossible to reach beneath the ice. Rainier. The official search started. Covered in tattoos. There were a few other searches after that, Carr said, but things didnt really heat up until Samantha Sayers vanished on Vesper Peak in 2018. Volunteers brought up snacks, so many grocery store fried chickens that the team joked about the tidal wave of drumsticks. Mohawked. The longest search in state history turned up nothing. It even had an iron box stove inside. Off the mountain, Kevin had become the tragic fiance who refused to give upor maybe the subject of wild speculation. Rachel moved back into her dads home in Moses Lake. And everything tilted at an absurd angle 35 to 40 degrees making progress a thing measured in hundreds of feet, not miles. NBC News this past week pointed out that in the seven years its Dateline NBC "Missing in America" online series has been in existence, around 57% of the series'subjects have been found. No definitive signs ever surfaced; some footsteps on the southeast side could have been Sams, but they revealed nothing. and our Seattle Met So forgive Kevin for being a bit antisocial sometimes. A Nazi? Too much vegetation. By 4 p.m. Oct. 17, Lakoduk had made it about 2.5 miles up the trail and was at 5,500 feet. My diets bad. They werent worried about getting caught, focusing instead on the imminent collapse of society. In his short tenure, Adams had already honed his instincts on missing hiker cases. He was accused of being a chauvinist. Using his cell phone for illumination under a moon just past full, he retreated three-and-a-half miles back to his car. Adams dispatched the county-owned SNOHAWK1 helicopter on what was turning into a cloudy Thursday. The first missing person Carr searched for was Patti Krieger in 2010 after the 65-year-old woman disappeared on Sauk Mountain, also in the North Cascades, just miles from Carrs home. He also once owned an exotic snake breeding company. Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below. Rebellious and combative, he was in solitary numerous times, contemplated suicide but then converted to Buddhism (even publishing three short books on the topic). Despite her healthy pallor, strangers assumed shed just undergone chemotherapy, and the sympathetic clucks wore on her. One saw her eating a sandwich. Anyone with any information should call the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office at 425-388-3808 or 425-388-3523.. After Collegiate, Sayers attended the State University of New York at Fredonia, where she graduated in 2013 with a bachelors degree in technical theatre and theatre design and technology, according to herLinkedInaccount. Kevin agrees to wait. I just do not know what to think, but I am guessing she fell, and the area that required technical climbers was not searched properly? Carr owns and operates 49th Parallel, a private search and rescue group located in Concrete and spent at least 70 days searching for Rachel. Dogs versus cats. Hes prone to long rants, but is also a good listener, happy to suspend a story, although he almost always picks it up later. Kim Turner, a Belltown community health therapist already close with Kevin, quickly befriended his new girlfriend. By and large, the United States depends on a patchwork of volunteer search and rescue teams organized and run by county sheriffs offices. They were among the outside experts Kevin hired using money from the GoFundMe. His father, Carlton Carr Sr. was an entrepreneur, jumping from hustle to hustle, but by far his most successful, and formative enterprise, was a gold mine in Colorado. Seattle Met. An accomplished smoker, American Spirits blue. One count estimates 1,600 people are currently missing on public lands. Point of Disappearance. I also believe quasi-conspiracy theories like missing411 perpetuate the underestimation of the dangers of going unprepared or overconfident into the wilderness by suggesting that there are other causes to the events other than accidents in the wild. They found boot prints but that's it. Samantha Jane Sayers (sammiieeiilikeeiitsayerss) See Photos. Not sure about the pad., Carr interjects, Orange, orange Therm-a-Rest.. Polite. For her 28th birthday in 2019, they planned to hike to the Hidden Lake Lookout. They dont touch anything. discussion about Sam that won't be silenced, Press J to jump to the feed. I have better things to do. Society persisted and Carr spent five years in a Missouri prison although he was sentenced to seven. Im at 4,500 feet, Dares says, about 500 feet above the group. The sheriffs office fielded sightings of bald women across the state, several at various Walmarts. Red hair. In October the occasional snow flurries turned to regular snowfall, and temperatures continued their plunge. Among them is a former Marine, who days after Rachel Lakoduk went missing on Oct. 17, 2019, spent an entire night searching for her. Could it be you or one of your friends?" The sergeant fielded endless rumors and accusations, about whether FLIR was really operationalit wasor why he wasnt using bloodhounds (wrong terrain, he says). The color of her lipstick debated, what does it mean? Whether or not he has anything to do with it, something is definitely up now. I never once even peeped at it before because I was under LYS's cult spell and I thought if I deflected there I'd get blocked from her page. They know the chances of finding her are slim to none. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. That self-promotion is an intentional choice, Carr said. By 6 p.m., her boyfriend Kevin Dares was worried. And a common refrain, the question of whether Sams disappearance could be foul play; Adams simply never found anything to suggest that possibility. 509 Olive Way, Suite 305, Seattle, WA 98101, Kevin recognized Sam from across the room. He watches crime shows, so he tells me, Theres always a dungeon where they lock them up. The duo spent 126 days on the mountain. On the phone he is well-spoken. Imagining Sam bushwhacking her way through the forest around Vesper, family members filled Ziploc bags with snacks and instructions for Sam. MARBLEMOUNT, Wash. This is tough country. After summiting Washington state's Vesper Peak on a day hike in August 2018, Sam Sayers disappeared. In a snowstorm, this would be easy to miss. No one exactly knows. But the gold business soured in the late 80s and Carrs dad got into a dispute with his business partner. Up at camp, just below the stone summit pyramid, the buzz of Facebook was distant. People can say whatever they want, that man steps up more than anybody Ive ever met, despite his faults.. No way, he said in a comment, because women need more protection than men do. Someone else commented on his swastika tattoo, calling him a Nazi and racist. Youve got to be a little crazy to do that.. As the August day melted into late evening, Kevin grew concerned. I'm happy to PM you with my FB name so you can invite me. On Friday nights, she joined Turner for what they called Rantwine and cathartic heart-to-hearts. It had never happened before. Im sure theyll be surprised [sic] twist weve never thought of., Its the murder mystery crowd, the I-love-watching-HBO-serial-killer-documentaries crowd, says Kevin, who tries, sometimes in vain, to temper his cynicism. I want to understand that she had to "put up a front" in order to properly follow other leads, but like how dare you rally and petition and raise money for volunteers to go searching if you never really felt she was there in the first place. He moved to Colorado as a child and now lives in northwest Washington in a small, rented home on the Skagit River with his wife and three children. Samantha Sayers is a 5-foot-8-inch white woman weighing 125 pounds. His baby girl, spunky and brave, wouldnt have given up without a fight. In videos posted to his own YouTube channel, he is combative and confident about his mountain experience. As a child, strangers in the store would comment on how beautiful her red hair was, to which she would only growl. That was day 106. Its hot, humid and even he a Louisiana native is sweating. He pauses and warns another search party member to watch his step. Super driven. That number 1,600 comes from the journalist Jon Billmans research. The paper is there to log the hikers on Sunrise Mine Trail #707, a route that winds to the top of Vesper Peak. Around 10 a.m., Sayers signed her name in the logbook at the trailhead and then disappeared. August 1 had long since rolled into August 2, the first day of the search for Sam Sayers. They were surprised at how she was dressed, thermal tights under shorts and a long-sleeved shirt under a NASA tank top, but Lakoduk seemed confident, had other clothes in her pack and was moving very well they told police. But something catches his eye to the right, in a depression beneath a tree, a flash of orange out of place in the rain-fed greenery. In Washington, there are 765 open missing persons cases. One day stands out: August 4, three days in. Several GoFundMe campaigns popped up. He didnt think it was likely Sam had ended up there, but it was worth a look. Also, if you check out her IG she appeared to enjoy taking a lot of cliffside selfies soit's feasible she may have fallen. Those moats haunt Kevin too; he knows theyll never really be able to search the bands between ice and rock that fill up with snow every winter. To my understanding, both the Truth group is no longer accepting new members. Now I can get Bud to focus on Vesper again.. Like Kevin she was a self-employed entrepreneur, owner of a cleaning service for Airbnbs. When she graduated from Collegiate, Sayers went by the last name of Steinbaugh, according to the Erie School District, who confirmed her enrollment in 2018. He looks drained. The vegetation is so thick and the terrain so rugged its entirely possible to walk by a clue, or an entire body, and not see it. This was Sam Sayers in her element: fired up by the theatricality, by a tight-knit community. She and Jamie became good friends, Jamie Lakoduk said, and then started dating. Squirrels are going to be stuffed, one poster wrote. All told, Carr and various configurations of volunteers have spent more than 70 days on this mountain in the North Cascades searching for her. SM is an admin but does not act like the other admins.Basically what I saw was half of the people think SS fell from the mountain and the other half think she was killed off the mountain. Despite those challenges, when Samantha Sayers went missing in 2018, county and state agencies spent 22 days searching for her. While his dad worked at the mine, Carr played and explored in the mountains. This happens all the time. After a $20,000 reward was announced, the trail swelled further. He searched with the blessings of her son, despite the county sheriffs office asking him not to. Missing people usually leave a signature, family members filled Ziploc bags with snacks and instructions for Sam, Cheryl Phillips, a dog handler from South Carolina, and her search dog Raven, In October the occasional snow flurries turned to regular snowfall, Ski Areas Shift to Mountain Bike Parks in Summer, The Insider's Guide to Visiting North Cascades National Park. She was expected to return that evening and check in with family, the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office reported. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office led the. They wrote operating plans, considered moon phases and water sources. Rachel, didnt miss a beat: What do you expect? Rachel Lakoduk was petite, freckled and redheaded, too. But for Dares these searches are painful. And when hes searching for someone, he never expects to find them. Spunky and creative, her room at her dads home is still covered in her photos and paintings. Someone sent Kevin a kind of fan fiction story they found online, casting Sam, Buck Carp, and Kelvin Daires as characters in a rambling tale with a menacing undertone. Yall come up here.. (GoFundMe) Search operations for a Seattle hiker missing since Aug. 1 have been suspended,. Sam's mother, Lisa Yax Sayers, declined to be interviewed for this story. Carr, by then a teenager, followed them to help his dad start a barbecue joint. Carrs ceaseless self-promotion. Some posters there report having read the public records on the FB Truth Group before it was made private. Adams established operations bases at nearby Big Four ice caves and at Spada Lake far below Vespers southeast side. But at that moment, on the steep side of a North Cascades mountain, Dares is shaking. Hed recently graduated. But then he met Dares. From his home in Minnesota, David Francis says that in the decade hes followed lost hiker cases, hes never seen anything like it. Not drinking makes nights harder.I dream, he says, the bayou drawl heavy even as his voice gets quiet. Other day trippers would recall seeing the solo hiker stripped down to her bra and hiking pants. I'm sure you've met them, the kind who are super into crystal healing but also love them some jesus? Cookie Notice She was super smart, cool, funny. It was moving at first, but now I just see it as a sociological experiment. Carr continues talking about his tattoos, all of which (except for the ones on his back) he did himself, Yes sir, Im ambidextrous, he says. It was around day 50 of the search; Kevin would ultimately spend over 100 on this mountain. The official search for Sam went on for 22 days. Language is powerful.. Show more Show more From Terra to Terabytes: Popular Cartography, Military Cartography. Her goal was to spend the night at the Hidden Lake Lookout for her 28th birthday. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review). So forgive Kevin for being a bit anti-social. He believes the county search and rescue crews should talk more about what they do, to be held accountable for their successes and failures. Would a glove or a boot bring closure to a family? See Photos. Before she left on her solo hike on the Vesper Peak trail hed texted Be safesos me if anything goes haywire. Her replyThanks baby I love you.was classic Sam, straightforward and confident. Literally nowhere else in the long history of missing persons cases do you see someone rallying up an "army" in this way. Gifts processed in this system are not tax deductible, but are predominately used to help meet the local financial requirements needed to receive national matching-grant funds. She was a strong woman who was not afraid to speak her mind, and I loved that about her, Turner says. In July, he posted a photo of a note hed placed on the car of a solo female hiker on Facebook. David Francisthe Minnesota man whod lost his son 13 years earliernow leads a foundation to aid the families of adults lost in the wilderness; he flew to Seattle to meet with Kevin and the county SAR team, to make a plan. People whod donated to the GoFundMe, which Kevin says was used entirely to fund the private search, wanted to know if the men had been goofing around up there, having a drug holiday around the campfire. Meanwhile, some of the grieving family members were publicly coming to his defense. Baker - Snoqualmie National Forest. It made sense, in a way, this impossible newsif Sam wandered out on her own, she could have hitchhiked back home. Back on the mountain the rest of the group makes it to Lakoduks final resting spot. They called it Operation Relentless Pursuit. His policy is to be as honest as he can. He continued up despite the plan to meet. She told him she would just walk up the trail a bit and be right back. And the military stuff, thats part of his Buddhist-warrior ethos and hes never claimed to have served. They told her theyd turned back at 6,200 feet. Samantha Sayers Business & Communications Graduate | Operations, Documentation, & Customer Success | Bilingual Idaho Falls, Idaho, United States. Idk, I am not there. Thanks to GPS watches and cell phones, facial-recognition cameras and credit card chips, the world observes and records.