When hikers go missing in Idaho’s backcountry, who looks for them? And for how long?

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — A pair of khaki pants on the ground, off-trail in Central Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, was the first sign to Sandy Epeldi that something was not right.

The 59-year-old Boise man was exploring near remote Benedict Lake north of Atlanta during a six-day backpacking trip in late July when he found the clothing. The pants had obviously been outside for some time, Epeldi told the Idaho Statesman in an interview. They were inside out, with undergarments still attached.

“I knew something bad had probably happened,” Epeldi said. “That’s not something you usually find in such a remote place.”

Within a few moments of searching, Epeldi and his hiking companion, Frank Burke, located a boot. Then they found the contents of a wallet that contained the ID of a man they’d already heard of: Jack Forest Thomas. The 66-year-old Nampa man went missing while hiking in 2016.

“He just happened to vanish into the part of the wilderness that’s my favorite part to go into,” Epeldi said. “The year after Jack went missing, I did a route really similar to his and it was always in my mind: ‘Are we going to stumble upon something out here?'”

When Thomas went missing in 2016, law enforcement looked for about two weeks before calling off the search. After that, it was up to Thomas’ loved ones to find him. Boise County officials recovered Thomas’ remains a few weeks after Epeldi and Burke found his belongings — more than seven years after he disappeared.

Idaho is one of many states where missing person searches fall largely to volunteers who are led by a mishmash of local sheriffs’ offices and nonprofits that are often short on resources. Search-and-rescue officials from around the state told the Idaho Statesman the system works quite well, with the exception of funding shortfalls.

But families of the missing said finding answers becomes much more complicated once sheriffs decide it’s time to call off a search. Search-and-rescue experts say a more formalized system could make it more likely that missing people are found alive or their remains are recovered in much less time — all while saving families the pain of taking on their own investigation.

WHEN SEARCHES END, FAMILIES LEFT WITH QUESTIONS

Officials from Elmore and Boise counties scoured the forest around Atlanta when Thomas went missing, mobilizing volunteers like Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue and even calling in the Civil Air Patrol for an aerial view.

A little over a week later, leads went cold. When law enforcement stopped searching, Thomas’ family carried on. They worked with private organizations, including the Minnesota-based Jon Francis Foundation. The organization was started by David Francis and his family after his son went missing in the Sawtooths in 2006 while climbing Grand Mogul, just 10 miles from where Thomas was found. In a phone interview, Francis told the Statesman the initial search for Jon added frustration to his family’s grief.

Francis said it was several hours into the search when he spoke with the search’s incident commander and learned teams hadn’t yet been sent to the summit of the mountain. He said officials tried to wrap up the search quickly.

“The incident commander came to us after one day and said we need to think about giving our son up to the mountain,” Francis said.

He told the Statesman law enforcement conducted one more day of exploration before ending the search. The Francis family then hired its own search manager, set up operations at Redfish Lake Lodge and began organizing volunteers. Their search lasted 40 days before snow and ice forced them to stop. They resumed searching the following spring and recovered Jon’s remains from a crevasse on the north face of Grand Mogul in July 2007.

David and his wife, Linda Francis, who’d earned search-and-rescue certifications in preparation for their searches for Jon, started the foundation soon after. The organization has aided in searches for 33 missing people, including Thomas.

“We have knowledge and experience we never wanted to gain, but it’s valuable to other people,” David Francis said. “We learned it’s fairly common that law enforcement does a short, hasty search and then discontinues it, leaving families in deep grief.”

The unresolved nature of having a missing loved one makes grief even more complex, Francis said. Finding a missing person — even their remains — can be crucial in providing resolution.

“We don’t use the word ‘closure,’ ” Francis said. “Closure is for bank accounts.”

In the 18 years since Jon’s death, Francis said, he’s seen Idaho search-and-rescue resources improve. While resources and funding can still be a struggle, he said he thinks officials are more committed than ever to finding the missing.

SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAMS LOOK FOR FUNDING

Butte County Sheriff Dave Hansen, who heads the Idaho Sheriffs Association’s search-and-rescue program, said most search-and-rescue cases are resolved within the first 48 hours. The ones that aren’t can stretch on for weeks, or even years. More than a dozen open missing persons cases involve people who’ve gone missing while hunting, camping or hiking in Idaho. The oldest dates back to 1961.

Idaho law mandates sheriffs to lead searches for “overdue, missing or lost” people. Hansen said there’s no centralized data collected on how many searches are performed in Idaho every year.

The state’s search-and-rescue fund totals around $560,000, most of which is designated for reimbursement for sheriff’s offices directing searches, according to Idaho State Police.

Hansen said sheriff’s offices can also request reimbursement for new equipment purchases or training costs. Still, search and rescue is a strain on resources, requiring a lot of time and personnel from agencies that are often strapped for both.

“Most sheriff’s offices have limited resources, especially small offices in the state,” he said. “I have three full-time deputies. At some point that decision has to be made that (a search) is going to be something we have to call off, and those are just gut-wrenching decisions.”

Hansen told the Statesman nearly all of the state’s 44 county sheriff’s offices have some type of search-and-rescue team, but those forces are often made up of volunteers. Some counties, like Ada, look to outside organizations like Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue to handle local incidents.

Though Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue is an independent organization, it deploys only at the request of sheriff’s departments around the state, and sometimes in Oregon and Nevada, said Ron Christensen, the group’s coordinator. Christensen aided in the initial law enforcement search for Jack Thomas and later joined Boise County officials who traveled to Benedict Lake to recover Thomas’ remains.

Christensen said the volunteer nature of search and rescue means there’s high turnover, and nonprofits feel funding shortages perhaps more acutely than law enforcement does. Christensen said Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue doesn’t keep track of the average cost of a rescue, but the organization raises nearly a third of its $90,000 annual budget by selling hot buttered corn at the Western Idaho Fair. The remainder comes from donations, grants or other fundraisers, and a small portion comes from member dues.

“There’s always things you have on your list that you’d like to have as additional resources,” Christensen said.

U.S. SEARCH AND RESCUE SYSTEM ‘A NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT’

Funding and resources are just part of the problem, said Chris Boyer, the director of the National Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR).

Boyer told the Statesman the country’s search-and-rescue infrastructure has five shortcomings: little consistency on who is responsible for finding missing people; no legal standard for the medical care search-and-rescue crews must provide; no protections for volunteers who may be injured; no established system for mutual aid or agencies sharing resources; and few states with a dedicated search-and-rescue coordinator.

In the U.S., the most complete search-and-rescue resource is through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which deploys teams to recover the missing and deceased after declared disasters. A 2019 report for the U.S. Department of Justice noted there’s not even an agreed-on definition for what constitutes a “missing person.”

Francis called it “a national embarrassment and crisis.”

“We constantly remark that the system is broken,” he said. Francis suggested a federal mandate could be useful in crafting training requirements and offering aid to state agencies in the form of federal dollars.

But Boyer said he doesn’t think a solution is likely on a federal level, since varying state constitutions and existing search-and-rescue infrastructures could make blanket regulations too complex.

“It’s going to come down to the states,” Boyer told the Statesman. “Volunteers that are out there are extraordinarily well-intentioned, and they can only be as strong as their community. So if the state isn’t going to support them, it makes them less efficient, less capable at no fault of their own.”

Mike Vorachek, an Idaho Falls-based Civil Air Patrol Commander who previously served as president of NASAR, said the national group offers training and resources to state agencies, but some are unable — or unwilling — to pay for the courses. Nonprofit members said they’ve also had law enforcement balk at including civilians in their efforts.

Jessica Knoelk, of Idaho Falls, heads up missing person searches in the Northwest for the Fowler-O’Sullivan Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping families of missing hikers. Knoelk is working on locating Fern Baird, a 62-year-old Utah woman who went missing in 2020 while hiking the Prairie Creek trail near Ketchum.

Knoelk, who is certified in canine search and volunteers with the Idaho State Trackers Association, said she often feels law enforcement is hesitant to share information with her organizations. She said she hopes to work with the state search-and-rescue association to create a vetting process for civilian resources that would allow them to work more readily with government officials.

SEARCH REQUESTS GROWING WITH IDAHO POPULATION

Hansen, the Butte County sheriff, said it’s clear the need for search-and-rescue resources is increasing in Idaho as more calls come in. He attributed the increase in part to Idaho’s fast-growing population, as well as a boom in outdoor recreation sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

“The number of (search reimbursement) claims coming through my office have significantly risen in the last five years,” Hansen said. “In the past, my county would go a year or two without search-and-rescue activation. We never do that anymore.”

As the number of new search-and-rescue cases grows, the longtime ones haven’t been forgotten. Knoelk said wildfires, snow and poor trail conditions have hampered the search for Fern Baird in the past two years, but she believes she’s narrowing in on an area where Fern’s remains could be. The Fowler-O’Sullivan Foundation sent three cadaver detection canines out in the area, and the organization also has experts poring over drone photographs for any evidence of anomalies.

Breck Baird said he hopes his mother’s case reminds outdoor recreationists to be prepared and to keep their eyes open when recreating in areas where someone is still missing. He said he thinks his mother’s remains may be found in a situation similar to Jack Thomas, by another outdoors enthusiast in the right place at the right time.

Sandy Epeldi said finding Thomas’ belongings has stayed on his mind since the summer. When he found the items, he had two days left of his backpacking trip. He and his friend decided to wait until they reached the trailhead to notify the authorities rather than sending incomplete information from their satellite device.

That night, Epeldi said, the reality of the discovery weighed heavily on him. Weeks later, he thought of Thomas when running into solo backpackers on other trips.

Epeldi said he believes Thomas knew the risks of spending time alone in the wilderness, where there’s little room for error. Epeldi knows the risks, too, and like Thomas, he’s not deterred by them.

He said he expects Thomas will stay on his mind when he’s in the Sawtooths. Epeldi thought of the missing man often in the years following his disappearance, and he said he hopes others will keep the missing in mind, too.

“People are surprised that I even knew about Jack,” Epeldi said. “I see why — these stories come and go and then they’re forgotten about. It seems like there isn’t anyone out there trying to get the answers.”