Sawtooth Range

You just disappear.

And now we have Jack Thomas, who went missing from the Sawtooth Range in 2016.

In 2016, a 66-year-old hiker, Jack Thomas, went missing while exploring the Sawtooth Range in the Rocky Mountains.

Despite the efforts of Boise and Elmore County officials, who searched for Jack for two weeks near the Queens River Trailhead, he was not found.

Jack had used a satellite GPS device to share his location on June 15th, but failed to return his plan the next day.

It was the middle of July 2015, and at twelve years old, summer camp seemed like the ideal way to escape everything surrounding my parents' divorce.

Camp Whispering Pine stood deep within the Sawtooth Mountains, with miles of wilderness extending in every direction.

According to the brochure, we would spend two weeks hiking, swimming, and gathering around campfires.

What happened during that summer continues to keep me awake at night, even now that I'm twenty-one.

job in the middle of nowhere.

But I was young, dumb, broke, and the posting for a fire lookout in the remote Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho paid decent money for just having to watch for smoke all summer.

How hard could it be? The hike end on the first day should have been my first warning sign.

The trail leading up to the tower cut through some of the densest, darkest forest I'd ever seen.

And now we have

Jack Thomas, who went missing from the Sawtooth Range in 2016.

In 2016, a 66-year-old hiker, Jack Thomas, went missing while exploring the Sawtooth Range in the Rocky Mountains.

Despite the efforts of Boise and Elmore County officials, who searched for Jack for two weeks near the Queens River Trailhead, he was not found.

Jack had used a satellite GPS device to share his location on June 15th, but failed to return his plan the next day.

I'm not going to do skis out there.

It's got to be no shoes because skis are not going to work in like the Porcupine Mountains and the Sawtooths and things like that.

But yeah, I'll then just adjust accordingly.

If I find that things aren't suiting my through hiker winter style, then I'll just swap things out and adjust however works for me.

Tonight, we're heading deep into one of the most beautiful and some would say the most unsettling mountain ranges in America.

The Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho.

jagged granite peaks that look like the teeth of a giant beast rose above endless forests, alpine lakes, hidden valleys, and miles of wilderness where a person can disappear without leaving a trace.

To most visitors, the Santus are paradise.

Others claim they heard screams unlike anything they had ever encountered.

One historical account from the early 1980s described witnesses reporting a large, hairy creature in Idaho wilderness areas.

Another witness recalled seeing a tiring figure with reddish-brown hair near the Sawtooth Mountains before dawn.

Could these have been bears? Possibly.

Author Ethan Kanin taught Scott in a workshop at the Sun Valley Writers Conference around 1996.

At a ranch high up in the Sawtooth Range, students sat on hardback chairs in the middle of a mountain meadow.

He remembered Scott as quiet and unassuming.

When she said she worked for Amazon, still in its infancy, Kanan advised that she try to get stock options.

And now everyone around me is like, sure, I guess that makes kind of sense.

But we grew up with the Sawtooth Mountains go through Boise.

Beautiful.

And so I, every morning, like at the end of my drive, like I could see the mountains where we would ski in the winter.