The Dad of a Missing Yellowstone Hiker Vows to Keep Searching, Even as the Odds Grow Thin

The massive search for missing hiker Austin King in Yellowstone National Park hit a snag this week, and the setback comes as a snowstorm is slated to hit the remote area where he vanished. On October Monday, 14, officials with the national park and the National Forest Service halted a private helicopter from dropping additional searchers into a remote area of the park.

The helicopter had been hired by King’s family as part of their ongoing efforts to search the slopes of 11,372-foot Eagle Peak, which is where King last called his family on September 17.

Officials did not approve the helicopter because they could not verify if the pilot had experience flying and landing in mountainous terrain. The news was first reported by website WyoFile.com.

“We deeply sympathize with Austin’s family and their desire to continue searching for him,” Yellowstone superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement provided to the website. “At this time, the park has limited resources to respond to Eagle Peak if something were to go wrong. The park’s helicopter is gone and there are limited air support resources capable of conducting high mountain rescues.”

King’s father, Brian King-Henke, told Wyofile that he and others plan to continue their search on foot. But the weather forecast calls for snowstorms to hit Eagle Peak on Thursday, October 17. Outside reached out to King-Henke and officials with Yellowstone National Park but did not hear back by the publishing of this story.

A Disappearance in Rugged Terrain

King, 22,  hiked into the backcountry on September 14 for a planned seven-day solo backpacking trip to climb Eagle Peak. He was reported overdue on September 20 when he failed to show up for a boat ride back home.

At the time of his disappearance, King was living in Grant Village, Wyoming, where he worked as a concessions employee within the park. A ranger who encountered King on the trail reported that he’d departed from his original route and had decided to climb the peak instead.

King was last heard from on September 17, which is when Eagle Peak was buffeted by snow and wind. He called his father from the mountain’s summit and left a voicemail around 7:00 P.M that night. The message didn’t appear in King-Henke’s phone until a week later, a searcher named John Lamb told Cowboy State Daily. “You can tell he’s scared, he’s cold—he doesn’t know where he’s at,” Lamb said. “It took him all day to get there, so you can just imagein trying to come down a mountain and not seeing at all.”

Searchers with Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks began scouring the area on September 21, but days went by without any sign of King. On October 11, King-Henke told news outlets that searchers had found a handwritten note that King had written in the registry atop Eagle Peak. The message was dated September 17.

“I can’t feel my fingers and my glasses are so fogged from the ruthless weather of the mountains. I truly cannot believe I am here after what it took to be here,” King wrote in a shaky script. “I endured rain, sleet, hail, and the most wind I have ever felt.”

Eagle Peak, he wrote, was shrouded in fog, and King wrote that he had lost the trail on his way to the summit, forcing him to scale cliffs and navigate vertical off-trail terrain. “I am 22 years old, and I will never forget today for the rest of my life,” King wrote. “Life is beautiful. Go out and live it.”

The Search Expands

More than 100 people participated in the search organized by crews from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and the effort lasted 11 days. On October 2, Yellowstone shifted the effort from a rescue to a recovery.

“To date, more than 100 personnel including two helicopters, search dog teams, ground teams with spotting scopes, trackers, and a drone have searched more than 3,225 miles by air and ground at elevations ranging from 11,350 feet to 8,400 feet,” the park said in a statement on October 2. “Despite significant search efforts over the past week and a half, we have not been able to locate Austin.”

But King’s father continued a private effort, backed by donors. He raised more than $17,000 on crowdfunding platform GoFundMe and contracted private rescue teams to scour the Eagle Peak Wilderness.

“I haven’t given up on the impossible,” he wrote in a post on GoFundMe the following day. Instead, he set up a base camp near Cody, Wyoming, and continued to send out private search teams and volunteers.

“Austin hang in there,” he wrote on Facebook on October 7. “I’m coming to bring you home.”

Another week went by with no sign of King. And with the season’s first snowfall forecasted for October 17, the teams began to feel the time pressure. King-Henke pooled resources for the helicopter. When their request was denied, they continued to search on foot on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

On Thursday, October 17, King posted on the GoFundMe page that he and crews were planning to pack up their base camp at Eagle Creek Campground.

“It is and will be rough couple of days to wait and see how much snow we get to determine if we can go back out or we are done until next year,” King-Henke wrote in the post. “I prayed to God to ask him to allow us some more time.”

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