Hiker vanished on WY peak. Now, a month later, backpack leads to body, cops say
A backpack spotted on a Wyoming mountain led rescuers to a missing hiker’s body, nearly a month after he vanished, deputies said.
Grant Gardner’s body was found Aug. 27 on Cloud Peak, the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
The Minnesota man had planned a three-day trek in the Misty Moon Lake area, McClatchy News reported. He texted his wife July 29, telling her he made it to the top of Cloud Peak, but he was more tired than he expected.
Then he never returned home.
Rescuers searched for him for weeks, but there were no signs of him until deputies got a message from North Carolina climbers.
The climbers made it to the summit Aug. 26 and were going down the mountain when they stopped to set up camp for the evening, deputies said.
As they set up camp, they saw a “slight reflection a few hundred feet above them underneath a ledge,” deputies said, and it appeared to be a backpack.
They used a satellite device to contact the sheriff’s office and waited for search-and-rescue teams to reach them the next day, deputies said.
There was a small window when rescuers could reach them before a weather system hit the area, deputies said, so a helicopter took the search team to the climbers.
The team and the climbers discovered the remains of Gardner near the backpack, deputies said. He was in clothing that “very closely matched the terrain he was climbing in.”
His body was recovered from the peak in a dangerous and difficult recovery, deputies said.
Deputies said Gardner’s body was found in one of their two primary search areas. His cause of death will be determined by a coroner.
Cloud Peak is in northern Wyoming.
