The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands

by Jon Billman

Overview

Perfect for readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston, this "authentic and encyclopedic" book examines real-life cases of those who vanish in the wilderness without a trace (Roman Dial)—and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them.

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue. The ones that baffle the volunteers who comb the mountains, woods and badlands. The stories that should give you pause every time you venture outdoors.

Through Jacob Gray's disappearance in Olympic National Park, and his father Randy Gray who left his life to search for him, we will learn about what happens when someone goes missing. Braided around the core will be the stories of the characters who fill the vacuum created by a vanished human being. We'll meet eccentric bloodhound-handler Duff and R.C., his flagship purebred, who began trailing with the family dog after his brother vanished in the San Gabriel Mountains. And there's Michael Neiger North America's foremost backcountry Search & Rescue expert and self-described "bushman" obsessed with missing persons. And top researcher of persons missing on public wildlands Ex-San Jose, California detective David Paulides who is also one of the world's foremost Bigfoot researchers.

It's a tricky thing to write about missing persons because the story is the absence of someone. A void. The person at the heart of the story is thinner than a smoke ring, invisible as someone else's memory. The bones you dig up are most often metaphorical. While much of the book will embrace memory and faulty memory—history—The Cold Vanish is at its core a story of now and tomorrow. Someone will vanish in the wild tomorrow. These are the people who will go looking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538747568
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	102,132
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Jon Billman is a former wildland firefighter and high school teacher. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Eastern Washington University. He's the author of the story collection When We Were Wolves (Random House, 1999). Billman is a regular contributor to Outside and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story. He teaches fiction and journalism at Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula, where he lives with his family in a log cabin along the Chocolay River.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Chapter 1 The Olympic Peninsula 1

Chapter 2 Wyoming 9

Chapter 3 The Sol Due River 37

Chapter 4 Olympic National Park & Olympic National Forest 51

Chapter 5 Washington & Santa Cruz 58

Chapter 6 Port Angeles 71

Chapter 7 Nova Scotia 78

Chapter 8 Olympic Peninsula 83

Chapter 9 Michigan's Upper Peninsula & North Carolina 93

Chapter 10 Olympic National Park 103

Chapter 11 North America 113

Chapter 12 Santa Cruz & The Olympic Peninsula 140

Chapter 13 Front Range, Colorado 146

Chapter 14 Pacific Northwest 165

Chapter 15 Olympic Peninsula 175

Chapter 16 Idaho, Nevada, California, New Mexico, Nunavut 184

Chapter 17 San Juan Islands & Utah 195

Chapter 18 Mount Rainier 210

Chapter 19 Olympic Peninsula & The Holy Land 223

Chapter 20 The Pacific Crest Trail 231

Chapter 21 New Mexico & Australia 237

Chapter 22 Maui, Hawaii & Idaho 248

Chapter 23 Sol Due Falls 265

Chapter 24 British Columbia 272

Chapter 25 Hudson Bay 293

Chapter 26 Olympic National Park 309

Chapter 27 Hoh Lake 322

Acknowledgments 335

Index 339

About the Author 349

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/18/2020

In April 2017, 22-year-old Jacob Gray, whose case forms the heart of this beautifully written chronicle from Billman (When We Were Wolves: Stories), disappeared while cycling in Olympic National Park in Washington State. It would take 18 months before his body was found on a mountainside, and it remains unclear whether his death was suicide or caused by hypothermia. Billman describes how red tape and the lack of National Park staff hampered the search, and how he accompanied Jacob’s father, Randy Gray, to Olympic National Park, and then to other places Jacob might have traveled to. In between accounts of the search for Jacob, Billman reports on the phenomena of people vanishing into the wilderness, covering famous cases, search and rescue dogs, and theories about why people go missing, including serial killers and Bigfoot abductions. Colorful side characters, like psychics and Bigfoot hunters, provide some light moments, but what makes a lasting impression is the story of Randy and his ultimately dashed hopes of finding his son alive. The author’s personal involvement makes this tale all the more affecting. Billman shows himself to be just as adept at nonfiction as at fiction. Agent: Julia Masnik, Watkins Loomis. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] compassionate and riveting non-fiction dive into wilderness disappearances."—MacLean's

"The Cold Vanish is part mystery, part glance into a world of heroes and charlatans, death, and loss that most of us, fortunately, do not know, and don't want to know, but perhaps should. The Cold Vanish is informative, and in a sad way, captivating and well worth a read."—National Parks Traveler

"Colorful side characters, like psychics and Bigfoot hunters, provide some light moments, but what makes a lasting impression is the story of Randy and his ultimately dashed hopes of finding his son alive. The author's personal involvement makes this tale all the more affecting."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A compassionate, sympathetic, and haunting book sure to make you think twice before stepping out into the wilderness alone."—Kirkus (starred review)

"Required reading for anyone concerned about the missing, Billman's authentic and encyclopedic book leads us across the landscapes of the vanished with a journalist's acumen and a searcher's sympathy. It's both true and useful, a storytelling textbook I wish I'd read before my own son went missing."—Roman Dial, author of The Adventurer's Son

"Most of us prefer to measure and celebrate nature in terms of its tendency to delight, to inspire, to instill awe. But there is another metric by which the power of wilderness can be calibrated, which lies in its capacity to take us between its teeth, tear us asunder, and swallow up whatever is left with such ruthless efficiency that no trace remains. Thanks to Jon Billman's talent for wielding words with the chilling precision of a scalpel, The Cold Vanish lays open nature's capacity to evoke terror in a way that will give you pause the next time you think about venturing into the backcountry. Haunting, spooky, and propulsive." —Kevin Fedarko, author of The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon

"It's a rare book that makes the hair stand up on your neck and pierces your heart all at once. With The Cold Vanish, Jon Billman has created a breath-taking genre all his own: the search-and-rescue of wandering souls. I was captivated from start to finish."—Alyson Hagy, author of Scribe and Boleto

"A harrowing collection of real-life wilderness ghost stories, proving that - even in this era of GPS and Instagram - it is still quite possible to get lost out there."—Bill Gifford, New York Times bestselling author of Spring Chicken

"A shocking, gut-wrenching, thriller-paced investigation into America's "silent mass disaster" of people who have disappeared through the invisible membrane at the edge of even the shortest hike. . . The Cold Vanish belongs in the front rank of outdoor narrative nonfiction, with Krakauer, Matthiessen, Chatwin. And throw in Stephen King, there is horror here. Written with understated compassion, The Cold Vanish will take you deeper than you ever hope to go into the wild, and it will break your heart."—Peter Nichols, bestselling author of A Voyage for Madmen, The Rocks

"Through deep research and personal investigation, Jon Billman has crafted the definitive account of the baffling stories of people who go missing in the wilderness. The Cold Vanish is provocative, disturbing, compulsively readable-and a brilliant achievement."—David Roberts, author of The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah

"The stories covered by the author are so intriguing, and the scope of the book so varied despite focusing on a single topic, that it is easy to overlook the quality of the writing itself – which is excellent. This book is not likely to remain unfinished on your nightstand, although it might be one that you should avoid giving to friends or family who’ve expressed concern about your safety while backpacking."—Backpacking Light

From the Publisher

06/05/2020

Delving into the stories of individuals who have gone missing while venturing into the wilderness, Billman (When We Were Wolves) centers the bulk of his narrative on the disappearance of 22-year-old Jacob Gray. In 2017, Gray went for a bike ride in Washington State's Olympic National Park and vanished. His father, Randy, was devastated but determined to find him. Billman joined Randy on many of his searches and also spoke to the park's employees and local law enforcement. The author interweaves the accounts of other missing persons; even when bodies were recovered, as in some cases, the reasons for the deaths are still open to speculation. It is hard to square the sincere heartbreak of family members searching for loved ones with Billman's frequent diversions into the world of Sasquatch obsessives convinced that Bigfoot could be responsible for some of these disappearances. Billman also refers to the work of David Paulides, a conspiracy theorist who has made a career of implying nebulous or supernatural reasons for these missing persons, which he peddles in his "Missing 411" series. Readers may find Roman Dial's account of his own search for his missing son, The Adventurer's Son, more coherent and less distracting. VERDICT For fans of true crime, this book will likely reinforce the admonition of My Favorite Murder podcast hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark to "stay out of the forest."—Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Library Journal

Jacob Gray’s bicycle is found in Olympic National Park in April 2018, but there is no sign of Jacob. His father, Randy, abandons his life to search for him even as the odds of finding him alive diminish. Narrator Stephen Graybill is steady and compelling as he guides the listener through the art and science of looking for missing persons, including Jacob, on America’s public lands. His tone is even a bit haunting, which is appropriate. It is a bit bewildering to think that numbers are collected for grizzly bears and wolves, yet no database exists for persons missing in national parks. Billman plumbs the practical aspects of training bloodhounds and conducting searches as well as taking a few turns into mystical elements—Bigfoot believers, psychics, and cults. Graybill keeps pace with it all. A.B. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2020 - AudioFile

Jacob Gray’s bicycle is found in Olympic National Park in April 2018, but there is no sign of Jacob. His father, Randy, abandons his life to search for him even as the odds of finding him alive diminish. Narrator Stephen Graybill is steady and compelling as he guides the listener through the art and science of looking for missing persons, including Jacob, on America’s public lands. His tone is even a bit haunting, which is appropriate. It is a bit bewildering to think that numbers are collected for grizzly bears and wolves, yet no database exists for persons missing in national parks. Billman plumbs the practical aspects of training bloodhounds and conducting searches as well as taking a few turns into mystical elements—Bigfoot believers, psychics, and cults. Graybill keeps pace with it all. A.B. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2020 - AudioFile

★ 2020-04-20
True-life accounts of wilderness disappearances and the families desperately seeking closure.

Journalist Billman, a regular contributor to Outside, is “obsessed with writing about missing persons in wild places,” particularly those stories that “defy conventional logic…the proverbial vanish-without-a-trace incidents, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks.” In his nonfiction debut, the author focuses primarily on the case of Jacob Gray, who stepped off his red bicycle in Washington’s Olympic National Park in April 2017 and disappeared into the wilderness. Billman takes us along on his journey with Gray’s family as they retrace Jacob’s steps, examine the few available clues, and encounter excessive bureaucracy in their search efforts. As he chronicles their trek across North America following leads, the author shares the rampant conspiracy theories, the skeptical yet hopeful encounters with psychics, and the emotional strain of a family who put their lives on hold in search of answers. “For someone close to someone missing,” writes Billman, “the world is reduced to this binary: missing and searching. Two awful gerunds.” Gray’s father, writes the author, “will liquidate his world in order to find his son. Or die trying.” Interwoven into Gray’s story are detailed accounts of other individuals who have gone missing in the wildlands of North America, many that eerily echo the mystery surrounding Gray’s disappearance. According to data cited by Billman, more than 600,000 individuals go missing in North America each year. While most are “quickly found alive,” those who vanish in the wilderness face much steeper odds of being found—and the author engagingly follows these sad yet absorbing cases. Some have been discovered in places previously searched; some have walked out on their own; some remain unexplained.

A compassionate, sympathetic, and haunting book sure to make you think twice before stepping out into the wilderness alone.

Kirkus Reviews