Speaker 1: Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished in America's wilderness. Join
us as we dive into the deep end of the
unexplainable world and try to piece.
Speaker 2: Together what happened.
Speaker 1: If you are listening to Locations Unknown, oh what's up everybody,
and welcome back to another episode of Locations Unknown. I'm
your co host Joey with me as always is a
guy who eats candy bars with a fork and a knife.
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that would be so snobby.
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Anything else going on in your world, Joe, Nope, nope.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, let's gear up and get out to
explore locations Unknown October nineteenth, twenty nineteen, an eighty six
year old lifelong hunter is dropped off along Divide Road
in Colorado's San Juan National Forest for a short morning
el hunt. He's told to follow a familiar trail down
to a pickup point by ten am. Around nine am,
a single gunshot echoes through the timber.
Speaker 2: By ten he's gone.
Speaker 1: Search teams, helicopters, canine units, and grid cruise comb the
aspen meadows and dense drainages but find nothing. No tracks,
no gear, no trace. Join us this week as we
begin the first of our mini series, The Lost Hunters
of Colorado, with the baffling disappearance of Alvi Webb.
Speaker 2: Almost got it there. I read it. I read and
then faded.
Speaker 1: I know, I read it, And the timing's always weird
when you do it live, and we don't edit on
this show.
Speaker 2: So no, so that was live. But before you get going,
I wanted to just say that this case feels very
similar to a case we did many moons ago on
Tom Messick m hm, the Hunter that went missing in
New York. That was episode twelve.
Speaker 1: Oh way back in time, yeah, way back way back
in time.
Speaker 2: So we'll talk about the area a little bit.
Speaker 1: So to understand how Alvi Webb vanished, you first have
to understand the shape of the country he walked in,
or the country he walked into. The San Juan National
Forest sprawls across more than one point eight million acres
of southwestern Colorado, steep, jagged, and vertical in a way
that most people from the lower elevations of the central
United States have never experienced. Alvi didn't disappear into the
vastness of the San Juan's at random. He vanished from
a very specific pocket of it by roads and trails
his family already knew. The main artery into the country
is I keep saying country a county, Ya, I mean
a country and like you know country, like yeah, country road?
You could say, is the divide road for It's so
the main artery is divide road forest road five sixty four.
Speaker 2: We'll cut all that.
Speaker 1: Out, Yeah no, we won't. A rugged, unpaved forest road
that rides the high ridge lines across the section of
the Dolores Ranger District, often exceeding nine thousand feet of
elevation for most of its length. It's a kind of
road that's passable in a pickup in dry weather and
a serious problem the moment conditions deteriorate. Sounds like the
road Ron daily, Yes, was driving absolutely a few episodes ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Branching off the divide road is a smaller spur called
Road five six four A. It's right off of five
sixty four. This is where the Web family set up camp,
the same spot they'd used for five consecutive years of
elk hunting. From the camp, at the end of five
six four A, the family drove Alvy out and walked
him approximately one hundred yards down an unnamed foot trail
that drops through timber and meadow country before eventually connecting
with Roaring for four Road roughly two miles below. So
Roaring Fork Road it is itself an unpaved eight point
seventy five mile four service road. So picture the disappearance
zone is something close to a tilted corridor, which is
the spur road. A camp sitting above the Roaring Fork
Road that runs below, and an unnamed trail connects them
over roughly two miles of descending terrain, so it's kind
of like a little interspersed roadway. Yeah, they all connect.
The plan was for Alphie, excuse me, Alvi to hunt
the upper portion of that corridor near the meadow he knew,
and then he'd be picked up at the bottom of
the hill on the road around ten o'clock. On a map,
it's not a huge box. On the ground, it's a
very different story. So we'll talk a little bit about
the terrain. A sheriff, Nolan repeatedly described the search area
as mostly aspen meadows. To a listener, a meadow sounds
like a flat opening clearing, the kind of place where
a man in a bright orange vest should be visible
from one hundreds of yards away, And in places it
is aspen groves and the san Juans can feel deceptively spacious,
especially in the mid to late October, when the leaves
are down or falling. In sightlines begin between trunks open up.
That's exactly why Nolan felt confident putting searchers thirty feet
apart in grid formation. In that kind of country, you
shouldn't be able to miss a person. But the san
Juans at nine thy five hundred feet are not a park.
The quote unquote meadows are often sloping clearings choked with
tall grass, fallen dead woods, and hidden depressions bordered by
dense stands of spruce and fur timber. The forest floor
is layered with decades of pine needles, leaf litter, and
organic duff and critically, the areas cut by steep timbered
side drainages leading down towards Rowing Fork Creek the kind
of terrain features that can swallow person in a matter
of minutes once they step off the main path. So
a hunter stepping from one of those open aspen meadows
into the darker timber, over a bench, or down into
a shallow drainage could become invisibly invisible remarkably fast, even
while remaining relatively close to the trail. The ground in
this part of the San Juans is three dimensional in
a way that flat country people don't always appreciate like
us yeah yeah, flat, Like the flat country in Wisconsin,
a body below a small lip of terrain, in a
fold of the slope, under dead fall, or behind dense brush,
or in a shadowed pocket a spruce could be invisible
from thirty feet, which is exactly the grid spacing. The
searchers used the nearby trail descriptions paint a consistent picture
of the character of the country. The rough Canning trail,
which starts from Roaring Fork Road, just one point three
miles from its junction with Highway one forty five. Is
described as seldom used in recent years, with faint tread
that can be followed if one is careful. Language like
that tells you how quickly maintained trails in this area
degrade into nothing, let alone the unmanned connector path. Alvi
was walking the Onyx trail. Descriptions mentioned single track, riddled
with roots, rocks, and with constant climbing through terrain that
shifts between asp groves, scrub oak, ponderosa pine, and steep
erosion features. So a little bit about the elevation altitude.
As we said, the hunting area sits at roughly ninety
five hundred feet above sea level. That number matters more
than almost anything else. In this case, Alviweb came from Muldro, Oklahoma,
elevation roughly five hundred feet. In the span of a
couple days, he was transported to a landscape sitting nearly
two vertical miles above his hometown. Colorado's own hunter's education
materials are blunt about this danger. Hunting in Colorado commonly
occurs between five thy twelve thousand feet where oxygen levels
can drop between seventeen and thirteen percent, compared to roughly
twenty percent or twenty point nine percent at sea level.
Altitude sickness can first appear at just five thousand feet
and its effects only worse than his elevation increases. Colorado
Parks and Wildlife advises that hunters from lower altitudes should
spend a few days at higher elevation just before or
the hunting season to allow your body to acclimate, and
warns that altitude effects health, stamina, and the ability to
move efficiently. So now we got the weather. So October
twenty nineteen was not a normal October in Colorado. The
National Weather Service described this month across southern Colorado as
dominated by several unseasonably strong and cold systems, bringing early
season record cold temperatures as well as the season's first
snowfall for many locals. The Colorado Climate Center confirmed it
was the seventh coldest October in one hundred and thirty
one years of record, which with the mean temperature running
at six degrees below the nineteen eighty one to twenty
ten normal, it's pretty cold, pretty pretty cold. The NWS
Grand Junction Office noted that the strong cold front pushed
across western Colorado at the end of the first week,
producing up to eight inches of mountain snow, and the
remainder of October remained fairly active, with several early season
winter storms moving through the region. So he was in
an altadie. He's not acclimated to He's got weather kind
of against him.
Speaker 2: He's i mean elderly, he is late eighties.
Speaker 1: He is older, so any of those effects worsening, you know,
are not going to be as easy on his body.
Speaker 2: So yeah, tell us a little bit about Alvi. Okay,
so his name was obviously Alvy web. We don't have
an exact date of birth, but based on the fact
that he was eighty six, with some news sources saying
he was eighty seven, his date of birth is roughly
nineteen thirty two to nineteen thirty three. He went missing
October nineteenth of twenty nineteen. He was a male. He
was five foot ten and one hundred and forty pounds.
He had gray, white hair. We don't know eye color,
other descriptions described in a lot of the missing person's materials.
So he was an elderly white male. Family and officials
noted he had some trouble walking long distances due to
his age. Sheriff Nolan stated he did not believe web
really could have walked very far given his a condition
and altitude, but his family stressed that he had no
formal disabilities and was described as very mentally alert. So
while he physically had some maybe challenges with mobility, he
was very mentally there. So okay, that was not anything
that they suspected in this case. Clothing gear he was
last seen in so bright orange hat, orange hunter's vest,
heavy camouflaged hunting jacket, vest worn over the jacket. He
had a hunting rifle, obviously he's hunting elk. He had
a few food bars, water. He he had a cell phone,
but it was turned off or the battery was dead.
It was according to report's last used on Friday, October
eighteenth of twenty nineteen, the day before he vanished, just
keep going, Well we can pause, you can go, No,
keep going. I'm gonna cut all this out in anyways, won't.
Locations unknown after there we gon fantastic. So he did
not have any overnight gear, no shelter, He had no
fire starting equipment, no sleeping bag, no pack. And this
is because this was intended to be a short morning hunt,
just for a few hours. So, you know, going in
Joe's showing pictures of Alvi, I mean he looks you know,
growing up hunting when I was a kid, we had
some elderly gentlemen that would come with us. He looks
just like all of them. Yeah, just like all the
guys would come hunting. But it's unfortunate. You probably should
carry gear, overnight gear and stuff like that hunting in
this environment.
Speaker 1: Or even just emergency blanket stuff.
Speaker 2: Like that something. But I mean they've done this for
many years and nothing happens, so you don't think to
bring that stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. Personality wise, so, Alvi was
a former school teacher. In principal, he was a man
of education, discipline, routine, and community standing. Friends all called
him just a great man in the days after his disappearance,
and people consistently this is family and friends who knew
him and interacted with him a lot described him as
mentally sharp, very alert, and fully independent despite his age,
and the fact that his family trusted him to hunt
alone at eighty six really speaks to the confidence and
the judgment they had in him, because sure, no disrespect
to anyone of his age. But if someone is cold,
if you know someone is starting to suffer from dementia
or Alzheimer's or something like that, you're not going to
let him sit alone out in the woods with a firearm. Yeah.
So that just goes back to the fact that he
was very sharp for his age. You know, I've known
family members that eighty six is getting up there. It's
getting up there, and some family members in the past
were not all with it, but then others. I had
a family member lived to one hundred and one and
she was with it almost until the end, which is
really impressive. That is super impressive because I know people
our age that aren't with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I know those same people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he was a kind person. Like I said,
people called him Papa, and he was kind of the
patriarch of the annual hunting traditions. So he was the
head honcho of the hunting party, which is pretty typical
guys like him with you know, probably his sons and
their grandsons. And he's got every.
Speaker 1: Type of overall you can imagine, he's learning like the
everyone's a huge I mean, he literally is like a
stereotypical paupaw. Yeah, he's hunting elk in the mountains. Yeah,
he's an overhaul overall. Yeah, he likes him. It's a
nice picture of him, and I'm guessing like your granddaughter
or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, he looks like a fun guy. Yeah, he
seems really cool and everyone probably be lucky to have
a grandpa like that. Medical issues, like I said, no
cognitive disabilities to mention impairments were publicly disco disclosed. The
only physical note was age related difficulty walking long distances
and a lack of altitude acclamations. So, like Joe had
mentioned earlier, he's his body's used to five hundred feet
of elevation in Oklahoma, and now all of a sudden,
he's at ninety five hundred feet. I remember going skiing
out in Colorado. In the first like two days we
were there, I was dying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It can like just make you feel like crap. Yeah,
you just you don't feel right. But you get used
to it, you do get used to occupation hobby. Like
I said, retired school teacher and principle, he was a
lifelong hunter, specifically hunting elk in Colorado in the high country,
and like I said, This was an annual family tradition,
so not just a casual one off hunting trip. Experience
in wilderness very significant. He was an experienced lifelong hunter
who had been making annual trips from Oklahoma to Colorado
mountains for years. He was very comfortable in the back
country camping, rifle hunting, and operating in remote forest terrain.
He was, though not described as a survivalist, mountaineer or
backcountry trucker. His hunting style, obviously by this age, was
sitting and just sitting there and waiting for the animals
to be driven to him.
Speaker 2: But still, he's been up there a lot, and he
knows what it's like, what the experience is, so pretty
experience and experience in this location is very high. Him
and his family have hunted in the same area for
five consecutive years. At this point, they've camped at the
same spot along Road five six four A, and the
morning he disappeared, he was positioned near a meadow where
he had hunted the year before, so, by every account,
very familiar with this location. It was not unknown country
to him, so he knew everything about the area. So
we'll jump right into timeline. So we'll start Friday, October
eighteenth of twenty nineteen, so this would be the day before,
so this would actually be the last time he used
his cell phone, and at some point after that final use,
the phone either powered off or its battery died. Investigators
would later attempt to repeatedly ping the device for a signal,
but never received one. It's now Saturday, October twenty ninth
or October nineteenth of twenty nineteen, so this would be
the day he disappeared, so it's morning. It's Saturday, October nineteenth.
The hunting party drove Elvie out from camp and walked
him approximately one hundred yards down an unnamed trail at
the end of Road five to six four A. So
they left him alone to hunt near a meadow where he,
like I said, hunted successfully the previous year, a familiar
comfortable spot, and like Joe said, this unnamed trail eventually
connects with Roaring Fork Road, which was Forest Road four
thirty five, about two miles downhill. So before leaving, the
family made a clear plan, so, as a family member
later recounted to investigators, they told him, now we'll pick
you up at the bottom of the hill on the
road around ten o'clock, and like I said, alv was
dressed in hive visibility clothing that most hunters wear if
you're hunting deer, especially in Wisconsin, you wear just complete
blaze orange and that you don't want to get shot
by someone else. So he was in bright orange hat,
bright orange hunter's vest with a camouflage jacket under it.
He had a little bit of food, but really no
survival gear at all. So nine am rolls around. Members
of the hunting party heard a single gunshot come from
the general direction where alv was left, and at the
time no one thought much of it. It was the
middle of elk season in an actively hunted forest, and
investigators would later check the area but find no evidence
of a shot animal. They didn't find blood, carcass, and
no signs of a kill. If you ever have gone
deer hunting in the Midwest or wherever you would deer hunt,
like opening day, it's not uncommon to hear gunshots off distance.
It's especially if you're hunting in an area that's more populated.
So I can imagine they heard that gunshot and they
didn't think anything of it. Maybe even they thought maybe
Alvie got.
Speaker 1: Something I've that was gonna be my first assumptions he
shot at something.
Speaker 2: And I will say too, when you're out in kind
of the wilderness like that and you hear a gunshot,
it might be deceivingly farther away than you think, just because,
especially in a mountainous environment, it could be echoing off things.
So they may have thought it was closer when in
fact it was probably someone much farther away. But interesting. Nonetheless,
it's now ten am. Same day, Alvie's son drove to
the agreed upon pickup spot at the bottom of the hill,
but Alvie was not there. The sun weighted, assuming his
father had simply run behind, But as a family member
later put it, they quoted, Papa didn't show up, so
really he was not out there very long. They dropped
him off early in the morning and by ten am
he was supposed to be picked up, so basically just
an early morning hunt three four hours. So the hunting
party almost immediately began searching the area, the trail, the meadow,
the surrounding timber. They found no sign of him, no belongings,
no drop gear, no tracks leading to anywhere obvious. They
checked back at the pickup location. They checked farther up
the trail, there was absolutely no trace of them anywhere.
And remember it was noted that he had mobility issues,
so he actually needed to be helped a little bit
when he was moving around out there, which makes it
even more strange that they didn't find anything. Yea, like,
no gear, nothing, crazy. Yeah, So it's now four PM,
so they've spent all days searching for him, didn't find anything.
Daylight is starting the fade. The family contacts the Montezuma
County Sheriff's office report him missing, and the emergency manager,
Mike Pasquin confirmed the overdue hunter report. By five PM.
A larger coordinated search mission was launched under the direction
of Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nolan, which Joe quoted earlier
in the location profile. It's now Sunday, October twentieth of
twenty nineteen, and they actually got a dusting of snow overnight,
and we had a lot of people already ending up
in the field. So on the ground there was teams
from the county Search and Rescue, County Sheriff's deputies, and
a canine search and rescue unit that fanned out through
the timber and aspen meadows surrounding Road five to six
four A, and there was a growing contingent of Alvi's
family and friends that were joining the efforts. So pre
quick mobilization of people searching for him. They searched almost
immediately the day before, and then you've got a growing
presence of professional search teams now in the woods, and
aerial assets were brought in very quick. So Colorado National
Guard Blackhawk helicopter worked the area from above. It was
joined by a Flight for Life Colorado helicopter and me
as a very day Civil Air Patrol fixed wing aircraft,
and they were all scanning the heavily wooded terrain for
any flash of Elvi's bright orange gear. All right, so
tell us what we're looking at, Joe.
Speaker 1: I'm not cheering yet, Okay, No, it's it's so hard
to find this, and I think I found it. I did,
like find Divide Road and into Loris, Colorado, So I'm
gonna see if that will pull up.
Speaker 2: For those watching, I apologize. I created a really cool
map that had all of this easily clickable, and I
couldn't get the work. That's okay, all right, here we go.
We're on Divide Road.
Speaker 1: So that's five sixty four okay, and I just found
this one, so I'll have to try and find this
spur that they're talking five six four A. Yeah, I
think it said it was. Uh, I'm scanned the looking,
so you can keep going and I'll chime in once I.
Speaker 2: Okay, arrow it down. So obviously, like I said, it's Sunday,
October twentieth, we've got I.
Speaker 1: Mean, look at how remote it as though. Yeah, it's
I mean you are away from everything. M hm, yeah,
I mean this is the part of Colorado. I've actually
never been to the southwest area, but it's remote. If
you zoom out, there's I'm trying to think of. I
think I saw it. Tell you ride okay, yeah, here's
tell you ride up here. Yeah, Dunton. This is where
I was actually in Duntin, So you have been over here.
I have been over I didn't. I didn't know that's
where Dunton was.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I went there to.
Speaker 1: Retreat. Wow, there's done the springs, Yeah, dun hot in
the hot springs. I stayed right in this cabin.
Speaker 2: Lucky you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll pull up some pictures and show you
as we're going on but it was.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. It was amazing. Well, this looks
like a cool part of Colorado that I need to
get to. I rented. I rented a car to get here. Yeah,
I just droid the where did you come from?
Speaker 1: I forget where we flew in? I mean if you
scroll out were I mean there's it might have been
like tell your ride. Yeah, I think it was okay,
looking over by Cassie to see if she heard me
and could tell me she was there with me. Well
you got there somehow I can rented a car. I
rented a car and it was so much fun off
routing in the little rental. Just got your deposit back?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah I did. I didn't. I didn't blow tire
or anything. How long ago was this? Uh? Two or
three years ago? Okay, long enough? They can't. Yeah, they
can't come back at you. That's the guy. I'll I'll
make headlines. Will be worth it. So where was I Sunday?
So yeah, We've got a lot of professional search teams
on the ground. We've got aerial assets in the air,
two helicopters and a fixed wing aircraft. So quite a
few people are now searching for him after dark we
had drones equipped with infrared cameras launched. They were hoping
to detect maybe a heat signature anywhere in the search grid. Unfortunately,
there were no heat signatures consistent with a person found,
and at this time authorities continued attempting to ping his
cell phone throughout the day, but the like we said,
the phone either was turned off or ran out of battery.
Back in eastern Oklahoma, family members and friends began circulating
desperate please on Facebook and social media. One family friend
wrote that she emailed the Today Show, NBCABCCBS Nightly News
in an attempt to bring national attention to the search.
It's now Monday, October twenty first of twenty nineteen, so
we've now got approximately twenty five searchers in the area
doing a formal grid pattern, walking shoulder to shoulder with
personnel space roughly thirty feet apart. And they were doing
this through the aspen meadows where he was last seen
between nine to nine thirty am. One of the searches
reported hearing what sounded like a muffled gunshot. Very interesting.
Teams converged on the general direction of the sound, but
found only signs consistent with other hunting activity and animals
being taken elsewhere in the forest, so no evidence connected
to the sound to him, so and they didn't find
any shell casings, blood, or again a trace of him.
So from Tuesday to Wednesday, this would be October twenty
second to twenty third of twenty nineteen, the ground and
aerial operations continued as unfortunately, a strong winter storm pushed
into southwestern Colorado, so snow was falling across the search area.
Overnight temperatures plunged into the low twenties. So for an
eighty six year old guy just in a cameo jacket
and a vest carrying only a few food bars and water,
survival at this point in these conditions without shelter would
be near to impossible. And every night the search went on,
I think the realization set in that that not finding
him like right now, might you know, might turn this
into a recovery effort, sadly, because even if you have
the survival gear for conditions like that up at elevation,
that's that's some tough nights. Oh yeah, it'd be really tough. Absolutely,
So searchers continued, they cross covered ground that they'd already walked.
That's common. We've done many cases where searchers might have
searched in a specific area three four times, and then
two or three years later, remains are found in that
spot that was searched three or four times yea. Or
they'll find an item of clothing or a boot or
something like that. So a lot of times searchers will
research areas over and over again. And well that's when.
Speaker 1: They always do training missions and areas where they know
people have gone missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean you think we've probably been in
areas like this where it's in spots really thick. Yeah,
and you know you could miss something easily the first
second or even maybe the third time walking by it.
So not uncommon. And like I said, they were re
checking areas in a systematic effort to ensure nothing had
been missed. The train, according to searchers, was thoroughly combed,
the open meadows, the timber edges, the drainages, the steeper cuts.
Nothing was found. They didn't even find a single bootprint.
They didn't find a piece of gear, not even a
scrap of orange fabric. I mean they literally found nothing,
like he wasn't there, which is crazy. So I said,
this is a very similar case to tom Messeick.
Speaker 1: All right, here's Rolling Forks Road in road Forks Creek.
So we've narrowed down to the area. You sharing it, Yes,
I am sharing it.
Speaker 2: Awesome. So it's like this section, okay, as.
Speaker 1: I zoom way out, like, look at how in the
middle of nowhere that is? Yeah, that is They were
down here because they said it was where Rolling Folks
Road it meets an unnamed road and I think.
Speaker 2: And their camp was kind of up top and it
kind of it tilted down. Yeah, so it's got to
be in this window right here. That's remote. That's so remote.
Speaker 1: Let's see if there's any nothing. There's not even no street.
No one took any photos. Yeah, that at least can
go to Google. Yeah, there's nothing. It is actually the
most I've ever seen of Yeah, look at it's only
out to the freeway. Like, no one's ever taken a
picture on the Divide Road or Roaring Creeks that has.
Speaker 2: Gotten to Google yet.
Speaker 1: So if anyone's in the area and wants to contribute, yeah,
you'd be the first.
Speaker 2: I always thought it would be really cool. Have you
ever seen one of those Google Trail backpacks? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to do that.
Speaker 2: Well, if I didn't have to work for a living,
it would be cool to just hike around Google backpack, Yeah,
hike around and just photograph all these places that are
obviously people go here, but relatively little traffic probably comes
through a lot of these places.
Speaker 1: I would tell you that's the case, because there's no nothing, nothing.
Speaker 2: It would be really cool to be able to like
catalog and yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, I'll go to the closest one right when the
road turns off. This is as close as you get.
Speaker 2: And I mean, look at that road. It gets not
too far off the road, let's see. And then right
down here, this is the only shot you get. Yeah,
and it just goes up there. Yeah, it's it's uh remote,
thick country. Yeah, it's cool though. I would love to
go hiking there. I say that every episode. Yep, just
gotta do it one day. It's gotta go hiking everywhere. Yeah. Right, So,
like I said, they have combed some of these areas
multiple times and they're not even finding a single bootprint
gear nothing like his rifle. He has limited mobility if
he's gonna if he's probably in a situation where he
was trying to walk out. He's probably not going to
try and carry that rifle with him. That's going to
be a hindrance. Yeah, potentially, So they didn't even find
a rifle and rifles. If he dropped a rifle, that's
not going to just wash away or an animal's not
going to take that. It's going to be there. And
with how remote this is, I doubt anyone else is
hike him through there, you know not, Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah,
So sadly October twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: If they're hunters, you know, they probably like that remoteness
of that area, So no one's trapesing through.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's so vad that's why you'd go
hunting in an area like this. It's so vast that
you're likely to not see anyone else.
Speaker 1: So when we were going to dunt In Springs, there
were a bunch of hunters along the road we went,
and they literally just pull off and park. Yeah, and
then they wander off into there and that's all they'll do. Yeah,
it's along the whole road. But I was on like
a main vein going to a tourist spot. You're on
like a paved highway.
Speaker 2: Uh not in the mountain. No, it was. It was
it was rough.
Speaker 1: It was four wheel driving and I was not in
a four wheel like, yeah, I ruined it and I
was like rally racing through there, and my wife was
like freaking out.
Speaker 2: I was just like I was bombing through there. Like
that's like my my journey on the Alaska Highway and
the Nissan Ultimate that we had bottomed out a few times.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this thing is just like it's got no
shock system left after me, I took our.
Speaker 2: Car through the car wash though before we returned it. Yeah,
I didn't do anything. Yeah, I didn't do none of that.
So October, here, here's our cabin. Oh jeez, we go back.
Looks very rustic.
Speaker 1: So it's an old mining town and like old bank
robbers would hide out there.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: So like it's all the cabin they like restored everything,
but like it is gorgeous. But this is like only
a few miles away roughly if you can. So everyone
stays in different cabins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool. It's it's cool. Imagine one hundred years
ago the Hot Springs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's like a bougie yeah, outdoor, outdoor place.
Speaker 2: Jewel was in the room we're in just before us.
Speaker 1: Oh not with you, not with us, No, no, And
like I guess, the Kardashians were there a couple of
weeks ago and they rented the whole place out, so
it's like a very bougie place. We went with a
professional group that we are with. I was gonna say,
why did you get invited? Because I'm boogie liked that mic.
But there's like the hiking was incredible. We got to
make our own tea from like the stuff we found.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, go to Dunton Hot Springs. But here here's
a good mountaintop meadow we hiked to picnic.
Speaker 2: So I envision this being similar to what Alvi was
sitting in hunting, not probably out in the open like that,
because when you're hunting you don't want that. It was
like in a blind Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 1: In a location that's maybe a little more. Yeah, but
when I zoom out, see how there's like the clearing meadows.
This is a rich shop reservoir. So they would have
been like off these main shoots. Yeah, and there are
openings like look at this. Yeah, there's some significant openings,
which I mean that makes it more mysterious. Oh yeah,
because it's dense in some spots, but yeah, like I've
been through this forest now I can actually say like, yeah,
there's some very dense areas, but there's also very open areas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So October twenty fourth, twenty nineteen, sadly, the official
search was suspended. So after five intensive days of searching,
the official operation was formally suspended. Sheriff Nolan publicly expressed
deep frustration at the outcome. He was quoted as saying,
we looked all over and searched a large area thirty
yards at a time, but there was no sign of him,
no clues. We had thirty people, we had people thirty
feet apart, and that's mostly aspen meadows in that area.
We cross covered areas we had already been over. We
should have found him, but there was no sign of
him anywhere. It's frustrating nobody's finding anything. The sheriff also
emphasized that given his age, his limited mobility, and the
fact that he hadn't had time to acclimate to the
ninety five hundred foot altitude, he should not have been
able to walk very far from where he was dropped off,
making the total absence of any physical evidence deeply puzzling.
So this is quote directly from the sheriff that was
running the search operation. He found it incredibly strange and
odd that absolutely nothing was found from a gentleman who,
in all rights would not be able to walk more
than thirty feet on his own. Yeah, that's crazy. So
the sheriff's office stated that the official search would resume
immediately if any new clue surfaced, and anyone with information
was directed to call their office at nine seven zero
five six five eight four or five to two or
their dispatch at nine seven zero five six five eight
four five four. It's now late October early November of
twenty nineteen. At this time, the family continued searching. So
after the official search was called off, his family and
friends stayed behind in the San Juan National Forest, continuing
the search on their own. They were walking ridgelines, checking drainages,
and spoke with other hunters in the area, but sadly, again,
they didn't find a single piece of evidence that he
was really even there. By November fifth, nearly twenty days
after the disappearance, there were advocacy groups that were starting
to circulate his photo and case details across social media. Unfortunately,
heavy snow and falling temperatures across the high country were
rapidly closing the window for any further search efforts, and
by the end of twenty nineteen, his disappearance was noted
alongside that of another elderly man, Ramon Brown, who was
eighty six, who had also gone missing in the same
area in July of twenty nineteen and was likewise never found.
And it's just it's puzzling. Winter twenty nineteen into spring
of twenty twenty, as winter buried the San Juan's on
our heavy snowfall, a ground searching effectively ceased. There's no
way you can search in that and the divide Road
Roaring Fork area becomes largely inaccessible during the winter months,
and the case remained open with the County Sheriff's office,
but there were no significant developments during this time. In
August twenty twenty, people started looking at the case again
and just the lack of physical evidence, so it's kind
of starting to pick up steam with the online community.
They did this grid search thirty feet apart and they
found nothing, so very interesting case. It keeps bubbling up
every couple of years. Twenty twenty one, it got some
broader coverage. People started covering it on TV shows and
forums like Web Sleuths. We're trying to solve it or
figure out what happened, and then it it really gained
steam in September of twenty twenty five. And this so,
like Joe said in the beginning, we're going to do
a little mini series here of hunters that have gone
missing in Colorado. And our next episode will actually be
on a pair of Elk hunters that went missing, Andrew
Porter and Ian Stasco in September of twenty twenty five,
so not very long long ago. I won't I won't
say anything more about the case to kind of leave
it a little mysterious. There you go again. But this
the case of Alvie kind of came up again when
these two hunters went missing, because this is something that
has happened multiple times and it's it came up again
this spring. So our final episode of the mini series
is going to talk about a very recent case of
a hunter was Caden Sites. And this case is so recent,
Joe and I made the decision we're going to let
it breathe for a few weeks and let the family
get closure. And before we start talking about it, so
we'll we'll talk about that case and probably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was brought to us because he was still
missing and we were going to cover it, and then yeah, yeah,
this active that case is very interesting, strange in my opinion,
I don't want to get into theories because sadly, I
was texting with Joe the other day and I I
wanted to try.
Speaker 2: And cover We wanted to cover a case that was ongoing,
and the Caden Sites case has been ongoing for a
few weeks now, and as I was texting Joe, they
they found his remains, and so we decided we're not
going to cover it right now. We're going to wait
at least a month. So we'll close out the series
on Missing Hunters with Caiden in a month or so.
But his case is very interesting. Each one of these
cases has a different aspect. So the Alvi case we
just talked about is very mysterious. His family dropped him off.
He's elderly, he can't move really, he was only at
that spot for maybe four hours and then vanished off
the face of the earth. They found nothing, and it's
a very remote area. There's not a lot of other
people there. What happened. So well's I guess let's get
into theories. So before I jump into theories, let's just recap.
I would say the odds were stacked against Alva in
a traditional sense of conditions, and the altitude ninety five
hundred feet. He'd only been there for a few days.
He could have been suffering from altitude sickness, maybe at
his age, just general age related. Maybe his body doesn't
process oxygen as good as someone that's twenty m so
that could impact that could create a problem with altitude
sickness even quicker. Like we've said throughout the episode, he
had limited mobility. He's not going to be able to
walk very far, and especially if he's at high elevation,
it's having an effect on him that reduces the distance
he can walk even further. And Joe and I but
from being in high altitude areas, as someone in my twenties,
it when you first get there, it's hard, and it's
even when you're young and fit, it's not easy to
move around, and so you get acclimated to it. So
but cell phone died, so searchers had no way of
pinging his phone to see maybe where his last known
location was. It was a simple, time limited plan. He
was one hundred yards away from their camp and he
was only there for a few hours and they didn't
find anything. Terrain. The terrain, like Joe mentioned in his
location profile, it can be deceiving, like it's not flat.
Little lips and things can hide hide a body or
something from searchers. And the weather was kind of turning hostiles.
So they really needed to find him like the day
he went missing, because he had no survival gear. And yeah, absolutely,
the longer he's in that environment, the worse the outcome
is going to be. So what are the main theories?
And when I say main theories, you heard the quote
from the Sheriff's step. The Sheriff's office, they're baffled by
this case. Yes, they they do not know what happened
and why their team could not find and they're familiar
with the area. They're familiar with the area. They've probably
done many searches up there, and they know his situation.
He's elderly, can't move like he should be there. They
should have found him even if he had. The most
likely theory that a lot of people talked about is
medical event and exposure, so he could have suffered a
heart attack, a stroke. You know, he goes down in
a concealed spot, deadfall, depression, timber pocket, and then dies
from exposure as the temperatures drop. Okay, that is a
good theory, but you got to think at his age
and his mobility, there's a limited radius of where he
could have gone, and you would think searchers would be
all over those. Yeah, absolutely, Like they're not running. He's
not running. Even if he has some kind of event
where he's experiencing hypothermia, is starting to kind of make
irrational decisions. He still physically just can't move that well. Yes,
so his body is limited. Yeah, so anything that could
have hidden a body, I feel like within a radius
of fifty feet from where he was sitting was heavily searched,
I mean heavily searched. And that kind of falls into
the second theory that he fell into concealed terrains. This
could be he steps off trail, possibly to reposition or
follow game, and falls into a steep drainage drainage or
over a small ledge or into a thick dead fall.
Then injury prevents movement and becomes hidden, and the searchers
didn't find him. So that's a good theory, but again
I feel like the mobility problem is they're gonna search
any of those areas that are close by, very very thoroughly.
The next one is he just gets turned around up there,
and it's altitude driven hypoxy hypoxia. It causes confusion, poor judgment.
He moves in the wrong direction, maybe going downhill in
a thicker timber. There's a word for that. What is it?
I'm not saying it. You go, I'm like afraid to
say it now. You developed like a speaking fear say
I have.
Speaker 1: If we ever get really famous and do like a show,
people are gonna make you say it live on stage.
I've been like, and I'm gonna reinforce that. I've been
shamed by so many people. I just won't say the
word it is. It is a weird platform because like,
you and me are still you and me. But like,
there's ten thousands of people that listen to this, So
you've had like hundreds of people showing, yeah, but you've
never met before.
Speaker 2: We've been doing this for almost nine years now, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thousands of people that hate you for saying that
you've never met.
Speaker 2: We've received more hate which is fine. We've received more
hate than probably a normal person would in their entire
life in the span of nine years. But you know
what it, I've got a thick skin, so other things
in life buged me less now since we started doing this. Yeah,
it's like you let it roll off your back. Yeah,
it comes with the territory. Some people like us and
some people hate us with a passion. Right. My advice
is just don't listen. It's free.
Speaker 1: Just no one, yeah, just everyone stopped, all right, keep going.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've covered the likely theories.
Speaker 2: So next theory is some kind of gunshot related instant,
so maybe accidental or self inflicted. Now, this one really
doesn't make sense to me. If it was self inflicted
or accidentally, they'd find his body, like if he was
sitting at the spot and like was like cleaning his
gun and shot himself, like he would be there. Yep,
they did hear that gunshot at nine am.
Speaker 1: That's where I think, like, there's a gunshot related to
whatever happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't necessarily know what it is. No,
And being that it's hunting season out there, you're in
the mountains, it could be echoing it's really not at
all unlikely that and you know what.
Speaker 1: Sorry to try to cut you off, because I'm just
thinking going through Dunton when it was hunting season, they
made us wear blaze orange and we went on our
hike because hey, people are hunting here. Maybe it is
more heavily packed. Then maybe I would imagine, like, maybe
there's not a ton of people out there, but if
you got like four hunting parties in the area, that's
where a gunshot wos a good precaution when you're out there.
I'm just trying to think of, like, Okay, was that
his gunshot? Because initially I'm like, well, of course it
was him, because if no one else in their group
and they're the only ones out there, I'm like, well,
maybe there was other people out there?
Speaker 2: Was like a signal gunshot? Was he signaling to his
family that something happened? I Was he shooting at an animal? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I just think I can't definitively say it was his.
When I initially when you said that, I'm like, oh,
that was him. I wonder what that means. And I'm like, Okay,
I think it's a high likelihood it was, But you
can't guarantee it.
Speaker 2: But the thing is they never found any evidence of
an animal being shot or I could have missed. I'll
say this too. Now, when I've gone in the past,
like grouse hunting in northern Wisconsin, we've been in some
thick openings where there's like tall grass that's kind of
been padded down, and sometimes you'll see like a shotgun
shell sitting there, and if like a shell casne has
been recently discharged, it's going to land on top of
the foliage and is relatively easy to see, like we'll
see all the time, like, oh, like somebody must have
been here. Yeah, So the fact that searchers didn't find
any kind of evidence of shell casings or anything like
that makes you wonder how close was that gun shot
that I heard? All Right, so I got some theories.
I'm brilliing. Okay, So the next one is accidental shooting
by another hunter, so a cover up. So maybe another
hunter mistakenly shoots him and removes conceals the body to
avoid consequences. This would explain a lack of evidence. But
this requires yeah, it requires a difficult, very risky cover up.
With and left. They were like a pro at.
Speaker 1: It because accidentally shooting someone wearing blaze orange and sitting still.
Speaker 2: And doing it within three or four hours getting his
body out of there, you'd have to have a vehicle,
and that would leave evidence hunting stuff like, yeah, you
don't accidentally shoot him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like like serious, no, Like I agree down a
road that they had to walk him down where there's
only one way in where they probably would have seen.
Speaker 2: A car or even if someone was out there in
a four wheeler, like investigators would have seen. Yeah, those
tracks in like trained investigator is going to see those
tracks leading out of there and there would be bloody.
But somehow a pro managed to shoot him, conceal it,
clean the area up, and get him out of there
in four hours. Yeah I don't think so. Yeah, and
he didn't put up a fight or shoot back or anything.
It was one shot and they got him. And yeah,
I mean that's not it. There's another theory. So post
mortem's scavenging. So this is kind of after something caused
his death, could have been anything. Then wildlife scatters the
remains in gear snow, time terrain, further obscure evidence, explaining
why nothing has been found so many years later. Okay,
they didn't find any evidence of that, and like a
hunting rifle is not going to be scavenged by an
animal that they'll leave that there. So I don't think
that's very plausible. We've got foul plays, so non hunting
related incident, so an encounter with another person leads to
harm and concealment. Again, no evidence supported this, but it
remains a theoretical possibility due to the lack of any
other evidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you almost have to consider it because they have
nothing else to go on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. And then we've round it out with
the completely unlikely so intentional disappearance no, yeah, he's eighty
six yep, move on, Yeah, abduction, so someone abducted him.
Speaker 1: I'd say that's more that's more plausible than intentional.
Speaker 2: Almost. Yeah, and then we've got the missing four to
one one unexplained phenomena. So people are speculating Bigfoot or
dimensional time shift.
Speaker 1: Honestly, in whatnot abduction or any missing four stuff thrown
into the ten percent category.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you've heard the case, You've heard the theories.
Speaker 1: What's your what's your theory? All right, I'm gonna I'm
gonna take some liberties. Oh you are, I think he
shot at an animal, Yeah, thought he hit it and
went looking for it. Okay, and if it wasn't elk.
I mean, you're a hunter. What do animals do when
they're hit?
Speaker 2: They don't stay put. They go to.
Speaker 1: Ground, usually downhill towards a river, per se. So if
he's following this thing towards a river thinking he hit it,
looking for evidence, maybe following the trail in yeah, because
he's a hunter. Even if you're think about like, okay,
let's pretend he wasn't of sound mind. Yeah, your natural instinct,
if you've been a hunter, your whole life is to
go look for the thing you shot. Yeah, it's a
big conservation thing, you know. You don't just shoot animals
and let him die. You're gonna go find it. So
if he thinks he hit it, and he's sharp enough
to thinks he hit it, yeah, and he's fairly mobile.
I think he walked off looking for an animal and
just simply got lost, fell maybe like stepped into one
of those depressions or reservoir where it didn't seem like that,
and then either injured himself to the point where he
wasn't able to get out, and they just didn't find him.
Speaker 2: I mean I think, actually I like that theory. I
would say I wouldn't call him mostly mobile. You gotta
think the gunshots was heard at nine am. Went to
pick him up at ten am, So there's an hour
for him to move to find that animal. Yeah, I'm
not saying he went far, No, I'm just think trying
to think how far could he.
Speaker 1: Have gone in an hour. Well, that's where I'm thinking.
If an animal runs downhill, downhill would be easier. Downhill's easier.
Speaker 2: So he got saw adrenaline go and he's like, I
gotta find this motivation.
Speaker 1: Gravity on his side, maybe a little mentally impaired from
the altitude, you know, and cold altitude you can make
poor decisions.
Speaker 2: He's a little dehydrated. He didn't really have a lot
of food or water.
Speaker 1: So, like, I really think it it like it's if
it was his gunshot, It's like, Okay, they didn't see
that he hit an animal. They didn't find the casing.
So that's the thing too. The casing would have been
around the spot unless he picks up his casings. There's
hunters that do that. Oh yeah, so they don't like,
do you pick up your casing? So you're not leaving
it littered, and then he just went searching for it,
and they're not going to find a bullet. Like No,
that's that's like a one in a billion.
Speaker 2: And the only thing I would think is, depending on
the clearing and what type of groundcover there is, would
that have left any kind of track? I mean they
had canine units in there too.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, that's that's why I said, I'm taking liberties.
But I'm just like looking at this, I mean, that's
the most logical theory that makes sense. That's kind of
where like it ties the gunshot and he's missing and
there's no sign of anything.
Speaker 2: He pretty much took everything with him looking for that animal,
fell into some area where the searchers didn't see him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe got injured, blacked out, and then to come
to the elements over the time. Unfortunately. That's that's like
the only thing that kind of.
Speaker 2: Pieces together a lot of the stuff and is very plausible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's what I think. If not that aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I do like that that theory. Oh look,
what are you thinking? I'm thinking it's I think, are
you in my train? I'm on your train? What other
theory makes sense? There you go. Even it's like leaving
your train doesn't make a lot of sense to me
because of his mobility issues, but it is the most logical.
Speaker 1: That's the only reason I was like when I was so,
if you look on here, I am showing the screen.
If you're watching, it's it's hilly. It's not like jagged mountainous.
And granted I'm looking at.
Speaker 2: The three D of Google Earth, so it could be
a little offesome. I mean it is, you know, ninety
five hundred feet. It's it's high up, but it's relatively flat.
If you're going downhill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be a tough uphill climb, especially for someone
of his age, but you got gravity work in your
favor again, and animal is not going to run up
hill if it's injured. Yeah, so maybe he thinks it
went downhill. Granted he also might have not hit it,
so it's going to run river the heck it wants. Yeah,
So there's a lot of there's a lot of holes
I can poke in mine. Yeah, in my theory, but
it's the only thing I can think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, it's this doesn't this remind of
you of the Tom Messick kiss it does, yeah, very much,
because that was another hunter that literally vanished like off
the face of the planet. And I would say that
one's even more mysterious because he was hunting out in
New York State, far less remote and the terrain was
far less.
Speaker 1: Can we get the coordinates of each one and see
if it like does a thing? Are there vies at
each point they like triangulate to a vile vortices?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Something.
Speaker 1: You know what I've been watching recently Monarch. Yeah, I
don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: Apple TV. It's a Godzilla show. It's actually really it's
got Kurt Russell in it, and okay, it's actually really good.
Speaker 1: It's got Kurt Russell's got to watch it. Kurt Russell's
in it.
Speaker 2: But they basically have these escape from la right, they
have basically have these these like dimensions that open up
around the Earth that connects Earth with the like, oh God,
it comes from to mention where the Titans come from.
They're called Titans.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a plausible thing on what happened here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Monarch, Monarch, If anyone listening, it's on Apple TV.
It's actually pretty good show.
Speaker 1: You go free promo for a giant television show.
Speaker 2: On TV.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, I don't have anything else.
Speaker 2: I am completely baffled by this and like me to
I say that sometimes when I'm not that baffled, we.
Speaker 1: Have but just for showmanship.
Speaker 2: I am truly baffled by this guy. Yes, me too.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks again for tuning into our show. We appreciate
you all for listening and sharing locations unknown with your
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whether backpacking, camping, or simply taking a walk, always remember
to leave no trace. Thanks and we will see you
all next time. By