There have been people attempting to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail since it was first established, and where people congregate there is also always some amount of tragedy. But when three young man vanish from the trail in a three-year period, former park ranger Andrea Lankford gets fascinated by the search for them.
For a person who one day wants to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (after a lot of preparation, mind you), I find myself reading a lot about wilderness disaster and crime stories. Maybe a bit as a cautionary tale, but also because in stories like these, so outside of civilization, the remoteness of the place adds a further complication to everything, even just reaching the scene of the crime in the first place.
Lankford was in a former life a park ranger who worked in search and rescue and wilderness medicine, and her expertise definitely shows in the way she approaches the subject – especially since the book focuses on amateur search efforts undertaken by friends, family, and complete strangers, it makes for a good contrast. I appreciated how Lankford also discussed hiker culture and what it was like out on the trail, really driving home the scope of the situation and the mystery of what fates might have befallen the hikers.
However, I did think the book was confusingly organized in places. We follow the stories of the searches for three hikers who disappeared in different years, but by continually and haphazardly flipping back and forth between their stories and the search efforts for them, it’s easy to get unmoored in time. I also found myself disappointed by how much page space was taken up by the stories of the psychic and the (pretty clearly) fraudulent “doctor” with his DNA scouting device. They add color to the story, but since it’s pretty clear to both Lankford and the reader that it’s going to be a waste of time, I wish she hadn’t devoted so much of the book to them.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
