Teton County Search and Rescue recovered the body of a 28-year-old Australian man on Wednesday after a search in the Teton Range near Grand Teton National Park. He had been trying to thru-hike the Continental Divide Trail.
The body was found in The Wigwams, on the west slope of the Tetons, below a ridge south of North Wigwam Peak. TCSAR said he is believed to have died after falling from a steep, high-altitude ridgeline that separates Grand Teton National Park and the Jedediah Smith Wilderness.
That is why the search drew attention on Wednesday. The recovery ended a backcountry operation that had begun after the man’s family lost contact with him for four days and reached Grand Teton officials on July 27. By then, his last Garmin check-in had given them no coordinates and no message, even though they had been tracking his progress as he headed south from Canada.
The missing details matter as much as the recovery itself. On July 19, he reached Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park and sent a message with his intended route through the Tetons and into the Wind River Basin. A check-in dated July 23 was later placed near The Wigwams in Teton County, near but outside the western boundary of the park. From the air, rescuers spotted his bright orange backpack and sent in a short-haul team by helicopter Wednesday morning.
The body was then recovered and taken to the Teton County Coroner’s Office. TCSAR said it was grateful for help from partnering federal agencies and expressed condolences to the man’s family and friends. The route he was attempting is a 3,028-mile trek that runs across the Rockies from Canada to Mexico, and hikers who try it in one continuous push can spend two to seven months on the trail.
What remains unknown is the basic fact that would explain the loss: what caused the fall from the ridgeline. For now, the answer is only that a young man on one of North America’s hardest walks was found dead in a place where a single mistake can be fatal.
