The puzzling disappearance of Jonathan Jetté and Rachel Bagnall near Valentine Lake

Jonathan Jetté and Rachel Bagnall disappearance

Jonathan Jetté and Rachel Bagnall, disappeared September 4, 2010, Spetch Creek Forest Service Road to Valentine Lake, British Columbia, Canada

On Saturday, September 4, 2010, Rachel Bagnall and Jonathan Jetté left Vancouver early, before 7 am for three days of hiking at Valentine Lake (Saxifrage Mountain and Cassiope Peak) near Pemberton in British Columbia, Canada. They were never seen again.

Who were Rachel Bagnall and Jonathan Jetté

25-year-old, Rachel Bagnall was planning to go to Columbia to do volunteer work for one year in underprivileged communities. She was training to be a doctor, part of UBC's Medicine Class of 2011. She was a painter and a pianist, inspired in her art by the beauty of the mountains.

Her boyfriend Jonathan Jetté, 34, worked for the government in Quebec as an Attaché.

They met at a climbing gym. Both were very fit. Jonathan ran the Grouse Grind three times a week and was competitive in climbing. Rachael grew up in Prince George and had been hiking since she was five years old.

jonathan jette and rachel bagnall disappearance british columbiia

The trip to Valentine Lake

There are rolling alpine meadows next to Valentine Lake where hikers could walk around in flip-flops as well as steep mountainous routes in the high alpine, complete with crevasses, which require crampons and ice picks to explore. They are also dense, wooded lower mountains with hidden vertical cliff bands and overgrown bush.

They stopped at Tim Horton's in Squamish for a coffee and a hot chocolate at 7.42 am on September 4th, according to a bank card statement. Then on through Whistler, Pemberton and towards Birken.

On Monday, September 6th, 2010, Labor Day weekend, they were supposed to come back to Vancouver as this was the couple's last few days together before Rachael moved abroad.  

Valentine Lake British Columbia
Lake Valentine, BC, Pemberton

Jetté parked his car at the Spetch Creek Forest Service Road and from there it was about a five-hour hike to the heart-shaped Valentine Lake, under the peaks of the Saxifrage and Cassiope Mountains. Then nothing.

The search

On September 8th, 2010 Rachel's sister, Elizabeth, notified the authorities that she was missing with Jonathan when she became concerned she hadn't heard from her.

Up to 50 searchers combed the area on foot around Valentine Lake and its surrounding peaks led by Sgt Steve LeClair, including police and SAR workers from around the province.

Police quickly found Jonathan's car, a four-door Toyota Echo, parked 1.2 km up the Specht Creek Forest Service Road. The empty cups from Tim Horton's coffee shop were found in the car as well as a cell phone. Records showed that Jonathan made no calls after September 3rd. The area around their vehicle was searched, but nothing unexpected was found.

Jonathan Jetté and Rachel Bagnall car

The RCMP climbing team went in by helicopter, set some fixed-line, and repelled down to search the area below the tree line. At the same time, dog teams searched the whole area, including cadaver dogs.

The official search was called off in October 2010, more than a month after the couple were reported missing. There was snow on the ground at that time.

After the official search was over, police got a tip that witnesses in the Mount Currie new site had seen smoke in the area above Peq Creek in the days the couple would have been camping. The theory was they could have fallen and survived. The RCMP climbing team went in by helicopter, set some fixed line and repelled down to search the area below the tree line. At the same time dog teams searched the area from the bottom up. But nothing was discovered.

A few months later in December, another witness in Mount Currie reported some unusual bird activity in the area while chopping firewood. After the long wait for the snow to clear, police met the witness on the ground and, in coordination with a helicopter, GPS'ed the area of the activity. It was then searched with teams. Again, nothing.

Nothing of the couple has ever been found despite extensive searches every year by family members, friends, SAR teams and even paid professional paid mountain guides.

Professional climbers like John Furneaux who has been to Mount Everest three times, were hired by the Jetté family and searched crevasses and other technical, hard-to-reach areas. Despite searching an area of 175 square kilometres, nothing came up.

No equipment has ever been recovered, in fact not a trace of them ever being in the area apart from the abandoned car. Police looked through their homes, cracked Facebook accounts, checked cell phone records and computers as well as their bank accounts and credit cards for any activity.

It's a case that has perplexed seasoned searchers as almost always the people are found alive or the bodies are recovered. 

A few new pieces of evidence, like some nail clippers, were found and sent off to the lab for DNA testing and an old fire pit near the Peq Creek area, which flows into the Mount Currie new site, was also discovered. They found a pair of women's sunglasses near Valentine Lake. A lead that could put Rachael at the lake at some point? But another hiker contacted the police, described the sunglasses in detail as a pair she lost while hiking in the area. Search experts from Parks Canada were called in to do a comprehensive overview of the search efforts to date to make sure nothing was missed. But these leads led nowhere.

Helicopter search

What happened to Rachel Bagnall and Jonathan Jetté?

Rachel and Jonathan were equipped for doing a scramble as opposed to doing any kind of technical ropework. They did not pack a map, compass or GPS. It's possible to get off track on the walk into Valentine Lake where the pathway veers sharply uphill and to the left, but the natural inclination is to continue on. That way would have led to cliffs but it would have been possible to turn around at any time.

Eventually, they would have found some form of civilization. The Duffy Lake Road runs along the eastern side of the area, the road to Birken is on the west, Cirque Mountain borders the north and the south eventually comes down to the Mount Currie new site. While it is a big area, they would have come to something such as a logging road, fairly easily.

LeClaire, the lead investigator said, "When you ask me what my thoughts on this are, it's a catastrophic slip and fall accident, either below treeline where we have not been able to find them or they've gone into a crevasse somewhere in the alpine area. There's not a lot of ways to go wrong. That was what was so perplexing about the whole thing. Where could they have gone wrong?"

With no physical evidence, it has been speculated that they may have walked over a cliff, were buried in a rockslide, attacked by bears or other wildlife, or met with foul play by someone or something sinister in the area. Some even believe that despite the car being in the area, they were abducted as the cell phone was left behind.

It just doesn't happen all that often that two people walk into the backcountry and seemingly disappear off the face of the earth with no clues as to what happened. But that’s what happened at Valentine Lake.

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