Revised and expanded November 2023
An unnamed 47-year-old woman was found camping on Sunday, May 2, 2021, in the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork Canyon, five months after she was reported missing. She had survived the cold winter months in the area. She did have a small amount of food with her, and she told SAR officials she foraged for grass and moss to survive and had access to drinking water from a nearby river.
She was first reported missing on November 25, 2020, after US Forest Service employees preparing for seasonal canyon closures found her car abandoned in a trailhead parking lot about 50 miles (80km) southeast of Salt Lake City.
The abandoned vehicle in November 2020
They also found camping equipment and information identifying the person camping there. Detectives and Search and Rescue officials with the Utah County Sheriff's Office (UCSO) searched the area by ground and from the air but could not find anyone.
Sgt. Spencer Cannon with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said, “All we had was her car down here in this parking lot, some of her personal items in that car and a campsite up here — all of which appeared to have been unused for an extended period of time and no evidence that she was still here.”
The initial search and investigations
Upon locating the vehicle, Search and Rescue crews searched the area several times, but there was no sign of the owner.
Investigators had telephone information that led them to believe the woman might be in Colorado. Assuming the car and camping equipment might have been abandoned, Deputies impounded the car and took the camping equipment for safekeeping.
Over the next few months, efforts were made to identify and contact the woman’s family without success. Detectives did make contact with former co-workers, but they did not get any information that suggested where this woman might be. They did, however, find information that suggested she might be struggling with mental health issues.
A second search in 2021 and the discovery of the woman in the tent
A UCSO Sergeant Cannon, a Search and Rescue Coordinator, returned to Diamond Fork on May 2, 2021, with representatives of a nonprofit aerial search organization using drones to find evidence that the unknown female might still be in the Diamond Fork area.
During one of the first passes, the drone crashed, and the Sergeant and drone pilot set out to find the missing equipment. Walking into the hills, they found a tent at around 3 pm that they believed was abandoned. They opened the tent's zipper, and they were shocked when they discovered a middle-aged female was inside and alive.
Sgt. Cannon said, “The zipper of the tent unzipped, and this woman, who we had identified the previous year in November and December last year, sticks her head out.”
The sergeant called in to dispatch that they had located the woman, saying afterwards, “I have to be honest; we fully expected we wouldn’t find anybody related to that alive up here, given how long it had been. In situations like that, we often find somebody after they passed away. We were quite relieved and happy that she was still alive.”
The team who located her said she was in rough physical shape. She had lost a significant amount of weight and was very weak. Because of her condition and information in their discussion with her, Deputies took her to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation.
The sheriff’s office believed the woman was out in the remote area “by choice” rather than being “lost.” Cannon says there’s a good possibility she “didn’t want to be found.”
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Sources
https://www.kcrg.com/2021/05/05/woman-missing-for-5-months-survives-winter-in-utah-canyon/
https://sheriff.utahcounty.gov/media/sheriffNewsDetails?ID=233483
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/05/utah-woman-missing-five-months-found-campsite-tent
