John Devine, disappeared September 7, 1997, Olympic National Park, Washington State.
Revised and expanded April 2021
John Devine was a 73-year-old hiker who headed to the Olympic National Park in Washington on Friday, September 6, 1997 for camping and hiking.
He was said to be an experienced hiker and had intended to go climbing the 6,796-foot-high Mount Baldy in Olympic National Forest using the extremely steep and rugged Maynard Burn Trail.
He failed to show up after the hike as planned on September 7 and his family reported him missing to the authorities.
John was never found and the search was curtailed by a fatal helicopter crash whilst looking for him.
Who was John Devine?
John lived in Sequim and he was in excellent physical condition although legally blind in one eye. He had hiked long distances by himself in the Olympics before.
The trip to Olympic National Park
He was last seen on the afternoon of September 7 while hiking along Gray Wolf Ridge on the park’s north side. He had been camping since Friday night with a friend near the Mount Baldy area, just outside the park boundary in the Buckhorn Wilderness Area of Olympic National Forest.
He was carrying snack bars but didn’t have any other gear or food.
Helicopter crash
During the search, a Bell 205A-1 rescue helicopter crashed killed three people and injured five others at the 5,000-foot level of Mount Baldy, 20 miles south of Port Angeles. It fell shortly after taking off from the mountainside. Kevin Johnston, 35, the pilot, of Springfield, Oregon, a former flight instructor with an 18-month old daughter and Rita McMahon, 52, a search volunteer who trained dogs to help with rescue missions, and Taryn Hoover, 31, a seasonal park employee were killed.
Robert Feldmann, 27, of Mukilteo and Cynthia Stern, 24, of Port Angeles. Another passenger, Heidi Pedersen, 32, of Port Angeles, was in stable condition in Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles.
The search
At the time of the crash, weather conditions deteriorated as snow and cold have swept through the mountainous area.
A dozen searchers continued to comb the Meuller Creek area looking for John, but they were brought out before dark. Jason Berry, 23, in his second year as a Park Service volunteer said, “It's steep and rugged . . . the bushes are super thick and it's tough to walk down the drainages.”
Sgt. Don Kelly of the Clallam County Sheriff's Office, which coordinated the search with the National Park Service, said: "If he was walking around up there, we would have found him by now. And if he had fallen down and hurt himself, he probably wouldn't be alive."
The search was called off on September 13, 1997. Unfortunately, John Devine was never found. Another strange disappearance in the Olympic National park.
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Sources
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19970914&slug=2560348
https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1997/09-13/0010_olympic_national_park___helicopte.html
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/sep/09/rescuers-continue-to-hunt-missing-hiker/
