One Of Oregon’s Most Puzzling Disappearances – Sanford Rice

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She found the store was still closed and locked, and Sanford was nowhere to be found.

Once Lucy realized that Sanford was not even at his house, she became concerned for his well-being and contacted his family.

She told them that she had last seen Sanford the day prior on June 23rd around 1:30 in the afternoon, right before he left to go on his hike.

A short time later, Sanford’s son, Kevin, called the Lane County Sheriff’s Office to report his father is missing.

He said that Sanford left for a day hike on June 23rd and that he probably went to the Maran Lake area in Lynn County.

Kevin said that his father left the store at around 11:00 am which would seem to contradict what Sanford’s employee Lucy said.

Either way, Sanford had not returned from wherever he went.

Kevin said that his father was in excellent health and that he ran two to three miles every week and that he was an avid golfer.

He said that Sanford was a moderate hiker who likely packed water and food for a day trip and that he had no medical or mental health issues.

Kevin said that he believed his father was planning to begin his hike at the main trail head to Maran Lake near Mount Jefferson and that he had never done the hike and was not familiar with the area.

After speaking to Kevin, a deputy with Lane County contacted Sanford’s employee, Lucy, to get more information from her.

Lucy told the deputy that Sanford told her he was going to go hiking somewhere outside Salem.

She said that she saw him leave the store on June 23rd at around 1:30 to 2:00 pm and that he left in his blue Buick Lasaber.

She said that when she arrived at the store the next day around 9:00 am, she was very surprised that Sanford had not already opened and that this was extremely unlike him.

Once the Lane County Sheriff filled out an incident report for Sanford, they tried to call his cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail.

Afterwards, they tried to trace Sanford’s location by having his cell phone pinged.

But once they called T-Mobile to have that done, the cell carrier told them that the phone had been turned off since 4:30 pm the day prior.

At around 1:37 pm on June 24th, the Lynn County Sheriff’s Office received a request from neighboring Lane County to go and check the Marian Lake trail head for a vehicle belonging to Sanford Rice, who had just been reported missing.

They were told to look for a 2000 Buick Lasaber that was blue in color.

A deputy Reed then began making the 2-hour drive to Marian Lake from the Lynn County Sheriff’s Office.

As he was in route, he called a Forest Service officer named Armenta and advised him of the missing person’s report.

Officer Armenta responded to the Maran Lake trail head along with his partner, Officer Ivers.

At 2:17 pm, Officer Armenta advised Deputy Reed that he had found Sanford’s vehicle at the trail head.

So, a search and rescue party was dispatched to the area.

Deputy Reed arrived at the trail head at approximately 3:51 pm While there, he conducted a cursory examination of Sanford’s vehicle.

It was backed into a parking spot with the windows up and the doors locked.

He could see a pair of pants and a pair of tennis shoes on the back seat.

Nothing about the car seemed suspicious or unusual.

Meanwhile, Officer Armenta went to the nearby permit box to check all the self-issue permits.

One of them was in the name of S.

Rice.

It indicated that he planned to hike alone and that he did not plan to camp overnight.

There was no destination listed on the permit.

Officer Ivers then searched the parking lot and the surrounding area with her canine partner Drax.

Meanwhile, Officer Armenta and Deputy Reed began hiking up the trail to Maran Lake.

Along the way, the duo encountered multiple groups of hikers.

None of them reported seeing anyone that matched Sanford’s description, but one group did say that some campers had told them they had seen an elderly man hike past them the previous evening and they did not see him return.

The group said that these people were camped along the shore of Maran Lake near a wooden bridge that crosses a creek.

Deputy Reed asked the potential witnesses to identify themselves to officer Ivers at the trail head and he and officer Armenta continued moving on towards Marian Lake.

The duo first went to an area near the northwest shore where there is a wooden bridge crossing Marian Creek, but they didn’t find any campers there.

They then doubled back and started heading northeast where the trail closely follows the lakes’s edge.

Around 6:50 pm, they came to another area with a wooden bridge and found a group of campers settled there near the shore.

The campers said that they had seen an elderly man the previous evening sometime between 7 and 7:30 pm and they provided a physical description of the man that matched Sanford Rice.

Later, these campers would be shown an actual photograph of Sanford and they positively identified him as the man they saw.

The campers said that they were concerned when they saw Sanford on the trail because it was raining and he seemed illprepared for the inclement weather.

They said that Sanford was only wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of light colored shorts while carrying a small cinch pack with him.

When Sanford encountered the group, he pointed down the Mento Pass Trail and asked them if it went around the lake.

They told him it did not, but Sanford continued on down the trail anyway.

The Mento Pass Trail follows the eastern shore of Maran Lake, but only up to a certain point.

Eventually, the trail veers from the lake and continues going further down before splitting into two separate trails.

From there, you have no choice but to continue deeper into the wilderness, unless you decide to turn back.

The campers who witnessed Sanford told authorities that they became concerned later that evening after they didn’t see him come back down the trail.

The campers explained that since Mento Pass Trail did not actually go around Marian Lake and since Sanford was obviously not prepared to camp out overnight, they fully expected to see him pass their camp again on his way back to the trail head and parking lot.

One of the campers said that he hiked along the trail for a short distance the next morning, heading in the same direction as Sanford, but he found nothing but some shoe impressions.

He thought that they might have been made by Sanford because they had not been completely obliterated by the rain.

So, he went ahead and marked the area by drawing two arrows on the trail.

I have to say, this camper showed quite a bit of foresight by doing something like this, considering he would be interviewed by authorities later the same day.

Deputy Reed wanted to get as much of the area searched as possible since the sun was beginning to set.

So he quickly obtained all the identifying information from the group of campers and then both he and officer Armenta proceeded southeast on the Mento Pass trail.

As they walked, they began calling out Sanford’s name.

Around 7:24 pm, the duo found two arrows drawn on the ground.

And shortly thereafter, they found a partial footwear impression at the beginning of what they refer to as an unofficial user trail that led downhill from the main trail and towards Maran Lake.

This type of trail would be something that is not created or maintained by the Forest Service, but instead would be made by hikers who have frequently and consistently walked off trail and thereby created a small footpath over time.

When the duo inspected the footwear impressions near this user trail, they noticed that the edges of the impressions were only slightly rounded, so they seemed fairly fresh.

Still, no tread pattern was discernable because the person’s foot had slid a little on the slope leading off the trail.

This user trail was at an important location because it was at a spot where the Mento Pass Trail starts to split off from Marian Lake.

Deputy Reed knew that Sanford was interested in walking around the lake and the user trail was heading in a westerly direction.

It seemed possible to both men that Sanford could have attempted to use this unofficial trail as a way to continue around Maran Lake, so they decided to follow it.

Both Reed and Armenta moved down the thin footpath until they reached the bottom of the slope.

After that, the trail seemed to end and there was no discernable path forward.

Deputy Reed notes that the area between that location and the lake consists of low rolling hills of lava rock topped with sparse vegetation, mostly shrubs.

Still, the men continued forward, yelling Sanford’s name into the ether.

They never received a response and saw no sign of Sanford Rice in the area.

It was 8:15 pm when the duo started hiking back to the trail head.

Shortly after reaching the main trail again, they encountered a member of the Lynn County SAR K-9 team.

A while after that, they encountered the Lynn County SAR Hasty Team, a small fast-moving group of searchers.

Eventually, both Reed and Armenta returned to the trail head at roughly 1:30 am and met with the search coordinator who was set up in the parking lot.

Deputy Reed left the area at 1:41 am For the next 5 days, the region around Marian Lake was searched by ground teams, horse teams, and canine teams from multiple agencies.

Airplanes, helicopters, and drones were used to search from the air.

Initially, it was just the trails around Maran Lake which were searched.

But after these efforts were fruitless, areas further from the lake were added.

Still, searchers found nothing in this region despite extensive searching both on and off trail.

Eventually, authorities switched from rescue to recovery, working under the assumption that they were looking for someone who would almost certainly be unresponsive.

From that point, grid searches were performed in areas which had been covered previously, but no new information or evidence was found.

Details of the search effort were included in Sanford’s case file, but I won’t go too heavily into them.

Suffice to say, searchers did some technical rope work to search down waterfalls.

They brought inflatable boats to Maran Lake to search the shoreline.

They made every attempt they could to find Sanford.

The only thing I would note comes from a K-9 handler searching on July 2nd.

This handler said that her dog had a change of behavior and appeared to catch a scent in the marshy area to the south end of the lake.

Afterwards, the dog was drawn towards the water of the lake, but no alert was given.

This is the only reported hit, if it can be called that, by a canine handler.

After the failure of multiple search efforts, the mission to find Sanford was scaled back.

During the search, investigators worked in the background trying to find any information that might help locate Sanford.

For example, on June 25th, Deputy Reed continued his investigation by interviewing Sanford’s wife, Marilyn Rice, his son, Kevin, and his daughter, Coranne.

While speaking to the family, Reed learned that Sanford was an avid hiker who often went hiking on his own.

They described him as being in excellent shape with no known medical issues.

Kevin said that his dad most likely took along a cliff bar and a bottle of Tropical Mango Power Aid and that he almost certainly had his Canon T3 camera.

In terms of outdoor training, Marilyn said that her husband was in the army for a short period of time, but other than that, he had not had any formal outdoor survival or medical training.

Kevin said that his father had become lost during hunting trips in the past, and each time Sanford was able to find his way out of the wilderness by finding a stream and walking down it until he came to a road, a trail, or an area he was familiar with.

On June 26th, Sanford’s son, Kevin, contacted Deputy Reed to tell him that he had some new information.

He learned that his father had left a painting for the golf pro at the Tokati Golf Club on June 23rd.

This club is located in McKenzie Bridge, Oregon, and Sanford stopped there shortly after leaving his store.

The golf pro was not there at the time to accept the painting, but another employee was.

This information did nothing to advance the investigation, but it did add some detail to the timeline.

On this same day, Lynn County Detective Campbell arrived at the Maran Lake trail head early in the morning.

His assignment was to stay at the trail head and contact any people entering or exiting the location in order to obtain any information regarding the whereabouts of Sanford Rice.

At 11:15 am, Detective Campbell spoke with a man named Talbet who just arrived at the trail head.

Talbot said that he was the neighbor of Sanford Rice and had information that may assist in the search for him.

Talbot said that on June 22nd, he went to visit Sanford at Horton Market around 2 pm The two men spoke briefly and during that time, Sanford told his neighbor that tomorrow he was either going to go golfing or go to Marian Lake to take photographs.

Talbot told authorities that Sanford showed him a handdrawn map of the Maran Lake area and told him the hike was about 8 miles and that he had never been to the area before.

During Talbot’s interview with Detective Campbell, he attempted to draw a recreation of the map that Sanford had shown him.

The map apparently showed the following locations: Highway 20 and Highway 22 to Marian Lake Road in Maran Forks.

It also showed the Maran Lake trail head, the trail to Lake Anne, and then continuing on to Marian Lake.

Just prior to Lake Anne, on the west side of the trail were three or four small curved lines.

Talbet said that he believed the curved lines were a waterfall since he knew that Sanford liked photographing them.

Talbett said that Sanford was very active and in good shape.

He said that Sanford was on a softball team and that he ran at least four miles per week.

Talbet believed that Sanford had most likely fallen and injured himself somewhere in the area.

On July 11th, a deputy Combmes obtained a toothbrush and hair belonging to Sanford in order to have it DNA tested.

Both items were submitted into evidence so that Sanford’s DNA would be on file in case any remains are eventually found.

Sanford’s cell phone, debit card, and credit card were checked one last time to see if there had been any activity since the disappearance began, but no new activity was found on any of those items.

On September 21st, 2016, a man named Benjamin called the Lynn County Sheriff’s Office and spoke with a sergeant there about finding a red jacket wrapped around a stump or tree just above Downing Creek Falls.

He was concerned that it might be related to the disappearance of Sanford Rice in the area.

Benjamin said that he left the jacket at his parents house in Sten, Oregon.

On September 23rd at around 9:00 am, a man named Jeffrey came into the Lynn County Sheriff’s Office to turn in the jacket that Benjamin had called about a couple days prior.

Jeffrey said that he had found the jacket while hiking with Benjamin, who was his son.

Jeffrey said that they were in the area of Marian Lake, but specifically they were near Downing Creek Falls.

This waterfall is located off of Highway 22, just south of the road leading to the Maran Lake trail head.

Jeffrey handed the jacket to the sergeant and told him that it had Cliff Bar wrappers inside one of the pockets.

He also gave the sergeant his son’s phone number in case he needed to contact him.

The jacket and rappers were then seized and put into evidence.

Later on, a lieutenant tried calling Benjamin to get his personal information and more details about where he found the jacket, but he was unable to get a hold of him.

The lieutenant left a voicemail, but still his call was never returned.

The lieutenant tried calling again once more at a later date, but Benjamin never answered his phone.

Eventually, Lynn County gave up trying to get more information on this potential evidence.

Photographs of the jacket and rappers were taken and then sent off to Sanford’s son, Kevin, to see if he could identify them and whether or not they belong to his father.

Within an hour, Kevin replied that the items did not belong to his father.

This was the last possible lead in this case and it brings us up to the present day where Sanford Rice is still missing and there have been no new updates in quite some time.

Given all this information, I thought Sanford’s case would be a perfect candidate for going on location.

Maybe understanding the trail and the terrain in this area would better help us to understand how we could have gotten lost in the first place.

So, in the summer of 2025, I went out to Oregon, drove into the mountains, and then onto Maran Forks.

The gravel road leading out to the trail head is one of the nicer forest roads I’ve been on.

That being said, there were still a lot of potholes, and it’s a fairly slow drive, maybe 20 minutes.

The trail head parking area was completely full this time of year.

After parking down the road a bit, I geared up and hopped on the trail heading to Maran Lake.

>> >> All right.

So, it’s a good morning.

Sun’s going to be up real high today and make it real hot.

But I’m on the Maran Lake Trail following in the footsteps of Sanford Rice.

He came out here because uh apparently he read it was a nice place to visit.

and a newspaper, I believe.

So, he decided to make a day hike of it.

He didn’t bring much.

I think just a power aid and a cliff bar.

So, he was traveling pretty light.

No intention to stay overnight that we know of.

He was a elderly guy, no medical conditions.

And uh this probably shouldn’t have been any issue for him.

Guess he was an avid hiker.

So it’s kind of strange really.

This is a easily accessible trail and it’s really popular.

It’s not one you’d really expect people to get lost on.

So guess we’ll try to figure that out.

>> >> This trail is relatively easy if you’re just planning to visit Marian Lake and head back.

The only significant elevation gain is at the beginning where the trail kicks off with about 500 vertical feet of switchbacks.

That’s probably the most strenuous section of the trail, which isn’t saying very much.

The ease of this hike and also the beauty of the area draws in many people.

When Sanford disappeared, this area was accessed by a self-permit at the trail head.

Currently, they only allow in a certain number of people every day.

Those permits have to be purchased online on the Forest Services website.

So, if you plan to do this hike, make sure you come prepared with that.

There’s no reception at the trail head and you’ll need to drive 30 minutes out of your way to find a single bar.

Trust me, I found this out the hard way.

This hike was the first time in many years I encountered a ranger who actually checked to make sure that I was permitted to be in this area.

Well, so far this uh trail has been relatively easy.

It is up at a bit of an incline, but I’m getting pretty close to the lake itself.

Um, I think the plan today is actually going to be to uh once we get to the lake, follow along the uh Mento Pass Trail because it seems like that’s the route that Sanford took.

Um, there was a group of campers in this case that saw him pass them.

He asked if the trail goes around the lake.

They told him it didn’t.

And yet he continued on down the trail along the [snorts] Mento Pass.

I think it’s called the Mento Pass Trail or Mento Trail, whatever.

He went along that trail.

And uh I I believe the rangers also found some shoe prints that might have indicated he went down that way.

And so it seems like he went that direction either not believing that the trail, you know, didn’t go around the lake or maybe he just wanted to go explore down there.

Kind of unclear.

Sounds like he thought the trail went around the lake, but it doesn’t.

So he went down the the Mento Trail and vanished.

And uh it seemed like there was some indications he used some sort of spur trail or uh game trail.

hard hard to really know.

Uh they went looking in that direction.

They couldn’t find him.

So, he just kind of up and vanished on this rather simple trail.

It’s not not the most difficult trail I’ve been on by far.

Anyway, so I’m going to keep moving along the trail until it leads into the Mento and just see if anything makes sense about how someone could get off trail.

I don’t know if it was his intention to make his own way around the lake or what.

Apparently, there was some inclement weather on that day.

It’s a little unclear what they meant by that.

Kind of sounded just like it was rain.

And uh Sanford wasn’t prepared for that.

He wasn’t prepared for overnight.

He just had shorts and a shirt.

It was June, so kind of understandable.

He only carried a little cinch pack, so he didn’t have much with him.

But still, this trail is like 5 miles out and back, depending on how you do it and how far you go.

A little odd that he was never found.

>> >> Huh? Huh? >> >> Once you hit the top of the switchbacks, you’ve made it to the first major landmark on this hike, Lake Anne.

You can pretty much pat yourself on the back at this point because it’s quite easy from here on out.

This is a much smaller lake than Marian and is basically just some scenery you pass as you continue on.

All right.

Well, the sun’s fully out.

The fish are jumping in Lake Anne, which is the first lake that we stopped at on the uh road to Marian Lake.

Obviously, Sanford would have passed this one and uh moved along.

Um I’ve seen nothing strange so far that would explain how someone could get lost here.

Uh yeah, nothing else.

Nice, easy trail.

Fish are jumping out of the lake.

Everything seems calm here.

Uh kind of an odd thing.

We know that he did like to photograph waterfalls.

So, I’m keeping my eye out for waterfalls in this area to see um if there’s any uh that he might have pulled off trail to try and get to in order to take a photograph.

Because my working theory right now is that uh whatever happened to him, he must not have lived very long because they had searchers out here the next day uh after he was he was reported missing the next day and then they had searchers out here looking for him and no one heard cries for help or anything like that.

And so unless he got really far off the trail to the point where no one could hear him shouting if he got injured, then it leads me to believe that maybe he was uh already passed away by that point.

And uh his age, it could be something as simple as a heart attack.

But it’s hard to know.

But uh in terms of how did he get off trail, my two working theories are that he thought he saw a waterfall that he’d like to go photograph.

So he left the trail to try and bushwack his way over to it.

Or two, he really wanted to go all the way around Maran Lake and thought he saw a trail that would do that or didn’t trust the other people in the area when they told him there was no trail.

Uh so maybe he tried to make his own way.

Both scenarios kind of rely on this idea that maybe he tried to make his own way.

And we know that in the past when he had gone hunting, he had gotten lost before.

Uh so I don’t know if you would say this guy was prone to getting lost, but let’s just say that it had happened before.

Uh but every time that it did happen, he always uh found a stream water and followed it down to safety.

And you could probably do the same in this situation, but that didn’t happen.

So again, leads me to believe that maybe he didn’t live very long or Yeah, I think that’s where I’m at with it right now.

>> [snorts] >> But, uh, let’s keep moving because we still got some some trail miles to go to get to the place he was last seen.

>> >> Shortly after leaving Lake Anne, the trail splits.

This is part of what I would call the Marian loop.

If you follow this loop, you’ll go right up to the lake, get the view, and then turn around and connect back up with the main trail.

It’s the shortest hike you could do at around 5 miles.

I will be going quite a bit further, however, and we know that Sanford did as well.

The interesting part is that if you ignore the loop and just start moving around the lake, you’re moving away from the nearby waterfalls.

So, what was Sanford’s intent when he went this way? Okay, so I’ve just come up on Marian Lake up ahead.

Um, I’m going to start following the trail until it leads into the Mento Pass Trail and then kind of see what we’re looking at.

Probably won’t do too much narrative or exposition as we walk through there.

It seems like this place is quite full up with campers right now.

Popular lake to camp at.

And uh I don’t want to be bothering anyone as I waltz through with my camera staring me in the face.

So we’re going to walk through there, see what it looks like.

Maybe there’ll be a lot of people.

I don’t even know what it looks like.

So we’ll see.

And then uh I’m going to keep my eyes out for anything that uh seems unusual cuz it seems to me that Sanford, whatever happened to him, happened along the Mento Pass Trail right along the lake there.

And just looking at my GPS, I can tell that that uh trail runs right along a a pretty steep ridge.

So, I’m kind of curious to take a look at that.

As I was walking up here, I did run into another group of hikers who told me about a waterfall I should go take a look at.

Um kind of off of a spur trail that leads from the main Maran Lake trail here.

So, I might go take a look at that since we know Sanford like to photograph waterfalls.

And uh I’ve always said in all my videos about missing photographers that they will tend to sometimes put themselves in danger to get a good shot.

So maybe that happened here.

Hard to say.

Anyway, let’s move on a bit.

>> >> as you continue moving east along Marian lake.

The Maran Lake Trail essentially turns into the Mento Pass Trail.

You follow some switchbacks down, maybe a 100 ft or so, and before long, you encounter a nice little beach with a great view of the lake.

This is the area where the large group were camped when they saw Sanford pass through this region.

Right behind this clearing is a bridge that crosses a small creek.

So, this is where Sanford was last seen, and it appears that he never passed back through this way.

Obviously, I can’t really pretend that we know anything for certain because for all we know, Sanford passed back through here after dark when the campers weren’t really paying attention.

You just never know.

But going off the information we have, it appears Sanford never came back this way.

Wherever his remains are today, they are likely somewhere beyond this point.

So, it appears I’m in the camping spot of the campers that last saw Sanford.

Um, yeah, just kind of a cleared out space along the trail with the bridge crossing a a small creek.

So, he made it quite far and then kept going.

And if he planned on going around the lake, he planned to go a long distance.

I feel like that’d be more than 8 miles.

>> >> So, the uh bridge is behind me and we know this was the place where Sanford was last seen.

So, and then it looked to the sheriff’s like shortly after this bridge that he might have gone off trail somewhere, but they lost his tracks or something happened.

Going to take a look at that.

See if we can see anything that makes sense cuz uh I mean, we’re right at this.

Whatever happened, it seems like it happened right around here.

Hey.

Hey.

Hey.

>> >> All right.

So far, absolutely nothing that I’ve seen that would kind of indicate to me what’s going on here.

It was steep a little while, but then you just kind of head down and levels out.

seen a couple of little spur trails that might be what the uh sheriffs were describing when they said they saw footprints.

Hard to say.

Look like they go toward the lake.

Uh once you get your first glimpse of the lake, kind of just disappears and you don’t see it again.

I haven’t seen it for a while now.

I mean, I know it’s off to my right, but haven’t uh haven’t had a chance to look at it much.

Just still kind of deep in the woods feeling here.

And uh yeah, level terrain pretty much right now.

>> [snorts] >> I could see why he might have thought this went around, but uh instead it just kind of meets up with other trails that go further into the mountains, I believe.

So, just one thing you should uh always bring a map.

You know, I have a GPS, so I know these things.

Seems like Sanford just uh mostly knew that this was going to be a a fun place to hike because it newspaper told him that.

Witness said he had a handdrawn map.

Uh with some waterfalls marked on it.

So hard to say what he was thinking or how much he knew about the trails in this area.

All right.

So, I’ve been going down this way a little while and uh one thing I quickly realized is that it is not what I expected it to be.

Um, just glancing at the map, I actually thought that off to my left here was going to be like a steep drop off.

That might explain what happened to him.

Like, you know, he fell or something, went off trail to go take a glance at a waterfall.

But I realized that [snorts] off to my left here is actually steep upward.

It’s part of this kind of basin area.

It’s a steep ridge.

So, he’s not falling upward.

So, now it’s making a lot more sense why the sheriff was terribly confused about this because I don’t know where he could have gone that would have killed him.

Yeah.

Unless he tried to go out towards the lake and then fell in one of any myriad of places.

And sure, you can walk through the woods here and probably get to the lake and there’s probably steep drop off there.

But I mean, good luck finding where he would have done that.

But yeah, this is actually the opposite of what I expected to find here.

And uh I’m at a bit of a loss as to what could have happened cuz I was thinking some sort of fall.

And now I I got to think it must have been some it could still been a fall if he would have went towards the edge of the lake.

Could also have been a heart attack.

But I don’t know where he would have done that or why.

I don’t know if he was much of a guy who would leave the trail, but now I I can see why the police were dumbfounded by this cuz Yeah, I just there’s I I got nowhere else to look because this trail just goes on and then it keeps meeting up with other trails going through the mountains or whatever and And it kind of gets to a point where it’s like, would he have gone this far? You know, you’re no longer around the lake.

Does this make sense? Did he pull off somewhere and try to get to the lake on his own? If he went off trail, did he have a heart attack? I just I don’t know that there’s much more I can actually look around here and get a sense of anything that would that would actually help because at this point I’ve seen most of the terrain I came to see and it’s not what I expected it to be.

All right.

So, I looked at the GPS again, and the ridge walls on the side of this part of the Mento Pass Trail are steep.

Super steep.

He’s not going up there.

And nor would you want to.

I mean, if he did, I mean, he’d probably have a heart attack and die, but I don’t think he would attempt it.

He wasn’t a stupid guy.

He didn’t have mental illness.

He didn’t have any known medical conditions.

He didn’t seem like he would harm himself.

Nobody in his life said he would.

Everyone seemed to say he was a happy guy.

No problems.

The only option is that he There’s two options, I suppose.

He either kept going further down the trail until it splits off into two different trails and then just kept going.

But and that is possible because I do recall in the report he told a witness that he was expecting an eight mile hike.

Now, right now, I’m at about by the time I get back, I’ll be at about six and a half miles.

So, he could have gone further down the trail.

But he didn’t have a map.

He just had his handdrawn map.

And maybe he didn’t quite understand the length of the trail.

But, well, actually, you know, I take some of this back because once I if I stop at one of the waterfalls where he likely stopped to take photographs, that is going to add then we might be getting up towards eight.

So it might actually make sense.

But so he either went down one of those trails, kept just kept going, in which case we have no idea where or how far he went.

Uh because we know he didn’t come back this way.

We know he didn’t recross the bridge.

At least that’s my recollection from reading the reports.

The other option is that he tried to go towards the lake and fell [snorts] and died.

But looking at the GPS from this location, it doesn’t look like it’s that steep.

Um, if you go out to the lake, it’s a little steep, but I don’t know if it’s like kill you steep.

So, um, again, I’m a little bit baffled in terms of like what the options are here.

And, uh, as a side note, strangely, this trail is covered in frogs.

I’ve probably seen a thousand frogs.

the the trail is just covered with them.

The the ground, little tiny brown frogs.

I thought they were insects at first, but they’re just hundreds of little brown frogs just covering the floor here.

It’s crazy.

Anyway, I’m going to keep pondering this one and uh get back with you if I have any uh new ideas about anything.

It’s difficult to understand how Sanford could disappear so completely in this area.

Still, there are a lot of things we can’t be sure about.

We can’t be sure if Sanford attempted to go around the lake.

We can’t be sure that it was really his shoe print that authorities found when they first searched for him.

We just know that he passed that large group camping near the lake shore, and he presumably never came back.

While he was a bit hemmed in by the terrain, there is still a lot of ground that would have to be carefully searched to be sure that Sanford wasn’t around here somewhere.

So, I just made my way down towards the lake for a minute and uh wasn’t a steep hike or anything.

Pretty flat the whole way.

So, while going up the trail, if Sanford took a left, he’s faced with an incredibly steep ridge that I don’t think he could climb up and I don’t think he’d want to climb up.

He turns to the right.

He goes out towards the lake and it’s not toward too bad.

Anyway, sorry I got interrupted by a large group of hikers coming through the area.

But as I was saying in this area, if he was continuing to head uh along the trail along the Mento Pass trail, on his left would be a steep ridge and on the right it would consistently be flat out towards the lake.

And then if you continue to follow it very quickly, you are past the lake.

And once you start looking off to your right and you no longer see that kind of blue through the trees, you know you’re past the lake.

So why would he keep going? That’s what makes this one actually kind of strange in many ways.

You know, he couldn’t or he wouldn’t go left.

He wouldn’t go up the ridge.

It wouldn’t make sense.

He would possibly go right towards the lake, but it’s not dangerous.

And if he kept on going forward, at what point would he notice he was no longer near the lake or going around it and turned back? Huh.

I don’t know.

It’s an odd one.

One thing I was also surprised by is that later on a jacket was found, red jacket by a waterfall and there was a cliff bar wrapper inside.

Now that’s kind of a crazy coincidence.

One, because we know Sanford liked to photograph waterfalls, so for his jacket to be found near one, that’s interesting.

What’s also interesting is that there was a Cliff Bar wrapper.

Now, a lot of people probably eat Cliff Bars, but we know Sanford had one on him.

So, when his stuff is eventually found, they would presumably be a Cliff Bar wrapper and a empty Power Aid bottle.

The problem is when they had Sanford’s family try to identify that.

I think they had his brother actually.

He said it didn’t belong to Sanford.

Made me wonder if he was just wrong.

I mean, how can he know for sure what his brother had in terms of clothing? I got multiple brothers.

I could not tell you for sure what clothing they have or don’t have.

or what jackets they use or don’t use.

So, to me, despite the fact that the brother, and I believe it was the brother, but I’ll have to double check that, besides the fact that a family member said that that jacket didn’t belong to him, I’m kind of of the opinion that maybe it did.

I mean, it’s just too much of a coincidence to overlook being found at a waterfall with a cliff bar wrapper in it.

The problem is, I don’t need to read the report again.

I don’t know if they were very specific about where or what waterfall it was found at.

And if I recall correctly, the sheriff tried many times to get a hold of the person who found it and turned it over to police.

And I don’t think they were able to do so.

So, in terms of like coordinates and stuff, I don’t think we have that, which is really frustrating cuz to me that would be really good evidence in this case in a sense.

And I think the sheriff just kind of dropped it because the brother family member [snorts] said that that stuff didn’t belong to Sanford.

And again, I’d say I don’t think we can 100% say that that’s true, but I don’t know.

I think that’s really the best lead in the case right now, depending on where that waterfall is.

I mean, if it’s like one of the waterfalls that’s kind of [snorts] right up the main Maran Lake trail and maybe it doesn’t mean much, but it really depends on the location where that stuff was found.

And uh maybe when I get back from this hike, I can contact the Lynn County Sheriff and ask them if they have any more information on where it was found.

cuz uh for me without knowing with any certainty what waterfall it was at, I’m not going to just start hiking out to every drop of water in the area wondering if it’s the correct one.

I’d like to know.

So hopefully by the time I do this video, we’ll have some answers in that department because right now I’m at a bit of a loss and the only way currently that I can see him getting lost and dying like he must have is if he just continued on up the trail way longer and farther than he ever should have.

In which case he’s his remains are up in the mountains somewhere cuz I just don’t know how you could get lost here.

It just doesn’t make sense.

I mean, you’re you’re trapped between a ridge and a lake.

And sure, there’s some steep areas like the one I’m on right now.

It’s a little bit steep, but if I fell right now, I’m not going to roll to the bottom.

I’m going to roll to the nearest log and hit my back.

So, I got to be honest, this one uh is a little bit more mysterious than I had thought it was before I began this hike.

Just because I’m rather confused what this man did cuz there’s no indications of mental illness or anything like that.

A seemingly healthy though elderly man of sound mind just vanished here.

And we’re not exactly sure why >> >> One of the unfortunate things about this case that worth mentioning, um, I think Lynn County, kind of a small sheriff’s office.

Um, though they did a pretty good report on this case.

Uh, still one of the things that was missing that I would have liked to seen more of is maps of the areas that they did search.

I know that they did go on ahead and search up the trail quite a ways to see if Sanford had just gone way past uh, Marian Lake.

Uh, but I don’t know the exact areas that they went and which areas they actually looked.

They didn’t include any maps that I can recall off the top of my head that would really indicate where they’d been.

And that’s always helpful because I’d like to know how far up the trail they went, how many miles, cuz at a certain point you got to think that Sanford would turn back.

uh you know once he’s realized that he’s gone 5 miles, 6 miles cuz then you got that same journey back and before you know it you got a 10 m 12 mile total trip and uh for myself right now I’m kind of gauging that it’s going to be somewhere in the realm of 7 to eight.

So maybe Sanford did have the right of it if you do all the little stops along the way terms of pulling off to kind of see waterfalls and whatnot.

Uh but we’ll see when this is all over.

But um yeah, that’s one of the more puzzling things uh about the search and dogs tracking.

Why didn’t they track him? How far up the trail did the searchers go? You know, I I’m sure that on some level his age came into it in terms of how far out they were going to go.

Uh often times it’s assumed that the elderly won’t go very far.

And uh in my experience, I’ve always found that to be kind of a bad mistake to make.

I’ve seen quite a few cases where the elderly have gone a lot further than people would normally expect.

Um, and that’s actually especially been true, I think, for Alzheimer’s patients and and such.

Uh, you know, you get unfortunately that’s the kind of thing that happens.

uh people with dementia and stuff, they will kind of walk off and uh sometimes people think they can’t get very far cuz they are elderly and they have dementia and then they wind up going quite far.

Not always, but um you know there’s outliers in everything and it’s always important to consider that especially when you’re having a ground search that’s not working out as you would normally have thought it would.

And that’s true in this case.

You know, you would think that this ground search would have been successful.

We knew where Sanford was going for the most part.

He’s elderly, uh, in good health, of sound mind.

This search on paper should have been a success.

So, you have to think of why it wasn’t.

Um, something about this case makes it an outlier and it might be that he could have gone further out than anyone expected.

It’s hard to know for sure.

Once I reached the Maran Loop again, I decided a detour was in order.

Sanford expected to do an 8-mile hike when he was here, and I wanted to see if I could discover more about his intended route if I matched that.

So, I endeavored to find the hidden spur trail that splits off from the loop and heads west to a couple of waterfalls.

Doing this would add some mileage to the hike, and I would contend it is very likely that Sanford would have wanted to stop and see these waterfalls either on his way up or down the trail.

Finding this spur trail would be a bit difficult without a GPS.

I encountered one group of hikers on this route that intended to go to the waterfalls, but told me they were unable to find the trail.

With a GPS, finding the entrance is rather easy, but that’s about it.

The trail itself is confusing and the GPS is not helpful once you actually begin walking the spur trail.

Certain parts of this trail are so steep that it really begins to be less about hiking and more about climbing.

I would be impressed if a man Sanford’s age could handle this with ease.

Still, the payoff at the end is a good one.

So, I finally made it to the waterfall.

fall that’s kind of halfway up the Maran Lakes Trail.

It’s a beautiful site, but if any of the other waterfalls in the area are similar in terms of the trail leading to them, can start to kind of understand how he might have gotten lost cuz the trail to get here was steep, hard to see, covered in logs in some areas, and uh just generally kind of dangerous.

Uh and if you don’t have a GPS, it would be really difficult to get here.

I had a hard time even with the GPS cuz it wasn’t exact.

Uh but it’s worth it.

Beautiful waterfall.

as I was getting closer to the trail head and the end of the hike, I passed the 8 mile mark.

So, I would have to think that whatever Sanford was doing, he was in for a longer hike than 8 miles.

In general, this is an odd hike to disappear on.

It’s a busy trail with a lot of people.

It’s a well-marked trail in the main areas where it seems Sanford became lost.

We understand something about Sanford’s intent, which was to photograph waterfalls, but he wouldn’t have to do 8 miles of hiking to complete that mission.

Given that Sanford even made it onto the Mento Pass Trail, I have to think that we don’t fully understand what his intentions were.

Sure, he may have wanted to go around the lake, but how did he plan to do that? And how would that fit into his anticipated 8-mile hike? I always try to get in the head of the person who went missing in order to try and understand their decisions, but I can’t make much sense of whatever Sanford was trying to do.

Did he think the smaller loop, which I’ve been calling the Maran loop, actually went around the whole lake? Did he think the campers were lying to him about the direction of the Mento Pass trail? How did he get himself so lost? All questions without clear answers.

So, what’s happening here with this case? Obviously, we can’t be certain of anything, but let’s start at the beginning.

Sanford’s interest in Marian Lake was first sparked by reading a news article.

Apparently, that article in the Eugene Register Guard specifically mentioned unmarked trails that led to Marian and Gatch Falls as well as other locations.

I can’t verify this because I can’t find that article anymore, not even on the way back machine.

Still, let’s just assume that’s true for a moment.

Marian and Gach Falls are at the same location you saw me go in this video when I stopped by the waterfall on the way back to the trail head.

That trail is unmarked and it can be confusing.

A lot of people blow right past it without realizing it’s even there.

The problem is it’s in a completely different area than where Sanford disappeared.

So, if Sanford was trying to go there when he got lost, then he was way off.

Still, what concerns me is that Sanford might have got it in his mind that an unmarked trail would lead him to a waterfall, something that he really enjoyed photographing.

Next, we know that Sanford had a handdrawn map that he was apparently following in order to get to where he was going.

I don’t know how he made it or what he was using for reference material.

I don’t even know if he used the map in the end, but it sounds like the map was for the most part accurate.

And we are going based on his neighbors memory of the map, so who knows? But the neighbor said that Sanford marked the falls on the west side of the trail right around the Lake Anne area.

And that sounds like a pretty accurate description.

So presumably Sanford had a reasonable idea of how to get to these waterfalls.

Part of me wonders if Sanford did make it to those falls on the way in and then kept going towards Marian Lake afterwards.

When he encountered the campers near the wooden bridge, he didn’t ask them for directions to any waterfalls in the area.

He just asked them if the trail continued on around the lake.

The fact that he would even ask that seems to indicate that he did not look at a full map of this area before leaving.

If he did, he would know right away that there is no trail around the lake.

The ridges on the south side are just too steep.

I think Sanford’s map was mainly designed to just lead him to where Gatch and Marian Falls were located.

His neighbor never described any drawings of the trail going past the lake.

So, I’m guessing Sanford decided to go a bit further than he originally intended.

Everything seems to point to that.

His drawn map didn’t go far beyond the waterfalls, and as far as I know, there are no other notable waterfalls on the trail going past Marian Lake.

So, Sanford asks about the path around the Mento Pass Trail.

He’s told that it doesn’t go around the lake.

He then decides to continue down it anyway.

It’s hard to know what he was thinking here.

Maybe he didn’t trust what the campers were telling him.

Or maybe he thought he could just bushwack his way around the lake.

I don’t know.

But if Sanford was expecting to do an 8-mile hike, then by even attempting to go around the lake, he had just made his hike much longer.

We have shoe prints turning onto a user trail near the edge of Maran Lake.

And we had what may have been a canine hit on a scent in the marshy area nearby.

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