Latest / Scary Horror Stories / She Walked Toward the Sound - Found 640 Feet Below
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: The pasta was still dry in the pot. Water inside,
- 0:07Speaker 1: bouillon cubes sitting whole and undissolved. The left burner cold.
- 0:12Speaker 1: Brenda Johnson had walked away from her dinner before it
- 0:14Speaker 1: came to a boil. She left her boots inside the tent.
- 0:18Speaker 1: She left her sleeping bag unrolled. A paperback opened to
- 0:22Speaker 1: page 41, a ziplock of ibuprofen beside her pillow. She
- 0:26Speaker 1: left everything that mattered, and she did not come back
- 0:29Speaker 1: that night. She did not come back for approximately 41 hours.
- 0:33Speaker 1: What happened between that abandoned pot and the moment a
- 0:35Speaker 1: search-and-rescue helicopter spotted a figure at the bottom of Coldwater Draw?
- 0:41Speaker 1: 640 feet below the canyon rim is a story about
- 0:43Speaker 1: a woman who did exactly what you are supposed to
- 0:45Speaker 1: do in the backcountry, every single step of the way,
- 0:49Speaker 1: until one evening in the Weyburn National Forest, when the
- 0:52Speaker 1: wilderness stopped being the only thing she had to survive.
- 0:55Speaker 1: Brenda Johnson was 38 years old when she drove into
- 0:58Speaker 1: the Holland's Pass trailhead. in early July of 2019. She
- 1:02Speaker 1: worked for the Salton Springs Parks Department, a job that
- 1:06Speaker 1: put her outdoors most of her working life. Her coworkers
- 1:09Speaker 1: described her morning and evening routines as structured to the
- 1:11Speaker 1: point of precision. They used that exact word, precision. Part
- 1:15Speaker 1: of that structure came from Norris, her diabetic cat, who
- 1:20Speaker 1: had needed twice-daily insulin injections since 2015. Before she left
- 1:25Speaker 1: for any trip, Brenda arranged coverage for Norris. With the
- 1:29Speaker 1: same care, she planned her gear lists. For the Holland's
- 1:32Speaker 1: Pass trip, she called her neighbor Bob Lund from the
- 1:35Speaker 1: Trailhead parking lot on July 11th. Bob was a retired
- 1:39Speaker 1: school teacher who lived three houses down. He confirmed the arrangement.
- 1:43Speaker 1: Insulin at six in the evening. Every night. No exceptions.
- 1:48Speaker 1: The call dropped as signal faded. That was the last
- 1:50Speaker 1: contact anyone had with Brenda Johnson from a functioning phone.
- 1:54Speaker 1: She had a permit. She had a summit plan. An
- 1:56Speaker 1: attempt on Holland's Peak for the morning of July 14th.
- 2:00Speaker 1: She had food for five days, packed into a large
- 2:03Speaker 1: frame pack, leaned against a pine tree outside her tent,
- 2:06Speaker 1: and a 20-liter daypack staged inside for the summit push.
- 2:10Speaker 1: Her gear was correct. Her campsite, three-quarters of a mile
- 2:14Speaker 1: up the Saddleback Connector Trail, was correctly set up. Don't
- 2:18Speaker 1: tent with the rainfly taut. Guylins staked. poles properly tensioned.
- 2:23Speaker 1: She had even rigged a trekking pole vertically through the
- 2:25Speaker 1: fly zipper, a ventilation trick that experienced backcountry campers recognize
- 2:30Speaker 1: immediately as the mark of someone who has done this before.
- 2:33Speaker 1: Her sister Karen Foss would later identify the green neoprene
- 2:36Speaker 1: sleeve on the titanium pot handle. Brenda had bought it
- 2:40Speaker 1: at a gear swap in 2017. Karen knew it on sight.
- 2:44Speaker 1: The way you know your sibling's handwriting. Something small and
- 2:48Speaker 1: particular that belongs only to one person. Karen drove up
- 2:52Speaker 1: from Salton Springs the moment she heard. She waited at
- 2:55Speaker 1: the trailhead while the search teams moved into the forest.
- 2:59Speaker 1: She identified the pot. She talked about Norris. About the precision.
- 3:03Speaker 1: About the ritual. How Brenda's evening cook time was as
- 3:06Speaker 1: reliable as a clock. The pot that evening had water
- 3:09Speaker 1: in it, and uncooked pasta, and two whole bullion cubes.
- 3:13Speaker 1: Whatever Brenda heard in the trees above her camp, she
- 3:16Speaker 1: heard it before she had a chance to eat dinner.
- 3:19Speaker 1: She put down her spoon, or never picked it up.
- 3:22Speaker 1: and climbed toward the sound to see what was there.
- 3:24Speaker 1: That single decision, in the last light of July 13th,
- 3:28Speaker 1: is where every question in this case begins. She climbed
- 3:30Speaker 1: toward the sound barefoot, or close to it. Her boot
- 3:34Speaker 1: liners were still inside the tent, her full boots absent
- 3:37Speaker 1: from the scene. That detail would matter later. Everything about
- 3:42Speaker 1: what she left behind would matter. Search and rescue coordinator
- 3:45Speaker 1: Frank Collins arrived at the Hollins Pass trailhead at two
- 3:48Speaker 1: in the afternoon on July 14th with a team of eight,
- 3:51Speaker 1: including two dog handlers. He had 11 years in mountain
- 3:55Speaker 1: search work and 43 closed cases in Marble County. He
- 3:58Speaker 1: had seen abandoned camps before, the kind where someone rolled
- 4:02Speaker 1: an ankle and walked out embarrassed or got spooked by
- 4:05Speaker 1: weather and bailed early. He had a practiced eye for
- 4:08Speaker 1: what normal fear looks like when it leaves a campsite.
- 4:11Speaker 1: This was not that. The tent fly was still taut.
- 4:15Speaker 1: The guileans were still staked. The lodge frame pack, loaded
- 4:18Speaker 1: with three additional days of food, Sat leaned against a
- 4:21Speaker 1: pine as if Brenda had set it down for a
- 4:24Speaker 1: moment and would be back to retrieve it. The day
- 4:26Speaker 1: pack she had staged for her summit attempt was inside
- 4:28Speaker 1: the tent, next to a novel with the corner folded
- 4:32Speaker 1: down at page 41, a ziplock of ibuprofen and blister patches,
- 4:36Speaker 1: and a headlamp loaded with fresh batteries. Her sleeping bag
- 4:40Speaker 1: was unrolled and slept in. The boot liners were inside,
- 4:44Speaker 1: still holding the shape of her feet. The two-burner stove
- 4:47Speaker 1: sat cold on its fuel canister. One pot. Water. Dry pasta.
- 4:53Speaker 1: Two whole bouillon cubes. Unmelted. Still sitting at the bottom.
- 4:58Speaker 1: She had not eaten. She had not even started the
- 5:00Speaker 1: water boiling. Collins' dog teams picked up scent moving northeast
- 5:05Speaker 1: from the campsite. The trail went up, toward Shatterbench, a
- 5:08Speaker 1: broken shelf of exposed rock sitting above the treeline. The
- 5:12Speaker 1: handlers followed the scent as far as the talus margin,
- 5:15Speaker 1: where the trail transitioned from earth to broken stone. At Talus,
- 5:19Speaker 1: scent diffuses. The dogs slowed. Then they stopped. The trail
- 5:23Speaker 1: died at the edge of the rocks. But that is
- 5:25Speaker 1: not the image that stopped the search team cold. That
- 5:28Speaker 1: came the next morning. Pete Morrow had 18 years of
- 5:32Speaker 1: backcountry tracking experience. He was not the kind of person
- 5:36Speaker 1: who got excited about a single print. He had learned
- 5:39Speaker 1: early that a single print, unconfirmed, uncorroborated, can send a
- 5:44Speaker 1: team in the wrong direction for hours. He was careful. Methodical.
- 5:49Speaker 1: The kind of tracker who would rather slow down and
- 5:52Speaker 1: be right than move fast and waste time. He found
- 5:55Speaker 1: the print at first light on July 15th, on the
- 5:58Speaker 1: eastern edge of Shatter Bench, in a narrow pocket of
- 6:01Speaker 1: wind-deposited silt caught between two rocks. The silt was smooth
- 6:06Speaker 1: everywhere else. In that one pocket, a single impression. Women's boot,
- 6:10Speaker 1: size 7, deep lug sole, pointing west, back toward the campsite.
- 6:15Speaker 1: The dogs had lost the trail on the western edge
- 6:17Speaker 1: of Shatterbench. This print was a quarter mile further east,
- 6:21Speaker 1: past where the scent ended, past the talus margin, in
- 6:24Speaker 1: the direction Brenda would have been running. And it was
- 6:27Speaker 1: pointing in the direction she would have been running from.
- 6:29Speaker 1: There is something disorienting about that single fact. A footprint,
- 6:34Speaker 1: pointing the wrong way. Or rather, pointing back toward whatever
- 6:37Speaker 1: she was fleeing. Moro stared at it long enough to
- 6:40Speaker 1: be certain. One print. Correct shoe size for Brenda. Oriented west.
- 6:46Speaker 1: No companion prints in the surrounding silt. No other surface
- 6:49Speaker 1: in the area soft enough to hold an impression. She
- 6:52Speaker 1: had been there. She had been moving. And then the
- 6:55Speaker 1: rock started again, and the surface gave nothing more. That
- 6:59Speaker 1: same morning, the helicopter request went through to the aviation
- 7:02Speaker 1: unit in Dolores. The terrain below Shatter Bench dropped sharply.
- 7:06Speaker 1: Coldwater Draw runs 640 feet below the canyon rim, a
- 7:11Speaker 1: narrow slot with a seasonal creek running through it. The
- 7:14Speaker 1: kind of place a person does not fall into by
- 7:16Speaker 1: accident and walk away from. The kind of place that,
- 7:20Speaker 1: if you are running in failing light and you do
- 7:22Speaker 1: not know the edges there, arrives before you can stop.
- 7:26Speaker 1: The helicopter found her on the morning of July 15th.
- 7:29Speaker 1: She was in the creek bed. She had a fractured
- 7:31Speaker 1: right fibula, two broken ribs, severe soft tissue damage to
- 7:35Speaker 1: her left shoulder. She was drinking from the creek through
- 7:37Speaker 1: her water filter, the filter she had carried out of
- 7:40Speaker 1: camp along with her daypack. and rain jacket, the items
- 7:43Speaker 1: that told SAR personnel. She had not been taken by surprise,
- 7:47Speaker 1: sitting still. She had grabbed what she needed to move.
- 7:51Speaker 1: She had run deliberately, and she had survived deliberately. She
- 7:54Speaker 1: had been in the canyon for approximately 41 hours, lows
- 7:59Speaker 1: in the low 40s Fahrenheit, both nights. She had eaten
- 8:02Speaker 1: two of her four energy bars and rationed the rest.
- 8:06Speaker 1: She had stayed close to the water source. She had
- 8:08Speaker 1: not tried to climb out. The fibula made that impossible
- 8:12Speaker 1: but she had stayed alive, methodically, the way a Parks
- 8:15Speaker 1: Department employee who understands terrain and exposure stays alive. When
- 8:20Speaker 1: she gave her first coherent account at Marble Regional Hospital
- 8:23Speaker 1: on the afternoon of July 15th, the team heard about
- 8:26Speaker 1: the sound before they heard about the man. The sound
- 8:29Speaker 1: came first, moving parallel to the trail through the trees
- 8:32Speaker 1: above her camp, roughly 50 feet off the path, not
- 8:36Speaker 1: crashing through brush. The way a bear moves, not the
- 8:39Speaker 1: quick dart of a deer startled and gone. Brenda described
- 8:42Speaker 1: it later as deliberate, rhythmic, slow enough to be controlled,
- 8:47Speaker 1: too quiet for a hiker who did not know someone
- 8:49Speaker 1: was listening. She stopped walking. The sound stopped. She took
- 8:53Speaker 1: a step back toward the camp. The sound moved toward her.
- 8:56Speaker 1: That correlation, stop, stop, retreat, advance, is what separated the
- 9:02Speaker 1: encounter from coincidence in Brenda's account. and later in the
- 9:05Speaker 1: assessment of the investigators who reviewed it. A random hiker
- 9:08Speaker 1: passing through trees at 50 feet does not mirror your movements.
- 9:12Speaker 1: An animal does not mirror your movements with that consistency
- 9:15Speaker 1: and that rhythm. She saw him when he came into view.
- 9:18Speaker 1: Large build. Dark canvas jacket. No visible pack. She ran.
- 9:24Speaker 1: The footprint on the eastern edge of Shatter Bench points west.
- 9:27Speaker 1: She had crossed the full width of that broken rock
- 9:29Speaker 1: shelf before the surface gave out beneath her, or before
- 9:32Speaker 1: the edge of cold water. Draw arrived out of the
- 9:35Speaker 1: failing light before she could stop. Now picture what the
- 9:38Speaker 1: search team found on the north side of the campsite,
- 9:41Speaker 1: 300 feet away. There were other unsettling discoveries. A fire
- 9:45Speaker 1: ring scraped into bare earth. Unauthorized. No permit. Direct line
- 9:49Speaker 1: of sight to Brenda's tent. The ash in that ring
- 9:52Speaker 1: was recent. Not from a previous camping season. Not weathered. Recent.
- 9:57Speaker 1: Someone had sat at that fire and watched the green
- 9:59Speaker 1: dome tent in the trees below. The tire tracks on
- 10:02Speaker 1: Forest Service Road 22, a mile from the Hollands Pass trailhead,
- 10:06Speaker 1: did not match any vehicle registered to use the area
- 10:09Speaker 1: that weekend. This was another piece of the puzzle. The
- 10:12Speaker 1: road is a pullout. A place to park when you
- 10:15Speaker 1: do not want a record of where you came from.
- 10:17Speaker 1: Taken separately, each piece holds a possible innocent explanation. The
- 10:21Speaker 1: fire ring. A careless camper who didn't know the permit rules.
- 10:25Speaker 1: The tire tracks. Someone who turned around on a forest road.
- 10:29Speaker 1: The man in the trees. A hiker who wandered off trail.
- 10:32Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The fire ring has a sightline
- 10:35Speaker 1: to one tent. Not to the trail. Not to the meadow.
- 10:38Speaker 1: Not to the creek. To Brenda's tent specifically. Because of
- 10:41Speaker 1: the angle of the terrain and the gap in the
- 10:43Speaker 1: tree cover. You do not accidentally build a fire in
- 10:46Speaker 1: the one spot that frames a single campsite. Picture the
- 10:49Speaker 1: man on that ridge. Fire down to coals, watching the
- 10:53Speaker 1: light inside a green dome tent go dark. Then moving,
- 10:56Speaker 1: parallel to the trail. Slow. Quiet. Controlled enough that when
- 11:01Speaker 1: Brenda stopped, he stopped too. And when she retreated, he
- 11:05Speaker 1: closed the distance. He chased her across Shatter Bench. She
- 11:08Speaker 1: could hear him on the rim above her after she fell.
- 11:11Speaker 1: Then silence. The investigators who reviewed Brenda's account did not
- 11:15Speaker 1: use words like conclusive. There was no DNA on the
- 11:17Speaker 1: fire ring. No fingerprints. No second footprint in the talus.
- 11:22Speaker 1: The tire tracks on Forest Service Road 22 were wide set,
- 11:27Speaker 1: consistent with a mid-sized truck. But that description fits a
- 11:31Speaker 1: substantial portion of vehicles in rural Colorado. and no match
- 11:35Speaker 1: was found in the registered vehicle logs for that weekend.
- 11:37Speaker 1: The case was referred to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
- 11:41Speaker 1: It remains open. What the physical evidence does confirm, without
- 11:44Speaker 1: requiring Brenda's account at all, is this. Someone built an
- 11:48Speaker 1: unauthorized fire in a position with a direct sightline to
- 11:51Speaker 1: her camp. Someone drove a vehicle to a pullout a
- 11:54Speaker 1: mile away and left no registration record. A woman fled
- 11:58Speaker 1: northeast in failing light, crossed a talus field, and fell
- 12:01Speaker 1: 640 feet into a canyon. The case file calls it
- 12:05Speaker 1: an encounter. The terrain calls it a near miss. Brenda
- 12:09Speaker 1: Johnson was found on the morning of July 15th, 2019.
- 12:13Speaker 1: A helicopter from the Dolores Aviation Unit swept the eastern
- 12:18Speaker 1: face of Coldwater Draw just after sunrise. 640 feet below
- 12:23Speaker 1: the canyon rim, a searcher spotted movement. Brenda was conscious.
- 12:27Speaker 1: She had been in that canyon for approximately 41 hours.
- 12:31Speaker 1: She had a fractured right fibula, two broken ribs, Severe
- 12:34Speaker 1: soft tissue damage to her left shoulder and the early
- 12:37Speaker 1: onset of hypothermia. She had been drinking from the creek
- 12:40Speaker 1: through her water filter. She had eaten two of her
- 12:43Speaker 1: four energy bars. Her phone was still in the tent, charging.
- 12:47Speaker 1: She had no way to call anyone, no way to
- 12:49Speaker 1: know whether anyone was looking. She did not know, from
- 12:52Speaker 1: the bottom of that canyon, whether the man on the
- 12:55Speaker 1: rim had walked away. Frank Collins, the search and rescue
- 12:58Speaker 1: coordinator who had managed the operation since 2 in the
- 13:01Speaker 1: afternoon on July 14th. later described the cold-water draw recovery
- 13:06Speaker 1: as among the most technically difficult extractions his team had
- 13:09Speaker 1: executed in Marble County. The angle of the terrain made
- 13:12Speaker 1: a ground extraction impossible. The helicopter crew lowered a rescue
- 13:16Speaker 1: basket into the narrow corridor of rock and creek and
- 13:19Speaker 1: brought Brenda out. She was airlifted to Marble Regional Hospital
- 13:23Speaker 1: and admitted on the afternoon of July 15. Her first
- 13:26Speaker 1: coherent account came that same afternoon. once the hypothermia had
- 13:30Speaker 1: been treated. She described the movement she had heard the
- 13:32Speaker 1: evening of July 13th, parallel to the trail, controlled, mirroring
- 13:37Speaker 1: her own stops and retreats. She described the man she
- 13:40Speaker 1: had seen. Heavy sit, dark canvas jacket, no visible pack.
- 13:46Speaker 1: She described hearing him on the rim of the canyon
- 13:49Speaker 1: after she fell, and then hearing nothing at all. Investigators
- 13:52Speaker 1: took the account seriously. They also acknowledged on record. that
- 13:56Speaker 1: the physical evidence alone could not confirm the intent behind
- 13:59Speaker 1: any of it. No usable composite was produced. No arrest
- 14:03Speaker 1: was made. No identification followed. What remained in the case
- 14:07Speaker 1: file were three confirmed physical facts that existed independent of
- 14:10Speaker 1: Brenda's testimony. First, an unauthorized fire ring 300 feet north
- 14:15Speaker 1: of her campsite, positioned at the one gap in the
- 14:18Speaker 1: treeline that provided a direct sightline to her tent, and
- 14:21Speaker 1: no other. Second, tire tracks at the Forest Service Road
- 14:25Speaker 1: 22 pullout approximately one mile from the Hollands Pass trailhead,
- 14:29Speaker 1: matching a wide-set pattern consistent with a mid-sized truck with
- 14:33Speaker 1: no corresponding vehicle registration for that weekend. Third, a single-size
- 14:38Speaker 1: 7-boot print in windblown silt at the eastern edge of
- 14:41Speaker 1: Shatter Bench, pointing west a quarter-mile beyond where the search
- 14:45Speaker 1: dogs had lost the trail. The case was referred to
- 14:48Speaker 1: the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. As of the date of
- 14:51Speaker 1: the source reporting, it remains open. No additional physical evidence
- 14:55Speaker 1: has been publicly confirmed. No suspect has been identified. No
- 14:59Speaker 1: second footprint was found in the talus. No DNA was
- 15:03Speaker 1: recovered from the fire ring. The Weyburn National Forest encompasses
- 15:07Speaker 1: more than 1.2 million acres. Forest Service Road 22 is
- 15:12Speaker 1: one of dozens of unmarked pullouts accessible from county roads
- 15:15Speaker 1: with no permit or registration requirement. A person could park there,
- 15:19Speaker 1: hike in, and hike out without generating a single verifiable record.
- 15:24Speaker 1: That is not a gap in the investigation. That is
- 15:27Speaker 1: the geography. Brenda Johnson was hospitalized for 11 days. She
- 15:32Speaker 1: returned to work at the Salton Springs Parks Department in
- 15:34Speaker 1: November of 2019. According to the source reporting, she has
- 15:38Speaker 1: not returned to the Weyburn. There is something that does
- 15:41Speaker 1: not resolve cleanly about this case, and it would be
- 15:44Speaker 1: dishonest to pretend otherwise. The physical evidence is real. The
- 15:48Speaker 1: fire ring is real. The tire tracks are real. The
- 15:51Speaker 1: boot print is real. The man in the trees... What
- 15:54Speaker 1: Brenda saw and heard and ran from me. Real enough
- 15:58Speaker 1: that she crossed a boulder field in failing light and
- 16:01Speaker 1: fell 640 feet rather than go back toward her tent.
- 16:05Speaker 1: But real is not the same as identified, and identified
- 16:08Speaker 1: is not the same as charged. The Colorado Bureau of
- 16:11Speaker 1: Investigation has the file. The trail is cold in every
- 16:15Speaker 1: sense of that word. What is also real? Brenda had
- 16:17Speaker 1: a green neoprene sleeve on a titanium pot, custom-fitted at
- 16:21Speaker 1: a gear swap in 2017. because she had a system
- 16:25Speaker 1: for everything, a specific spot for the trekking pool, a
- 16:28Speaker 1: two-burner stove with the left camera door for the evening meal,
- 16:31Speaker 1: a neighbor named Bob Lund, who gave a diabetic cat
- 16:34Speaker 1: named Norris his insulin injection every night at six in
- 16:38Speaker 1: the evening, without fail, because Brenda had made that arrangement
- 16:41Speaker 1: before she left, and she had every intention of coming
- 16:45Speaker 1: home to give those shots herself. She did come home
- 16:48Speaker 1: that matters. not as a resolution to what happened on Shatterbench,
- 16:52Speaker 1: but as a fact about who Brenda Johnson is, a
- 16:55Speaker 1: woman who plans, who prepares, who trusts the mountain enough
- 16:59Speaker 1: to go back into it every season until now. The
- 17:02Speaker 1: decision not to return to the Weyburn is not a
- 17:05Speaker 1: small thing. It is the one outcome of July 2019
- 17:08Speaker 1: that can be maimed without qualification. The man in the
- 17:12Speaker 1: dark canvas jacket is still out there, unidentified. The fire
- 17:16Speaker 1: ring has been dismantled. The pullout on Forest Service Road
- 17:20Speaker 1: 22 looks the same as it did in July of 2019.
- 17:22Speaker 1: The Weyburn does not record who passes through it. Search
- 17:27Speaker 1: and Rescue Coordinator Frank Collins has said, in context like
- 17:30Speaker 1: this one, that most people who get lost in the
- 17:33Speaker 1: mountains made one small decision that seemed reasonable at the time.
- 17:38Speaker 1: Brenda made none of those decisions. She set up her
- 17:41Speaker 1: tent correctly. She had her permit. She had her filter,
- 17:45Speaker 1: her food, her emergency supplies. her day pack for the
- 17:49Speaker 1: summit attempt. She was not lost. She was found by
- 17:52Speaker 1: something that should not have been there. The case file
- 17:54Speaker 1: stays open because there is no explanation that accounts for
- 17:58Speaker 1: all three pieces of physical evidence, and also has nothing
- 18:01Speaker 1: to do with Brenda. The CBI has not closed it.
- 18:05Speaker 1: Marbell County Search and Rescue has not forgotten it, and
- 18:08Speaker 1: somewhere in Salton Springs, a woman goes to work every
- 18:11Speaker 1: morning at the Parks Department. takes care of a diabetic
- 18:14Speaker 1: cat named Norris and has not gone back to the Weyburn.
- 18:17Speaker 1: That is where things stand. This show is made by
- 18:20Speaker 1: Oboe Media.