Missing Yosemite National Park backpacker found dead

An experienced hiker was found dead at Yosemite National Park in California after he went missing during a backpacking trip there, park officials announced Saturday morning.

Park rangers had asked the public for help locating the hiker, Kirk S. Thomas Olsen, on Thursday, more than two weeks after his planned return date from a hike near Ostrander Lake, which is about 8 miles south of Yosemite Valley. The 11.4-mile round-trip hike from the trailhead to the lake is strenuous, with a steep, 1,500-foot elevation gain.

Olsen, 61, had planned to backpack in the area from Aug. 23 to 27, officials said. Officials did not provide a cause of death or any additional details.

Holly Leeson, Olsen’s niece, said her uncle was declared missing Thursday after a park ranger found a note left on Olsen’s vehicle that said he had intended to return from his hike two weeks earlier, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Leeson wrote on Facebook that her uncle was a former state park ranger in California and an experienced hiker.

“Unfortunately Mother Nature in all of her glory does not account for past experience and solo hiking is never an endeavor that is without risks,” Leeson wrote. “Please, whenever possible, travel with a companion and be safe.”

Reached Sunday, the California Department of Parks and Recreation could not immediately confirm that Olsen used to work as a ranger.

Millions of people visit Yosemite National Park each year to explore its stunning valley, gushing waterfalls and alpine wilderness, with most visiting between May and October. Nearly 3.9 million people visited the park in 2023, according to the National Park Service.

This year, at least one other person died in Yosemite. Grace Rohloff, 20, died in July after slipping and falling while descending the climbing cables on the backside of Half Dome, one of the park’s granite faces, during a sudden rainstorm, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The leading causes of death in national parks are motor vehicle crashes, drownings and falls, according to the National Park Service’s mortality data from 2014 to 2019, the most recent years with validated death information. The National Park Service said on its website that the death rate at national parks, which was 0.11 deaths per 100,000 visitors in 2019, was much lower than the death rate for the overall population, which was 715 per 100,000 people that year.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.