The original version of this story was published on The Inertia.
For a short moment this summer my home of Santa Cruz County was in the global spotlight. The reason: A man was miraculously rescued after being lost for 10 days in the forest, found alive and well. Big outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC jumped on the story, posting photos of the hiker covered in mud, overcome with emotion as he was reunited with his family. GearJunkie covered the story as well.
And while I was relieved that he’d been found safe, in my opinion, the media coverage missed a key point. The story wasn’t adding up.
The reports all went something like this: A 34-year-old man, Lukas McClish, went for a hike on June 11 in the woods outside of his town, Boulder Creek, nestled in the thick redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains. McClish, who didn’t bring a phone or any gear, got disoriented on the hike through previously fire-ravaged areas that no longer appeared as he remembered.
He was reported missing when he didn’t show up for Father’s Day dinner 5 days later. A search and rescue operation involving 300 people across several agencies got involved. Then, on June 21, he was found, albeit 30 pounds lighter. He informed his rescuers that he’d survived by drinking a gallon and a half of water a day and eating berries.
The Mystery: What Happened to Lukas McClish?
Someone who doesn’t know the Santa Cruz Mountains well might read that story during their morning coffee, crack a small smile at the heartwarming news, and never think about it again. But, having grown up in the area, I was left scratching my head. How on Earth does a local who is, according to the NYT, “an experienced backpacker who has traversed other rugged regions of the United States,” get lost for 10 days?
Sure, the Santa Cruz mountains are thickly forested, but these are not the Himalayas or even the Sierra Nevada. They aren’t remote. Multiple busy roads traverse the terrain. The area is fairly populated with towns and small housing communities. The place he was found, Foreman Creek, is less than a mile from his home of Boulder Creek. What was I missing?
None of the stories bothered to pick at this discrepancy, so all I could do was hypothesize. Did he really just get lost? Did he want to get lost? Or did he have some sort of mental breakdown? Maybe he entered a portal to Narnia — and returned …
McClish revealed in interviews after that he is albino and legally blind. I don’t think albinism is relevant, but lack of vision certainly could have played a role. However, McClish didn’t attribute the predicament to his sight, stating, “I feel my eyesight’s pretty good for the cards that I was dealt.”
Rumors on social media ran rampant that his vision, or lack thereof, explains everything. But if that’s true, why didn’t any news outlets pick up on it? A New York Times journalist with a degree from Columbia covered the story, after all.
Following Lukas McClish’s Footsteps
I was intrigued enough to retrace McClish’s steps and check out Foreman Creek for myself. I’d never been to that specific area, but Boulder Creek is just a 30-minute drive from my Santa Cruz home. Thus, on a sunny summer morning, I hopped in my car to go for an investigative hike.
Before starting, I wanted to pinpoint the location of McClish’s rescue as closely as possible. It’s unclear where exactly McClish’s hike took him. He described it as “each day going up a canyon and down a canyon” — but we know that he somehow ended up in Foreman Creek for at least the last 3 days he was missing.
In the weeks prior I reached out to all the agencies involved in the rescue, without any luck on a more accurate location. The Sheriff’s Office told me to call Big Basin State Park, who told me to contact California State Parks, who told me to contact … the Sheriff’s Office.
Santa Cruz Search and Rescue told me to contact the Sheriff’s Office, which then told me to contact Boulder Creek Fire Department or Cal Fire, but neither of them ever responded.
I was finally able to confirm a GPS point with a local photographer who indicated the location of the search command post. It was exactly where I imagined it would be.
Regardless, knowing that McClish was found in the Foreman Creek area significantly narrowed the hike down to a small zone. The creek only runs for a little over a mile from the mountains above before crossing Big Basin Highway.
Setting Out to Get Lost
I pulled up at the end of a paved road that parallels Foreman Creek. After having spent so much time mulling over online maps of the area, it was as if I already knew the meager stream calmly trickling down the canyon. In theory, I was only going to hike a mile, at most, up the creek.
But given I still had lingering doubts about how someone had gotten lost out here, I overprepared for the occasion. I brought 2 L of water, an array of salty hiking snacks, sunscreen, a sunhat, and a power bank for an emergency phone charge. Imagine the headlines if I were foolish enough to become hopelessly disoriented investigating the story of a man who had gotten lost.
I strolled up the creek, switching between hopping along the granite rocks in the creek bed to walking on faint dirt paths on the water’s edge. It was the epitome of a hike in the Santa Cruz Mountains: age-old redwood trees sprouted from the earth, reaching to the sky on the steep canyon slopes. Their hardy trunks had been tinged black from the CZU Lightning Complex fire that tore through Big Basin State Park in August 2020.
The late-morning summer sun was already high, as its rays plunged through the gaps in the canopy, shining on the low, thick shrubs that had taken root since the fire claimed much of the vegetation. Even though it had been months since a significant rain, the creek flowed at a healthy pace. To top it all off, the most classic mark of a hike in Santa Cruz was the famous yellow banana slugs inhabiting the forest floor.
Finding Traces
The canyon shows signs of human intervention. There’s a small, manmade wooden dam a short distance up the creek with pipes that redirect the pooled water. Interestingly, there’s a security camera next to the dam, high up on a pole, pointing straight down. It’s anyone’s guess what that camera is used for, or if it’s operational. As I revisited the NYT article I realized you could see the pole for this camera in the photo of McClish reuniting with his family.
My most notable observation was the ease at which I was climbing up the creek. In just 30 minutes of hiking at a normal pace, I covered a half-mile of distance and gained 500 feet up the canyon. Navigating the creek bed wasn’t complicated. While there was generally no trail, there were no major obstacles. It was certainly terrain that a moderately experienced hiker could have handled.
I was unable to contact McClish for an interview to clarify my doubts. But in an interview with Bay Area outlet KSBW, he said that he was somewhere in this watershed yelling, “Help! Help! Is anybody out there?” adding that he was craving a burrito and a taco bowl. Entering from the bottom of the creek, as I did, it was clear how to get out.
However, since it appears McClish had stumbled down from an adjacent canyon, I suppose I could understand how it would be somewhat disorienting to know which stream would lead to safety and which could lead to being even more lost.
Civilization Nearby
After those 30 or so minutes, I was fairly certain that I’d already crossed the area where McClish had stayed and collected water (assuming he wasn’t in a smaller, side canyon, which is also possible). I finally hit a point where the cliffs around the creek closed in, steep and narrow, and big fallen trees and debris clogged further passage.
Just a half-mile farther up the stream, and 1,000 feet higher, there’s a little community with a couple of dozen houses. My logic was telling me that McClish had traveled no further than I had. It would have been a brutal ascent through the steep, choked-up creek bed.
I doubt someone who couldn’t do the relatively easy hike out on their own would have continued farther up such terrain. (But who knows? Nothing makes sense in this story.) McClish said he stayed in an area where Foreman Creek converged with another creek, and I had already passed several locations that matched that description. And even if he had found a way to continue farther up the grade, he would have eventually stumbled upon the populated community in just a half mile.
Several news stories reported that people heard his calls for help. At this point of the creek in the narrow gorge, I couldn’t imagine anyone would have heard cries for help. And even though the creek wasn’t gushing, it created enough noise to partially mask any screaming. I deduced that he hadn’t been this far, and I had already crossed, at least part, of his path.
Coming to Conclusions
I sat on a nearby rock thinking about the hike and the missing person case. A cairn (a rock used to mark a trail) had been placed on a boulder nearby. Someone had been here. There was no way to know if it predated McClish’s hike or had been placed recently, perhaps by Search and Rescue, or, who knows, by McClish himself.
As I was resting, suddenly a sense of unease swept over me. I remembered that McClish said he was stalked by a mountain lion in this canyon. I put my lunch away and decided it was best to limit my exposure. Again, it would be silly to waste public resources for a second extrication.
When I safely returned to my car, I contemplated what I’d learned. If anything, it underlined my initial, baffled reaction. The canyon was not hard to hike and was close to civilization.
There’s no reason anyone should get lost there for days, especially someone with hiking experience in the area. There’s more to the story, and I don’t know if it’s related to McClish’s poor vision, as the internet detectives purport.
Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe not. Since he survived, perhaps no one fully cares about the truth. But given that when people die in these circumstances, they dedicate entire books and 60 Minutes specials to them, I’m sure I’m not the only curious hiker wondering what the hell happened. Regardless, even if I didn’t get all the answers to my burning questions, at the very least I got to spend a lovely afternoon in a redwood wilderness.
