Trinity Alps hiker mystery leads wife on sad, resolute search

Steve Morris on Billy's Peak, in the Trinity Alps, shortly before he went missing on a hike there. Steve Morris on Billy's Peak, in the Trinity Alps, shortly before he went missing on a hike there. Photo: Photo Courtesy Carrie Morris Photo: Photo Courtesy Carrie Morris Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Trinity Alps hiker mystery leads wife on sad, resolute search 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Somewhere up in the craggy Trinity Alps lies something Carrie Morris dreads seeing more than anything else on this Earth. But she feels she must. And she says she won’t stop until she does.

What the Sonoma County resident is desperately hoping to find are the remains of the man she has loved for more than 40 years — her husband.

Steve Morris, 59, disappeared Aug. 2 on a hiking trip with friends in the forest north of Weaverville (Trinity County). After county search-and-rescue teams spent a week picking through treacherous terrain for the Windsor man and found no clues, they gave up.

That’s when Morris’ 56-year-old wife took over.

She’s been scouring the 7,000-foot mountains ever since with a small army of volunteers that include two trained trackers, two helicopter crews, relatives, friends and parishioners from her church. The hunt costs $2,000 a day, mostly for chopper fuel, and they’ve been paying for it through donations from around the nation.

More than 11 weeks after Morris went missing, the team holds no real hope that he is alive. Even though he was an experienced outdoorsman, they’ve determined through tracing his trail that he fell 30 feet off a ridge, injured himself so badly he could scarcely move, and probably couldn’t have survived more than a few days in temperatures that sink below freezing at night.

But it’s the principle of the thing that drives them forward — mixed with practicality.

Carrie Morris, who runs a Christian-oriented family therapy practice with her husband, cannot stand the thought of leaving him forever in the forest where bears and mountain lions rule, and where snow will soon cover and destroy any evidence of what happened to him. There’s also the delicate issue of the well-being of herself and the couple’s 16-year-old daughter, Ellie.

Carrie Morris cannot collect life insurance or Social Security spousal benefits until her husband is declared dead by a county coroner, and without remains as proof, that usually takes five years or more. She has a health condition that will someday make it difficult for her to work as much as she can now — so she faces the distasteful task of having to be pragmatic about her husband’s fate.

Hoping for any sign

“This is the kind of thing nobody should ever imagine having to live through,” Morris said this week from near Billys Peak, the 7,342-foot mountain that her husband hiked up just before disappearing. “But this many weeks later, we assume the worst, and that the best we might find is some scattered bones, pieces of his backpack, his shirt ...”

Tears erupted mid-sentence, and she stopped to regain her voice.

“That’s what I have to think about now,” she said after a long moment. “But Steve spent over 40 years with me. He sacrificed so much of himself for me and our daughter, was so selfless. I cannot even think of stopping. I have to find him.”

Help from church

Volunteers were easy to find at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Rosa where the Morrises worship. The couple, married 36 years, have a wide circle of friends who have also pitched in. Donors who heard about their plight through the grapevine or through the team’s gofundme.com fundraising website have kicked in $21,000.

From the beginning, how Morris vanished has been a mystery.

On Aug. 2, he was on an annual backpacking retreat with church friends when he and three other men decided to take a day hike up Billys Peak. He took sturdy boots, a wide-brimmed hat and water in a small pack. It was on the descent from the summit when things went wrong.

Morris went ahead of the group, and nobody thought twice about it because he was such an experienced hiker. Concern set in when he hadn’t returned to camp by late that night.

From the air

“I heard about what Carrie was going through and thought, 'How can I not help?’” said Jim Higgins of Chico, who has been volunteering with the search team on the ground and with his helicopter. “She’s basically a widow now, she needs the help, and there aren’t a lot of people with helicopters who have outdoor experience like me.

“Steve’s tracks are weak, but we’ve been able to find where he bedded down in manzanita the first night and been able to follow his trail 5,000 feet from where he fell,” said Higgins, 39, who uses his chopper to install Internet and phone equipment in remote areas. “It’s hard searching, but we’re getting there. One worry is that the snow could come in any time.”

Morris’ group has asked Trinity County Sheriff Bruce Haney to authorize county search teams to go back up into the mountains to help, but the sheriff said he needs to examine new evidence before he can do that.

“The family needs closure on this and I’m sensitive to that, and nothing is off the table,” Haney said. “But we had the best rescue teams around helping us, and they finally came to me after the last day and said, 'It’s getting so dangerous, so hazardous, that we can’t continue sending people up there.’ That is a massive, risky area. There are granite crevices all over it where if someone falls in, you may never find him.

“I even spent some days driving the roads up there myself, thinking, 'Come on, Steve, be standing there somewhere,’” Haney said. “But at some point, without a definite direction, you just can’t keep going up there.”

Candy wrapper

Carrie Morris says she feels confident they have that definite direction — searchers are still tracking footprints, and on Tuesday they found a wrapper from Starburst candy, Steve’s favorite. In particular, she would like Haney to send in remains-sniffing dogs.

“I am frustrated,” Morris said. “The search-and-rescue teams that came in were amazing people, and I have a lot of respect for their skills. But we could use them again now.”

On Wednesday, the family sent an e-mail to the sheriff saying their searchers have found evidence of Steve Morris’ tracks in a less treacherous area than the one originally searched. Haney said he’d take a look.

Meanwhile, there is limbo. The family held a memorial service Aug. 23 in Santa Rosa, where everyone wore plaid in honor of the shirts Morris wore as he hiked all over Northern California. But his friends say they still need resolution.

“Steve was very observant, very kind,” said Carolyn Kemp of Berkeley, a longtime friend. “And he was happiest when he was outdoors, climbing the mountains somewhere.

“I hate to see the family go through this.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kfagan@sfchronicle.com