After finding the body I’d made my way back down to the trail from the creek bed and then started up the steep path that led to my tent in order to get my phone. There had been no use in carrying it with me in the gorge because there was no reception. Even the GPS lost signal down there. Once I retrieved my phone my choices would be to find higher ground where I had reception, an iffy proposition at best, or hike 2 miles back out to my car and drive 10 miles to a place where I knew I could get reception.

Before I could head up the trail to my tent, I was startled by voices behind me on the trail. Being a weekday, I hadn’t expected to see too many people. I turned around and saw a group of backpackers. I hurried down the path yelling, “Hey! Excuse me! Does anyone here have a phone? I just found a body!”

I heard a responding “Wha?” from the hiker in the lead.

“I said, I found a bo...” I trailed off.

The hiker was taller than me, but couldn’t have been more than 14 years old. “You found a BODY!?” he asked. I could hear both fear and perhaps a bit of excitement in the young man's voice.

“Umm. Are you the trip leader?” I asked.

"Nah,” he replied. “TRACE! Can you come up here?” the boy called behind him.

A woman in her early twenties came forward. She looked like she was comfortable on the trail, but not quite as comfortable being in charge of a bunch of fourteen year old boys. Then again, no one looks comfortable in that situation.

“Do you have a phone handy?” I asked.

Trace was leading an Outward Bound group along the Mountains to Sea Trail. The hike out to the parking lot was only about three quarters of a mile from where I met the group and would be much quicker than going to my tent and returning.

“We’ve got a sat phone.” she said, “ I don’t know if we’ve got reception here or not, but we can try.”

We walked out of earshot of the group. On the third try we got through, but the signal dropped in and out.

“I’m not sure they got all that,” Trace told me. She looked distracted. I could see that exposing the group to a body hadn’t been on the agenda. She not only had to worry about reporting the body, but also about dealing with the possibility of having a bunch of Search and Rescue personnel running through their group, and also the inevitable questions about the body.

“I think we’re just going to turn around and go back,” she told me.

They had camped just across the creek from the trailhead where I started my hike. We agreed to have the group wait with the co-leader for about 15 minutes while Trace and I made our way back to the parking lot where there was a better chance of getting reception on the sat phone. That way we could speak without having to worry about details being overheard by the kids.

We found a spot almost all the way back to the parking lot where she could get solid reception. I did my best to describe the location, but my knowledge of the area was a bit more extensive than most, so I gave some more general directions like “He’s below all the big falls on the section between FR 233 and HWY 181.” My references to Cave Falls, Pothole Falls and Steel Creek Falls didn’t mean much to Trace or the person on the other end of the line.

“Our dispatcher is going to call it into the Forest Service,” she told me.