Vanished on Mt. Hooker: The Beckwith Mystery, Solved After 11 Years

I. The Silence Begins

The Beckwiths were the kind of family that lived by the rules of the wild. Garrett, 45, was an engineer and an obsessive planner—a man who believed that with enough preparation, even the chaos of the Wind River Range could be tamed. His daughter Dela, 19, was his mirror in many ways: methodical, bold, and hungry for the kind of beauty you only find on the world’s highest granite walls.

In late August 2013, they left for Mount Hooker—one of Wyoming’s most formidable peaks. They packed for every emergency, but left their satellite phones, fully charged, in the glovebox of Garrett’s truck. That single oversight would become the pivot on which the entire tragedy turned.

Maryanne Beckwith, Garrett’s wife and Dela’s mother, waited for their check-in call at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday. She told herself it was just a dead battery, a slow pitch, a little more adventure than planned. But as hours turned to days, the silence grew teeth.

By Wednesday, she called the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office. Within hours, Deputy Miles Corbin found the Beckwiths’ truck at the Big Sandy trailhead—satellite phones untouched in the glovebox, maps on the seat, everything in order. No sign of panic. No sign of violence. Just two people who had walked into the wilderness and not walked out.

II. The Search and the Storm

The search was immediate and massive. Helicopters swept the ridgelines. SAR teams combed the trails and scoured the cliffs. Garrett’s climbing partner, Alistair Finch, organized a parallel search, focusing on the improbable routes Garrett was known to favor—hidden faces, obscure traverses, and lines that weren’t in any guidebook.

But the Wind River Range is a place that swallows evidence. A freak storm rolled in—snow and sleet battered the teams, forcing an early retreat. After 10 days, the search was scaled back. The Beckwiths were gone.

The case became legend. In Lander, the Beckwith home froze in time: Dela’s room untouched, Garrett’s tools in place. The story became a warning whispered at trailheads: even the best can vanish, and sometimes, the only clue left behind is a pair of unused satellite phones.

III. Years of Questions, Flickers of Hope

Three years later, a hiker found a climbing nut in a creek southeast of Mount Hooker. It matched Garrett’s gear, but it could have belonged to any serious climber. The hope was brief, and quickly faded.

Rumors circulated online—wild theories about staged disappearances and financial ruin. The cold case detectives found nothing: Garrett’s business was solvent, his life insurance unremarkable, no evidence of foul play or a staged escape. The files thickened with negations, but no answers.

IV. The Mountain Gives Up Its Dead

In late summer 2024, two young climbers, Khloe Vance and Ben Carter, ascended a remote, technical face of Mount Hooker. They stumbled onto a derelict portaledge camp—old bolts, a faded blue dry bag, a coiled rope, and a red sleeping bag, zipped nearly to the top and lashed to the frame.

Inside the sleeping bag, they found a human skeleton. The scene was deliberate, almost reverent—gear coiled, the bag secured, as if someone had tried to keep its occupant safe from the wind and time. Khloe and Ben took photos, marked their GPS, and made the long descent to summon help.

Detective Isabella Rossi, new to the cold case unit, led the recovery. The remains were identified as Dela Beckwith. The forensic anthropologist found a catastrophic spiral fracture in her right leg—an injury that would have left her utterly immobile. She had been cared for, secured, and left with supplies. Garrett’s harness was missing. The theory crystallized: Dela was left, helpless but protected, while her father set out alone to get help.

V. The Final Clue

The search for Garrett resumed, now laser-focused. Below the portaledge, a single rusted piton marked his descent. But after that, nothing. The mountain kept its secrets.

Months later, a wildlife biologist’s drone, surveying bighorn sheep, spotted a splash of blue fabric in a remote, cliff-ringed basin miles from the logical descent route. A recovery team found scattered bones and a titanium jaw plate—matched perfectly to the one installed in Garrett after a cycling accident years before.

The location told the rest of the story: disoriented, injured, or simply lost in a whiteout, Garrett had wandered far off course. He died alone, miles from his daughter, in a place no one would ever think to look.

VI. The Questions That Remain

The Beckwith mystery was finally, painfully solved. Dela died alone on a ledge, waiting for a father who would never return. Garrett died trying to save her, defeated not by a lack of skill or courage, but by the brutal indifference of the wilderness—and one fatal mistake.

Why did they leave the satellite phones behind? No one will ever know. Perhaps it was overconfidence, a momentary lapse, or a simple, irreversible error. That tiny decision doomed them, turning an accident into an unsolvable mystery for over a decade.

VII. The End of the Story

Maryanne Beckwith buried her husband and daughter side by side, the last act of a story that had consumed her for 11 long years. The Wind River Range kept its silence, but the Beckwiths’ story became more than a cautionary tale—it became a testament to love, to the limits of preparation, and to the wilderness’s power to humble even the best among us.

There are mysteries that end in justice, and there are those that end only with the truth. For the Beckwiths, the truth was enough. The mountain, at last, had given them back.