Mystery on path to mountain: A skeleton

LOS ANGELES — The climbers were on their way to the top of California’s second-highest peak when they came upon the grisly discovery of what looked like a bone buried in a boulder field.

Closer inspection revealed a fractured human skull.

Tyler Hofer and his climbing partner moved some rocks aside and discovered an entire skeleton. It appeared to have been there long enough that all that remained were bones, a leather belt and leather shoes.

The discovery this month beneath Mount Williamson unearthed a mystery: Who was the hiker? How did he or she die? Did the person have a partner? Were they ever reported injured, dead or missing?

The Inyo County Sheriff ’s Department doesn’t have any of those answers yet but retrieved the remains last week in the hopes of finding the identity and what happened. There’s no evidence to suggest foul play, spokeswoman Carma Roper said.

“This is a huge mystery for us,” Roper said.

The body was discovered Oct. 7 near a lake in the remote rock-filled bowl between the towering peaks of Mount Ty n d a l l and Williamson, which rises to 14,374 feet. The pair of climbers who discovered it phoned in their report once they got a cellphone signal and met with the sheriff’s department the next day after hiking out, Sgt. Nate Derr said.

Derr, who coordinates the county’s search and rescue team, said bodies found in the mountains are typically connected with someone they know who has gone missing. The opposite is rarer: finding the remains of someone that appears to not have gone missing or reported as missing.

Because the body was so decomposed, investigators believe it’s possibly been there for decades.

They have ruled out that it’s 1st Lt. Matthew Kraft, a Marine from Connecticut who vanished in February during a nearly 200-mile ski trek through the Sierra. Derr also doubts i t ’s Matthew Greene, a Pennsylvania climber last seen in the Mammoth Lakes area — nearly 70 miles north — in 2013.

They ’ve gone back through decades of reports of people missing in the Inyo National Forest and come up empty, Derr said. Neighboring Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks also don’t have reports of anyone missing in that area.

The death could have occurred in the days before helicopters were used to fly out bodies, Derr said. It’s possible the person died on the mountain and was buried by a climbing partner.