Lost In The Mountains: Let’s Find Samantha Sayers

On August 2nd, 2018 the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office (WA) received a call about a missing hiker. Samantha Sayers went on a day hike in the North Cascade Mountain Range. The last area she was seen in was the Vesper Peak area.
Washington Trails Association page for Vesper Peak
According to her family, Sam is an experienced day hiker. She also grew up going on camping trips. She may not be a novice, but Vesper Peak is known to be quite the challenging trail. Despite this, when Samantha headed out, she believed she would be back that night (August 1st).
Samantha was seen multiple times throughout her day. One witness saw her going up the mountain in the morning. Another witness saw her on the summit. She was last seen heading South from the summit.
After Samantha didn’t show up at home, her boyfriend Kevin Dares, drove to the trail head. The whole way he expected to see her pass him. When he arrived at the trail head, her car was still there, empty. Bravely, Kevin attempted to follow the trail at night. He slipped and fell. In the process he broke his flashlight and had to return to the car under the light of his cellphone in order to find help.
At 1 AM on August 2nd, her family called the Snohomish County Sheriff. A search was organized and continued up until August 23rd. At least the official search ended on August 23rd. The official search involved large amounts of man power, augmented by volunteers.
Since she has been missing, attempts have been made to trace Samantha’s cellphone. Further attempts have been used to track her digital data, including fitness apps and messaging services. According to officials, her phone has not been connected to the cellular network since she went missing.
Even after the official search ended, volunteers from around the world have been working to try and bring Samantha Sayers home. A variety of different methods are being worked on.
Volunteers have been searching the mountain on foot, with dogs, and even in helicopters. Yes, volunteers have come forward with private helicopters to assist in the search. Drones have also been used to scan the mountain sides.
The one problem with utilizing drones is that their flight has to be coordinated with helicopters and planes that are searching the area.
Crowd Sourcing Drone Footage
Drone footage has been captured and upload to the internet. With a relatively new idea, crowd sourcing search and rescue. The idea is that, the more eyes that look at an image, the more likely they will be to find something. Other areas have seen great luck with crowd sourcing. Why not move it over to search and rescue?
This isn’t the first time a search and rescue operation has been crowd sourced. Malaysia Air Flight 370’s search was opened to volunteers. But in that case, satellite footage was used and coordination of ground teams was more difficult. Further more, technology has come a long way since 2014.
Volunteers working with the drone footage have put the imagery through search software that is able to identify colors, objects, and unusual pixels. Combined with manual review of the footage, volunteers have already found objects that search members missed.
How You Can Help
You can join the online review of footage on the website FindSamSayers.com. This website has some extremely high quality drone footage that you can run through in full screen. If you have search and rescue experience or access to specialized software, you can send a message through the website.
YouTube also has a selection of other drone and helicopter footage. Looking through this imagery is just as important. Any piece of footage might contain the clue that is needed to bring Samantha Sayers home.
Information About Samantha Sayers
I already mentioned above Samantha Sayer’s information but here it is again:

Name: Samantha “Sam” Sayers
Age: 28 Years Old
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 125 lbs +/-
Eye Color: Green
Hair: Bald
Distinguishing Marks: Star Tattoos on head (as pictured to the left), Multiple Piercings
Last seen wearing a green sports bra, maroon jacket, grey yoga pants, and hiking boots. She had a backpack, tanish hat, and hiking poles.
People Have Survived For As Long
Some people have given up hope, saying that she likely didn’t survive in the wilderness. Being an experience camper and day hiker, all hope isn’t lost. People from various walks of life have survived during “emergency” situations.
Here are some cases of remarkable survival:
- Robertson Family survived 38 days at sea
- Juliane Koepcke survived 9 days with a maggot infestation, broken collar bone, bruising, wet, after falling from an airplane that was hit by lightning (If that can be survived, what else could be?)
- Aron Ralston survived 6+ days after self amputating an arm in the snow
- Alexander Selkirk survived 4 years 4 months as a castaway
- Lisa Theris survived a month lost in the forest
- Jose Salvador survived 13 months adrift on a small boat in the ocean
- Peter Skyllberg survived 60 days trapped in a car that was buried in the snow
- Matthew Allen survived over 2 months in the Australian Outback during a heatwave
Some of these people were rescued in a shorter time period than the search for Sam has gone on, but at the same time, they survived in terrible situations. It is completely possible that Samantha Sayers is alive somewhere in the Washington wilderness.
Get together with friends, review footage. Volunteer to join a search party if you are trained. Let’s make sure that we bring Sam Sayers back home.