2ND UPDATE — Searchers for hiker missing in Olympic National Park stop for the day; will resume Sunday

Published 12:01 am Saturday, December 27, 2014

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Searchers plan to resume looking at first light Sunday for a Port Angeles man missing since he set out on a day hike on the Olympic Hot Springs Trail on Monday.

James Thomas Griffin, 60, was last seen at about 4 p.m. at the hot springs.

Searchers have been seeking him since friends reported him missing at about 10 p.m. Wednesday after he didn’t show up for a Christmas Eve dinner.

They said he had planned a Monday hike on the Olympic Hot Springs Trail, a place he had often visited.

Teams totaling 21 searchers returned at about 3 p.m. Saturday after they completed an intensive search, which found nothing, and the weather “turned nasty,” said Jacilee Wray, acting park spokeswoman.

Two others were searching until dark at Cougar Creek and another drainage in the vicinity of the area where Griffin disappeared. The results of their inspection will help guide Sunday’s search.

Wray said the watercourses were “the most likely ones he could have ended up in” and decided to follow had he become lost in the dark.

“It’s very heavily vegetated,” Wray said of the area, “even if it’s very close to the trail head.”

“A smaller number” of searchers, she said, would resume the effort at 7:30 a.m. Sunday.

Searchers also posted flyers at Olympic Hot Springs, where Griffin was seen getting out of the pool at 4 p.m. Monday.

When Griffin was seen there, he had his backpack with him.

The pack was found Thursday about one-half mile from the trial head, where his blue Subaru Forester was parked, and some 50 feet off the trail.

“Someone did see him in the hot springs on Monday in the late afternoon so we know he came out from the hot springs after dark,” said Wray on Saturday morning.

“He was on his way back in the dark, and he stopped about a half-mile from the trail head about 50 feet from the trail,” she said.

“He stopped there on his way down, yet it was only a half-mile down,” she added.

The pack was found leaning against a log with a towel placed over it. It had been opened and some of the contents pulled from it.

In the pack was a container of water, Griffin’s camera — which contained a photo of a nearby waterfall date-stamped June 29 — a stove and no overnight gear.

On a nearby log sat a coke can and a plastic coffee mug.

Also close by was a pouch of freeze-dried food with water already in it. The pouch had been resealed.

There were no signs of a struggle, Wray said.

The area around the pack already had been searched but Saturday it was the focus of what Wray called a “100 percent grid search,” an intensive combing by 21 people and two dog teams, Wray said.

The searchers walked within 10 feet of each other, working within 500 feet of the pack “covering 100 percent of the ground under everything,” Wray said.

If anyone saw Griffin that day, the information might be helpful to searchers, Wray said.

Anyone with information on Griffin’s whereabouts or who has seen him in the park is asked to call dispatchers at 360-565-3115.

When he was seen at the hot springs, his clothes were in a pile in the dark, so it is not known what he was wearing.

However, his friends have said that he usually hikes in jeans and a flannel shirt, Wray said.

His car has been searched but no information helpful to rescuers was found, she added.

On Friday, 10 people from the park and Olympic Mountain Rescue were aided by three state Department of Emergency Management search dogs and their handlers.

Several of Griffin’s friends, including the person who reported him missing, assisted in the search Thursday and Friday.

By Saturday, Tacoma Mountain Rescue and Clallam County Search and Rescue had three people each searching the area, along with eight people from the Jefferson County Search and Rescue, two from Olympic Mountain Rescue and five from the park, Wray said.

Two dog teams from Pierce County assisted.

Family members have said that Griffin is an avid hiker but makes slow progress because of an old leg injury, Wray said.

But they also said he was not thought to be overly distraught and was hiking in familiar terrain when he seemingly vanished.

Griffin, a six-year Port Angeles resident, is retired, single and lives alone, Wray said.

Wray said the park’s average search for missing hikers is for at least seven days, but that could change.

“It’s whatever the circumstances dictate,” she said.

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Reporter James Casey, Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb and Managing Editor Leah Leach contributed to this story.