Karen Sykes — Experienced Hiker Vanishes on Well-Traveled Mount Rainier Trail

Karen Sykes was no amateur. A seasoned hiker and respected Seattle-area outdoor journalist, she had hiked hundreds of trails in the Pacific Northwest and written extensively about safety in the wilderness. On September 1, 1991, she set out with a companion on a trail in the Mount Rainier National Park area of Washington State. At some point during the hike, the two separated. Her companion returned to the trailhead and assumed Karen had taken a different route down. When she failed to return, a search was launched. Despite the trail being well-documented and the area being relatively well-traveled, Karen Sykes was never found. No remains, no equipment, no clothing, no trace of any kind has ever been recovered. A subsequent search of the surrounding wilderness over the following days and weeks found nothing. For a woman of her experience level to simply vanish on a known trail with no physical evidence left behind has puzzled searchers for decades. No credible theory about what happened to her has ever been established. Karen Sykes remains one of the Pacific Northwest's most baffling missing persons cases.