Yesterday was my final ground search of the Lee site for the season. I searched to the north of the devil’s club thicket that I searched on 2 September. I entered the wood line from the northern line of drift, near the areas I had searched on 22 May and 30 June 2023. My goal for the day was to overlap with the thicket search on 2 September and then go over the area to the east and north.
I cleared the northern portion of the thicket, overlapping with the search on 2 September. This was another hands and knees to stomach and elbows search through the undergrowth. I uncovered nothing of note, but it was worth the effort to clear the north end of the thicket. I turned my attention to pushing east, searching between the previously cleared alder grove and the stream bank.
This was flood plain of scrub alder, maples, devil’s club and native Oregon blackberry and salmon berry vines. Judging by how the alders and maples were growing, with their branches swept almost parallel to the ground and pointing in the direction of the creek’s flow, it became apparent that this area is inundated yearly. I did notice a path through the underbrush, very low but distinct. Getting onto my stomach, I followed it into a mountain lion den.
Thankfully the den was empty when I arrived and stayed that way until I departed. The Glock loaded with .40 cal hollow points and the auto-opening knife felt very comforting to have in that moment. The den was worth entering and excavating because it was full of bones. I spent about an hour in there, on my stomach, sorting through deer bones and fragments.
I crawled out of the den and continued my search until I reached the creek bank. Standing up, I then searched north along the top of the bank, noting how flooding had eroded the bank back about 50 feet, creating a new channel and toppling several trees that the flow had undercut. The ground was exceptionally clean of forest debris. A few leaves, some sticks, moss and grass were all that was to be found. The annual flooding really removes a great deal of material from the forest floor, which leads me to rate this as a low probability area to find remains.
I returned to my pack and water bottle in the alder grove, and reviewed the GPS track of my searches here. Since June 30, I have hands and knees searched almost the entire area behind the landing. What remains to be searched is the hillside that leads from the landing down into the forest, two impenetrable sections of thicket and the flood plain. I divided those areas into work plans for the future, given that other than the unsearched areas of the thicket, the other areas were of low probative value based on descriptions of where Karen’s clothes were found, which is down the hill. I consider the hill of low probative value since in my experience, remains generally don’t disperse uphill, and if animals scatter them onto a slope, they tend to drift back down.
This review led me to three possible conclusions:
1) All of the potential remains are located in the areas within the thicket I was unable to search.
2) Karen Jean Lee has fully returned to the earth, and due to flooding of the area, her remains are no longer there.
3) I’m in the wrong location and this is not the Lee Site.
Sitting on a log, I began to review my notes for why I designated this the Lee site. On the 15 May site survey, all of the section 19 pull outs were extremely small, except for the turn-out designated the Grissom site, and the landing I designated the Lee site. These two locations were 1/4 mile apart, which fit the description in both the LCSO summary and contemporary news accounts. I had marked on my map two turn-outs south of the Grissom site, closer to US20. These were smaller scrapes on the side of the road, where a pickup could pull over to let a log truck pass by. On my way out of the woods, I decided to take the time to survey the site closest to the Grissom site.
The Search for Karen Jean Lee and Rodney L. Grissom 