30 August 2025- Day 1 Working the Grid

After a weekend working in Coos County on 23 & 24 August, Remy and I went back to Soda Fork Saturday and got started on clearing the grid. This is the first hands and knees search since I finished working the former timber boundary around Landing 3 in Section 19. We arrived at the alternate location, walked down the skidder track , walked down to the grid, dropped the pack and got to work.

Since I have lanes clearly marked, my plan for the grid is to start at northeast corner and work my through each quadrant until complete. My goal for the day was to clear one 2500 square foot quadrant. The grid is 100×100 and centered on the area where the HRD K9 indicated “odor of interest” back on 2 August. That’s a 10,000 square foot area subdivided into 2500 square foot quadrants, and further subdivided into 5×5’ grid squares.

I began with my usual silent appeal to Karen and Rodney that Remy and I were there to help them come home, and if they wanted, today could be the day that the return journey began. With that, I gloved up, put the knee pads on, and started clearing the area.

I used the lawn mowing technique, where I cleared one lane to the bare earth, moving forward one grid square at a time. I was thorough and it was slow going all day. Since this location matches both the news accounts, the suspected offender’s preference for a murder / major assault / body dump locations (for this offender, both phases of his offense pattern would be the same location) and an HRD K9 showed strong interest, I am very deliberate and thorough. 48 years is a long time for a skeleton to disarticulate and scatter, so literally any grid square could be “the one”.

I hit the wall of my endurance at 4pm. I had cleared about 1500 square feet of ground, and I really couldn’t do much more that day. Based on what I was able to clear, I will be working this location through the fall. I am content with the thoroughness of the area searched, and that I would rather be slow and thorough than go faster and miss something.

I’ll continue the grid search next weekend.