Search continues for missing hiker

BackpackingLight.com alert about Ken Knight

A poster on WhiteBlaze.net, an Appalachian Trail forum, describes the hike

12-second video clip Ken Knight posted online Sunday at 6:36 a.m.

National Park Service map of the Blue Ridge Parkway (PDF)

Ken Knight's blog

BUENA VISTA — Scores of searchers from throughout the region are combing through the mountains in Amherst County, looking for a legally blind missing hiker from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Ken Knight, 41, was last seen Sunday between 9 and 10 a.m. at the Punch Bowl shelter near the Blue Ridge Parkway’s mile marker 51.7. Knight was hiking a lengthy portion of the Appalachian Trail with a group and was supposed to fly home to Michigan on Wednesday, but missed his flight. He is described as being 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing 180 to 200 pounds.

Family and friends became worried when Knight, a very experienced hiker, didn’t come home. He last updated his Twitter feed through his iPhone on Sunday morning with a brief video.

Authorities began looking for him in the area near Punch Bowl Mountain on Thursday and the search Friday expanded dramatically. Still, with more than 110 people looking for him, the only clues found were some candy wrappers that may not have even belonged to Knight, said Randy Sutton, National Park Service spokesman.

Sutton said the weather posed no threat to Knight.

Knight is an editor for Backpacking Light magazine and the company’s leader, Ryan Jordan, posted a comprehensive note on a message board about Knight’s plans and why friends and family are so worried. He was traveling with a group moving at different paces and meeting up with members at campsites, Jordan said by phone Friday. Knight said he wasn’t feeling well and might leave the trail and find a place to recover or a way back home, but “Sunday morning, he didn’t convey that he had made a decision.”

Knight has been legally blind since infancy and developed a strong sense of independence and self-sufficiency, Jordan said. He can see vaguely 10 to 15 feet in front of him, but can’t see details so he uses binoculars for that, Jordan said. He can make out basic shapes on the trail and read sections of a map and if the terrain is good, Knight can “keep up with just about anybody. Rocky and rooty trails, he will slow down,” Jordan said. “He has hiked a lot of the (Appalachian Trail), and I don’t know how much,” he said, guessing Knight has covered 80 percent of the 2,175-mile long trail.

Friday’s search was centered at Punch Bowl Mountain, where Knight was last seen, but searchers fanned out as far south as mile marker 76.3 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where he was supposed to meet friends, said Lt. Col. Wendy White, with the Civil Air Command. “He is a very experienced hiker. He is very experienced on this portion of the AT.”

Searchers are examining 35 areas between 80 and 110 acres, White said. By 5 p.m. Friday, 18 of those were complete. About 110 people were looking for any sign of Knight, including those from experienced search and rescue teams. Also on the trail were seven dog and three horse-mounted units, though they were having difficulty because there is no definite search point, White said. The Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary unit of the Air Force, was overhead, providing communications support. The command center, which had been at a Blue Ridge Parkway overlook near mile marker 45, was being moved to Buena Vista, Sutton said.

No searching is being conducted by air due to the dense foliage, said White.

The Amherst County Sheriff’s Office, the county Public Safety Office, the state Department of Emergency Management, the National Park Service, Rockbridge County’s Emergency Services department, the Big Island Rescue Squad and other search-and-rescue groups from across Virginia are looking for Knight.

Jordan, who is close friends with Knight, said he was flying to Washington, D.C., from Montana and driving to Buena Vista to join the search.

“Everybody’s pretty shocked. Ken’s a pretty resourceful guy, and none of us have ever worried about him hiking alone,” Jordan said. “He’s very independent and I think it just comes from, you know, he’s had to deal with this liability his entire life, and has a hard time accepting help from people.”

Jordan said the magazine’s co-founder and students from wilderness trekking school are also involved in the search, which he said would continue Friday night, with four crews actively searching overnight. “I’ve been in touch with search and rescue all day, and it’s building momentum.”

Friday morning Knight’s parents flew in from Rhode Island to Richmond and arrived at the command post just before 4 p.m., where they had a lengthy briefing from investigators, but declined to speak to the media.Hikers along the Appalachian Trail were aware of Knight and some said they were helping out when they could.

Rachel Goldberg and Justin Carter were hiking from Georgia to Maine and said they saw a sign posted at Petite’s Gap on Thursday about Knight. “She was really concerned about it,” Carter said as the couple lunched by the James River. “We were calling out his name just in case he had fallen over a bend, just to let him know that there were people walking by if anything happened,”

The couple was working their way to the Punch Bowl shelter, where Knight last had been seen Sunday.

“Although it’s small, I just kept my eyes open for trails he might have turned down that were not the AT,” Goldberg said. “It’s kind of eerie being out here with all this going on.”