A young woman set off on a solo hike through one of Washington’s most breathtaking trails to celebrate her 28th birthday.

She packed her sleeping bag, left a note for her family, and promised she’d be back by morning, but she never came home.

Days turned into months and then years.

Search teams gave up.

Her mother never did.

What they finally uncovered, hidden beneath silence and the deep, left even the most seasoned rescuers stunned.

What would you do if your birthday wish became your worst nightmare? October 17th, 2019.

The morning sun painted the Washington landscape in golden hues as 28-year-old Rachel Lacaduct stuffed her purple sleeping bag into her green backpack.

Her hair caught the early light streaming through her bedroom window in Moses Lake.

Today wasn’t just any day.

It was the day before her 28th birthday, and Rachel had plans that would change everything.

She dumped clean laundry onto her bed, carefully selecting clothes for what she believed would be an unforgettable adventure.

Her white Jeep Cherokee sat waiting in the driveway, keys in hand, destination set, the hidden lake lookout trail in Washington’s North Cascades.

But Rachel wasn’t just planning any ordinary hike.

This was her bucketless dream, spending the night at the Hidden Lake Lookout for her birthday.

A dream she’d shared with her husband Jaime just a year earlier, though they’d postponed it, worried they weren’t in good enough shape for the challenging terrain.

Now things had changed.

Rachel and Jaime had separated in August.

The marriage they’d built together, traveling the world, doing missionary work in India, South Africa, and Ireland had crumbled.

Rachel had moved back to her father’s house, but the hidden lake lookout still called to her.

At 700 a.m., Rachel was westbound out of Moses Lake, driving through Washington’s hot and dry middle toward the mountains that would soon swallow her hole.

She registered for her hike at the Ranger Station, parked at the Hidden Lake Lookout trail head, and by 200 p.m.

she was hiking.

Her plan was simple.

Reach the lookout, spend the night under the stars, and meet a friend in Bellingham the next day.

She had no idea that within hours she would vanish into the wilderness, triggering one of the most extensive searches in Washington state history.

What happened next would haunt her family for 667 days.

The hidden lake trek is not for the faint of heart.

8 mi round trip, gaining 3,300 ft in just 4 m.

It starts at 3,600 ft in the thick, sometimes vicious vegetation of the rain soaked North Cascades.

The trail winds through alpine meadows of wild flowers before reaching a rocky granite saddle and finally at 6,700 ft, the lookout itself.

Rachel was petite and freckled with the same vibrant red hair that had drawn comments from strangers since childhood.

Those who knew her described her as spunky and creative, someone who spoke her mind without hesitation.

She was the kind of person who once told a complaining customer at Denny’s, “What do you expect? It’s Denny’s.

It’s frozen.

” But on this October afternoon, Rachel was alone with her thoughts and the mountain.

By 400 p.m., she had made it about 2.5 mi up the trail, reaching 5,500 ft.

The forest was dense, the air crisp with the promise of winter.

That’s when she encountered two hikers coming down, a decision that would later become crucial evidence in understanding her final hours.

The couple stopped to chat with Rachel.

They had turned back at 6,200 ft because the first winter storm of the year was rushing in.

Snow was falling and the trail ahead was hard to follow.

Obscured by the white blanket and exposed to the elements above the treeine, they noticed her clothing, thermal tights under shorts and a long-sleeved shirt under a NASA tank top.

For the conditions they just left, it seemed inadequate, but Rachel appeared confident, carried additional clothes in her pack, and was moving very well.

They later told police.

The conversation was brief.

Rachel asked about conditions ahead.

They warned her about the snow and poor visibility.

Then they descended and Rachel continued up.

The storm hit with full force.

What happened next remains one of the most chilling mysteries in North Cascad’s history.

Because by the next evening, when Rachel failed to meet her friend in Bellingham, she was officially reported missing.

Her white Jeep Cherokee was found that night by a sheriff’s deputy, sitting alone at the trail head like a ghost car waiting for its owner’s return.

The search for Rachel Lacaduck began immediately.

Over the next 10 days, 137 volunteers spent roughly 2,000 hours combing the mountain.

Dogs, helicopters, trained searchers, and mountain rescue teams all converged on the North Cascades.

But the mountain kept its secrets.

Every year in the United States, roughly 600,000 people go missing.

Most are found quickly, dead or alive.

However, tens of thousands remain missing for more than one year.

In Washington alone, there are 765 open missing persons cases.

An estimated 1,600 people are missing in America’s wildlands, a number that’s likely wildly conservative.

The search for Rachel was methodical and extensive.

Teams scoured the thick vegetation where it’s entirely possible to walk by a clue or even an entire body and not see it.

The terrain was brutal.

Toppled trees covered in moss.

Everything tilted at absurd angles of 35 to 40°.

Making progress measured in hundreds of feet, not miles.

Her family held on to hope.

Maybe she’d taken shelter somewhere.

Maybe she was injured but alive.

Her father, Brad Trip, whom everyone calls Brad Dad, refused to give up.

Jaime, her aranged husband, waited by the phone for news that never came.

But after 10 days of searching, with winter conditions worsening and no trace of Rachel found, the Scadget County Sheriff’s Office made the difficult decision to suspend the search.

For most missing person’s cases, this is where the story ends.

The family is left with questions, hope slowly fading into heartbreaking acceptance.

But Rachel’s story was different because when the official search ended, one man refused to stop looking.

His name was Carlton Bud Carr Jr.

and he would spend the next 2 years searching for a woman he’d never met, driven by what he called his karmic debt to society.

Bud Carr is not the man you’d expect to spend months in the wilderness searching for missing people.

Lean as a whip and covered in tattoos, including a Buddhist swastika, mohawkked, and with a felony conviction for armed robbery, Carr looks more like someone you’d cross the street to avoid than a volunteer searcher.

Born in California’s San Bernardino Valley in 1978, Carr learned wilderness survival from his father at a Colorado gold mine.

Those boom years taught him how to move through mountains, how to read terrain, how to survive when civilization disappears.

But poor choices led to prison time.

5 years in Missouri after a botched gun store robbery driven by Y2K paranoia.

In solitary confinement, contemplating suicide, Carr found Buddhism.

He converted completely, even publishing three books on the topic, though his journey was far from conventional.

When he emerged from prison, Carr carried his past like a badge of honor and his Buddhist beliefs like armor.

He became a carpenter, moved to Northwest Washington with his wife and three children, and began his unusual calling, searching for missing people as a way to balance the scales of karma.

He’d never found a single person alive.

But when Rachel Lacaduck vanished, Carr read about it online and felt compelled to help.

While the official search teams packed up their equipment and moved on to other emergencies, Carr drove to the North Cascades and began what would become an obsession.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, Carr returned to Hidden Lake Trail.

He brought volunteers, former Marines, rogue search and rescue members, grieving family members of other missing people.

They formed an unlikely family united by loss and the desperate need for answers.

The terrain was punishing.

Spiders repelling into hair, mosscovered logs creating natural obstacles, vegetation so thick you could walk past a body and never see it.

Progress was measured in hundreds of feet, not miles.

But Carr kept searching even as online critics called him a charlatan, a grief proeteer, and worse.

He posted videos on social media documenting his efforts, drawing both supporters and detractors.

Some accused him of capitalizing on tragedy.

Others saw him as the only person who cared enough to keep looking.

We are just clearing ground.

Carr would say, I don’t ever go out and think, oh, I’m going to find Rachel.

Today is a day where we clear ground where they are not.

Among Carr’s regular volunteers was Kevin Dares, a Seattle hotel year with a Louisiana draw and a broken heart.

3 years earlier, his girlfriend Samantha Sers had vanished while hiking Vesper Peak.

Despite a 22-day search, the longest in state history, she was never found.

Dares understood the desperate need of Rachel’s family.

He’d lived it.

So when Carr called, Dares packed his bag and headed to the mountains, using an ice ax to bite into moss, scrambling over rocks, and ducking trees in the endless search for someone else’s lost loved one.

I’ll owe Bud for the rest of my life, Dar said.

People can say whatever they want.

That man steps up more than anybody I’ve ever met.

Despite his faults, the search became a routine of heartbreak.

Carr and his volunteers would spend entire weekends picking their way through the wilderness, methodically covering ground they’d searched before, hoping today would be different.

Rachel’s father, Brad Trip, joined these searches whenever he could.

He’d become friends with Carr, bonding over their shared determination to find his daughter.

During one search, Trip found remnants of a small campfire, a cup of noodles, six hand warmers, some glow sticks.

Nothing conclusively Rachel’s.

But Trip had a feeling.

His spunky, brave daughter wouldn’t have given up without a fight.

This discovery changed their strategy.

Instead of searching uphill from where Rachel was last seen, they began following the terrain downhill from the fire site.

All told, Carr and various volunteers spent more than 70 days on the mountain searching for Rachel.

70 days of false hopes, near misses, and crushing disappointments.

But they never stopped believing that somewhere in those brutal north cascades, answers were waiting.

667 days after Rachel Lacaduck vanished into the North Cascades, the search party was taking a breather on the steep mountainside.

It was hot, humid, and even Kevin Dares, a Louisiana native, was sweating.

The conversation covered more ground than the searchers had.

Dogs versus cats, whether psychics were legitimate, the easy banter of people who’d worked together through tragedy.

Then someone asked, “Where is Kevin?” Dares was 500 ft up the hill, obscured by thick vegetation.

He’d continued up despite the plan to meet with the group.

Maybe it was intuition, maybe stubbornness, but something pulled him right when he should have angled left.

“Kevin,” status report.

Carr’s voice crackled over the radio.

I’m at 4,500 ft.

Dares responded about 500 ft above the group.

Dares dropped his pack, planning to have a cigarette and rest while the others caught up.

Before settling down, he climbed onto a boulder to see if he could spot the group below.

He couldn’t see them through the vegetation, but something caught his eye to the right.

In a depression beneath a tree, a flash of orange completely out of place in the rainfed greenery.

His radio crackled to life.

What color was Rachel’s pad, backpack, and sleeping bag? His voice was tight with an emotion he dared not name.

There was a pause, ever so slight, as if the universe held its breath.

We’re looking for a green backpack and a purple sleeping bag, came the response from someone who’d memorized these details through 2 years of futility.

Not sure about the pad.

Car’s voice cut through.

Orange thermarrest.

Dares looked closer, careful not to disturb anything.

Next to a log and up against a rock sat an orange thermarrest folded as if someone had used it as a cushion.

Next to that, a green backpack and a purple sleeping bag.

Two trekking poles, two boots, red hair.

“I’ve got her,” Dares said into the radio, his voice breaking.

“Y’all come up here.” The discovery revealed Rachel’s final story.

After passing the two hikers on that snowy October day, she had continued up the trail.

At some point, the trail takes a hard left turn.

Easy to miss in a snowstorm.

Rachel’s father believes she missed this turn and became disoriented.

When she realized she was in trouble, she turned around.

The evidence suggested she tried to make it back down, fighting against worsening conditions, cold, and exhaustion.

Rachel was found at 4,500 ft, 1,000 vertical feet below where the hikers had last seen her.

She was 3,300 ft and three hard miles from the road, but she was on the right track back to safety.

A winter storm had been too brutal an opponent.

When the rest of car’s group reached the site, they called the sheriff and flagged evidence with pink tape hanging from branches.

Over the following days, the Scadget County Search and Rescue team gathered Rachel’s remains and belongings.

Her father, Brad Trip, would caress his child’s remains through the thick plastic of a body bag, trying not to cry.

Her husband, Jaime, would receive a bag of her gear from the coroner and place the items on the floor of an empty room in the house they used to share.

But in that moment on the steep mountain side, Kevin Dares was shaking.

car, usually talkative, was uncharacteristically quiet.

“The two men sat together uphill from the remnants of a life.” “I don’t understand why I can’t find Sam,” Dares said, his voice breaking as he thought of his own lost girlfriend.

He composed himself, his defenses returning.

“But hey, this family has closure, so that’s cool.

That will be nice for them.” He paused, warning another searcher to watch his step.

Don’t touch anything.

Brad Dad will sleep much better tonight, Dares continued.

Now I can get Bud to focus on Vesper again.

In the end, it took 667 days, over 70 search days, and the determination of volunteers who refused to give up to bring Rachel Lacaduk home.

A 28-year-old woman who set out to celebrate her birthday became the center of one of the most remarkable search efforts in North Cascad’s history.

Not because of official channels, but because ordinary people chose to keep looking when everyone else had stopped.

Rachel’s story reminds us that in our vast and sometimes cruel wilderness, the most powerful force is the human refusal to abandon hope, even when hope seems lost forever.

What would you have done if Rachel were your daughter, your sister, your friend? Would you have stopped searching? Or would you have kept believing that answers were waiting somewhere in those unforgiving mountains?