The Disappearance of Jim Carter from Ape Canyon – Did the “Apes” Really Get Him?
This write up is about a famous disappearance that has since become incorporated into Bigfoot lore. It covers the 1966 source that made the disappearance famous, followed by two contemporary 1950 newspaper articles that contain somewhat different details.
Ape Canyon is a gorge on the southeast portion of Mount St. Helens in the American state of Washington.
The canyon became so named when a group of miners alleged that “apemen” (aka BigFoot, Sasquatch) attacked their cabin one night in 1924 (detailed in the Slate article linked below).
The 1966 book entitled Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist? by Roger Patterson published another story about Ape Canyon. It was a reprint of an August 1963 newspaper article from the Longview Times entitled Ape Canyon Holds Unsolved Mystery by staff writer Marge Davenport.
Summary of the 1966 reprint of the 1963 Article
Jim Carter, 32, was an experienced skier and mountaineer who disappeared from the slopes of Mount St. Helens in May of 1950. He was with a 20-member climbing party from Seattle.
Bob Lee, a well known Portland mountaineer and member of the Seattle Mountain Search and Rescue, said, “Dr. Otto Trott, Lee Stark and I finally came to the conclusion that the apes got him.” (Note: the 1966 book uses the term apes but some online sources I found use the term mountain devils).
Lee described the search for Carter as “the most eerie experience I have ever had.” Every time Lee found himself alone, he felt that he was being watched.
“I could feel the hair on my neck standing up,” Lee said. “It was eerie. I was unarmed, except for my ice ax and, believe me, I never let go of that.”
Carter and his party had climbed Mount St. Helens. On their way back down, Carter skied to a landmark named Dog’s Head with the intention of photographing the rest of the group as they skied down to the timberline. Dog’s Head was situated at about 8000 feet altitude and was destroyed when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.
Carter was never seen again.
His discarded film box was found where he had taken a picture. From that point, Lee says that Carter appears to have skied down the mountain in a great panic, “taking chances that no skier of his caliber would take, unless something was terribly wrong or he was being pursued.”
“He jumped over two or three large crevasses and evidently was going like the devil.”
Carter’s tracks reached the side of Ape Canyon but they didn’t find him at the bottom at all. As many as 75 persons spent the next five days searching the canyon, but no trace of Carter was ever found. The search was called off after two weeks.
If Lee saw large footprints near Carter’s ski tracks then that detail was missing from the article.
Summary of the 1950 Articles
I found two articles from May 1950 in the California Digital Newspaper Collection about the disappearance of a Joe Carter who disappeared while skiing at Mount St. Helens.
Both of these articles were published while the search was still ongoing.
The Madera Tribune of May 23rd says that Carter was 18 and that a helicopter was to be dispatched to search for him.
The San Bernardino Sun article of May 25th says that Carter was 32 (agreeing with the Patterson reprint) and that he was diabetic. This detail isn’t in the Patterson reprint.
This article also says that “Carter’s tracks near Ape canyon tonight indicated he had turned into total wilderness during the last 24 hours.” There’s nothing in this article to indicate if Carter was or wasn’t fleeing something. It sounds like he just entered the tree-line in a calm and deliberate manner.
The article also says, “Carter apparently abandoned his skis late Sunday or early Monday. Stanger and Don Rascom traced the man’s tracks by plane again this afternoon towards the Eagle Crick ranger station before they disappeared into complete wilderness.”
The article ends by mentioning the “apemen” that were believed by some indigenous peoples to inhabit the valley, and also refers to the 1924 incident which gave the canyon its name.
Neither of the 1950 articles mentioned Lee (of course, there were as many as 75 people involved in the search)
Questions
What happened to Jim/Joe Carter?
Does the fact that was diabetic change your opinion of the 1963/1966 story?
Do you believe in the apes?
Links
Disappearance of skier Jim Carter Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape_Canyon#Disappearance_of_skier_Jim_Carter
Ape Canyon Holds Unsolved Mystery (copy of 1963 article, but differs from 1966 Patterson reprint)
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/spiritlake.htm
Search Organized For Lost Skiier, Madera Tribune, Volume 59, Number 46, 23 May 1950
Searchers Fail to Find Diabetic Skier Who Had Only One Day’s Insulin Supply, San Bernardino Sun, 25 May 1950
Slate article describing how Ape Canyon got it’s name: