Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

I have a bit of an obsession with the Pacific Crest Trail. I live so close to it. I can get to a trailhead in less than two hours, if I want. I had plans to backpack a large section of it at one point (but then I was diagnosed with epilepsy and my doctors told me that wasn’t such a good idea) and that’s about 33% of the reason I wanted to read this book. Another 33% is my fascination with stories about missing hikers and the other 33% was based simply on the blurb. Then let’s just allow a negligible amount there just for me liking true crime. Let me tell you: This book is absolutely fantastic.

Andrea Lankford may be a former park ranger for the NPS that worked as a cop, an investigator, a firefighter, and a wilderness medic, but she’s also a very talented writer. I found her earnestness refreshing compared to some other writers in this genre and connected ones. Lankford lets us readers hear her vulnerability, frustration, exhaustion, fear, anger, regret, and more as she helps her compatriots search for lost hikers over the course of a few years. Lankford is level-headed and almost cynical after her years in the NPS and as an investigator, yet she can’t help but get wrapped up sometimes in the excitement of new technology that will help them search, or dive deep into research when a really good lead comes around. In turn, we also witness how dispirited and angry she gets when good money goes into resources that definitely weren’t worth it, watch as people get hurt or fall ill during searches, and look on as she sees the families of the missing hikers come around to the the same thing she already knows: that the government basically doesn’t have the resources to look for missing hikers and they usually don’t even care.

This book isn’t about Andrea Lankford, though, as fascinating as she is. It’s about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the hiking culture, the main three missing hikers they’re looking for, how they all came together to look for them, how social media has both helped and hindered searches for missing hikers, about different methodologies to search for missing hikers, the dangers that come with being the searchers, how hard it is to resist following up on every lead even though you know it’s probably going to end up being a dead end, and the importance of knowing when it’s time to stop actively looking.

The stories told in this book are fascinating and the people are absolutely remarkable. There are some absolutely powerful and tenacious people in this book and some absolutely horrible people. There are startling stories involving wildlife and a complicated one involving a cult. There’s the dangers of cannabis farms, illegal opium poppy operations, wildfires, illegal mushroom hunting, and trail trolls. There’s also the majesty of Mount Rainier, the rainforests of Washington, the weird beauty of an abandoned Buddhist temple, the surprising tasty hardiness of a cult-made nutrition bar, and camaraderie over many campfires and glasses of wine.

All at once a biography of missing hikers, their families, and the people who search for them, a memoir of Lankford’s experience with this group, and a short history discourse on the PCT and hiking culture, you couldn’t ask for a book that will simultaneously entertain you and break your heart.

I’d like to thank Hachette Books for providing me a copy of the physical ARC of this book via their influencer program. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Biography/History/Memoir/Nonfiction/True Crime