Yi-Jien Hwa, Disappeared August 11, 2008, Body Found July 3, 2011, Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountains, Montana

Revised July 2024

Malaysian Yi-Jien Hwa,  aged 27, graduated from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He loved the wilderness and wrote content on the website backpackgeartest.org about his experiences with various kinds of outdoor gear and his hikes.

Hwa started backpacking as a teenager, and he and his wife, Siu Yin, planned to embark on their most ambitious hike to date: a dangerous 96-mile trek across Glacier National Park.

What is Glacier National Park, and where is it?

Glacier National Park is a 1,583 sq. mile wilderness area in Montana's Rocky Mountains, with glacier-carved peaks and valleys running to the Canadian border. The mountainous Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses it. Among more than 700 hiking trails, it has a route to photogenic Hidden Lake. It has diverse wildlife ranges from mountain goats to grizzly bears.

Yi-Jien Hwa's trip to Glacier National Park

The couple would begin their eight-day trip at St. Mary, then travel across extremely difficult terrain south of Logan Pass and north toward Kintla Lake Campground.

However, just before they were to begin this trip in the summer of 2008, an unexpected family emergency forced Siu Yin to abandon the hike. After months of planning, Hwa decided he would go anyway despite the obvious risks of a solo hike. His hike would include the risk of hypothermia, animal attack by mountain lions and bears, altitude sickness due to a climb up to 14,000 feet, and water and weather.

When Hwa arrived at the St. Mary Visitor Center park for a backcountry permit, rangers were extremely concerned. Beginning at Logan Pass on August 11th, where he left his car, he would start with a long hike to Sperry Campground, then through Floral Park and the Sperry Glacier basin.

On his second day, he would trek towards Reynolds Creek Campground, northwest of St. Mary Lake, and pick up supplies at Logan Pass. His third night would be spent in Granite Park Campground,  seven miles from Logan Pass, and then on to 50 Mountain Campground at the Continental Divide for his fourth night. Kootenai Lakes was his fifth-night destination, and a day's hiking from there would take him to Hole in the Wall Campground.

Hwa planned to reach the Upper Kintla Lake Campground on his sixth night and continue north to the Kintla Lake trailhead, a final hike of 11.6 miles. He planned to finish on August 18, 2008.

The rangers at St. Mary tried to talk him out of the trip, but Hwa refused to listen to the advice after all the planning and preparation, and they reluctantly issued the permit. Park spokeswoman Norma Sosa said in early September 2008, “Even for a seasoned mountaineer, this is a tough and dangerous itinerary," she said. “The biggest red flag was that he was a solo hiker. This is not a hike we would advise to attempt solo.”

On the first day of Hwa's hike, he descended into Floral Park, an area of grassy slopes and wildflowers in Spring, between Logan Pass and Sperry Chalet, which follows the comparatively easy Hidden Lake Trail for three miles, passes near the southern edge of Bearhat Mountain, and then climbs above the lake and almost immediately drops into a basin. Crossing the basin leads to a gentle route up to the Sperry Glacier and then onto Comeau Pass. A short distance to the right, hikers reach the top of a high ridge with a view of Avalanche Lake some four thousand feet below. From here, the downhill route to Mary Baker Lake leads into Floral Park.

The hike on the 1st day was so steep and challenging that there was a low chance of meeting anyone else.  The day's efforts were even more extreme as  Floral Park would not be a final destination. Hwa's plan needed him to reach Sperry Campground, which was several miles more difficult hiking beyond the meadows in rock and boulder-strewn terrain. The area was also full of ice, crevasses, loose scree, steep slopes, and fast-flowing and freezing streams. 

The disappearance and search for Yi-Jien Hwa

A week later, Hwa's family notified the rangers that he had not called them on the appointed day to tell them he was at Kintla Lake Camp.

What happened to Hwa on that first day on the route to Floral Park? 

• Hwa could have fallen into a crevice in a snowfield that became concealed by overgrowth.

• He could have fallen into the numerous fast-flowing streams.

• He might have crawled into a hole or under an overhang for shelter, making him invisible to helicopters searching for his body.

• Any fall from a cliff might have dislodged enough loose rock to conceal him.

Rangers found Hwa's car still parked at Logan Pass, fully loaded with the supplies he had planned to pick up after his second night in the park so he could never manage to complete the circuit back. Search and rescue teams interviewed every hiker to whom they had issued a backcountry pass to the Sperry Campground, and no one remembered meeting a solo hiker. 

Rangers believed that the highest probability was that he went in from Logan Pass and tried to make it to the Sperry Campground through the Floral Park because he had expressed a high desire to go through Floral Park to those at St. Mary before he started his hike.

No human footprints were visible on the glacier's surface, as three inches of new snow had fallen since the day Hwa might have passed through the area.

By the end of August, more than 2,500 man-hours had been spent searching, including helicopters, canine teams, and horseback riders, but surprisingly, they had no luck as they were looking in a defined area due to the discovery of the car loaded with supplies. The choppers had FLIR, heat-seeking equipment. 

On the seventh day, just two search teams continued on the ground in the park, including one fifteen-member team with technical rope training focused on Sperry Glacier and the surrounding area. These searchers descended into the cracks and crevices in the area. Several veteran mountaineers said that if an animal attack had happened, searchers would have found his walking poles, boots, and at least part of his backpack.

Park officials decided to end the full-scale search, though they committed to Hwa's family to continue looking into new leads and any evidence that came to light. The lack of clues made park officials question if Hwa had even hiked in the park as they had combed. They considered every possibility, including that Hwa might have headed north into Canada or been picked up by someone else and driven out of Glacier. However, the team found no evidence of problems Hwa might try to flee from.

Discovery of Yi-Jien Hwa’s remains and identification

But, nearly three years later, on July 3, 2011, remains were eventually located.

John Wagner and his son, Christopher, were on the headwall of Avalanche Lake as a possible route to Floral Park. They didn't succeed, but as they climbed up a dry creek bed on the east side of the lake, John saw something he had not expected. He got closer and found the bits of color he spotted in the weeds, a nylon strap and a pair of long underwear. He thought it odd that someone would leave or even lose clothing in a gully at this remote location, so he reported his find to Park Rangers and took them to the area.

They then found bone fragments from the decomposed body and equipment that Hwa detailed on his equipment list when he applied for his backcountry permit. Rangers believed that water and avalanches transported this evidence down the slope from the cliffs above. 

The park sent the bone fragments to the National Missing Persons Program at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. There, they were examined over several months, and on May 31, 2012, they announced that the bone fragments and clothing were indeed the remains of Yi-Jien Hwa. But it was impossible to tell the exact cause of death with so little remaining evidence.

It is a sad tale of a solo hiker probably succumbing to the terrain in this dangerous part of the Glacier National Park. But the cause of death remains a mystery on that first day of hiking around Avalanche Lake. A slip, rockfall or something more sinister? It was surprising that Hwa's body was never found much earlier after such a comprehensive search.

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Sources

https://missoulian.com/news/local/lost-never-found-yi-jien-hwa-among-those-swallowed-by-glacier-national-park/article_c241cc8c-3bdd-5a5b-bc8a-557e20300f0c.html

https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/glacier-park-bones-identified-as-hiker-missing-since-2008/article_c04600aa-aa89-11e1-927f-0019bb2963f4.html