YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – The family of a Winona climber missing on a solo adventure up Eagle Peak has spent the week at Lake Hotel in Yellowstone Park, checking regularly with a search headquarters 10 minutes away. Brian King-Henke said his son may have overreached his athleticism in tackling Eagle Peak, a treacherous 11,300-foot crag in the remote southeast corner of the park. “He took on something he was not prepared for,” King-Henke said. A massive air and ground search for the 22-year-old adventurer has been underway a week. His father had encouraged Austin to take a summer tourist job at Yellowstone. “I’m the one who told him to come out here,” King-Henke told an interviewer: “You know, I was like, ‘You’re 22. Go see the United States.'” The climb up Eagle Peak was to be his final Yellowstone adventure before the end of the Yellowstone tourist seas0n – a solo climb. Austin’s mother Pandy King was the last to hear from Austin. He called from the summit about 7 p.m., September 17. “This was the pinnacle of his summer because he had to go home in two weeks,” she said. “So, this was it. This was the grand adventure for him.” Said his father: “I’m glad he was doing what he loved.” Meanwhile, the parents and Austin’s brother at the hotel can hear search helicopters heading out all day every day toward Eagle Peak, which is across Yellowstone Lake and then about 14 miles into the wilderness.
Earlier: Weather eases: Search for Winona climber intensifies
Lake shuttle. Austin King-Henke took a boat shuttle to a drop-off point on the south arm of Yellowstone Lake to begin a five-day trek to Eagle Peak. He didn’t return for a scheduled pickup seven days later.
Lay of the land. Eagle Peak is deep in the Absarokee Mountains southeast of Yellowstone Lake and about 50 miles from Cody, Wyoming.