Hundreds join ongoing, expanding search for missing Lake Tahoe hiker
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Authorities and volunteers continued searching Sunday for a man who vanished on May 25 while hiking through a wooded expanse west of Lake Tahoe.Jason Coughran, a 60-year-old with an athletic build, had set out on a trek last Monday into Desolation Wilderness from nearby Fallen Leaf Lake.He was thought to have been in the area of Angora Peak around 11 a.m., and the last anyone heard from him was around that afternoon, authorities said.
Days later, the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department issued a public appeal for any information about his whereabouts.By Saturday evening, a total of nearly 200 search and rescue personnel had joined in the search operation, according to a post on the department’s Facebook page.Some of the searchers were ferried into the area and dropped off by a massive Air National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter; about 50 of the them would remain there overnight as they continued the search for Coughran.Desolation Wilderness in Eldorado National Forest is a short drive from South Lake Tahoe and covers “63,960 acres of subalpine and alpine forest, granitic peaks, and glacially-formed valleys and lakes,” according to the U.S.
Forest Service.An email to the Sheriff’s Department’s press office wasn’t immediately returned on Sunday.Authorities said that Coughran — who they described as a 6-foot-2, 150-pound white man with brown hair and hazel eyes — may have been wearing khaki shorts.The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
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