Bill Ott Disappeared While Hiking the Grand Canyon 14 Years Ago. Authorities Just Found His Remains.
On April 5, 2012, 65-year-old Bill Ott set out on a three-week, solo thru-hike of a remote area of the Grand Canyon. The Oregon man was in search of thousand-year-old rock panels on the Hualapai Indian Reservation, pictures from the past that he had spent years chasing, photographing, and digitally recreating.
He would never be heard from again.
Now, officials have positively identified a set of human remains found 14 years after his disappearance, closing one chapter of his mysterious disappearance. But what happened to the blue-eyed hiker remains a mystery.
Bill Ott Was a Legendary River Runner and Thru-Hiker
Bill Ott wasn’t just a lost tourist—he was a legendary wilderness figure. Scott Thybony, a Flagstaff anthropologist who knew Ott, told Outside that the former river guide was an experienced expedition hiker. Ott spent 78 days walking the length of the Grand Canyon in 1981, making him the first to complete the traverse on the north side.
“Some people credit him with doing the first thru-hike of the Grand Canyon because on the north side he was able to stay below the rim from Lee’s Ferry to Grand Wash Cliffs at the end of the Grand Canyon,” Thybony told Outside. “But that’s splitting hairs. “
Thybony was involved in the initial 2012 search for Ott—he was also the one who advised him on where to explore. Years before his disappearance, Ott decided to “pull a Thoreau” Thybony said, and sold all of his possessions except for what he could fit on a $250 motorcycle, which he drove up to Cave Junction, Oregon. There, he built a cabin using an ax and saw, tools he could use with just his hands. Thybony says Ott was anti-technology and lived completely off the grid, but he’d come back down to Arizona at least once a year to run the Colorado River, hike through the Grand Canyon, and a more recent passion, search for ancient rock art.
“I try to stay away from using the term ‘otherworldly,’ because this art is of our world,” Thybony told Outside over the phone. “But there’s a series of archaic rock panels that dates back between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, possibly older.”
Featuring long-bodied “visionary” beings, these panels occupy a remote section of the western canyon on the north side of the river. Thybony describes them as spectacular. The multi-colored panels weren’t well-known until the eighties, and Thybony was one of the first modern explorers to examine them in 1998 as part of a National Geographic grant.
Ott was working in a nursing facility at the time of his disappearance, but but devoted his off-time to photographing and digitally recreating ancient rock art.
“He would go pixel by pixel, hours after hours, trying to match the colors with broken-off pigment, removing smoke stains,” Thybony said. “It was a painstaking effort, and it went on for years.”
The post Bill Ott Disappeared While Hiking the Grand Canyon 14 Years Ago. Authorities Just Found His Remains. appeared first on Outside Online.
About The Author
