The American Dyatlov Pass, aka The Yuba Incident
Dim the lights and strap in for a doozy, folks. This week Spencer and Ryan recount the strange and terrifying mystery of The Yuba Incident, sometimes referred to as: The American Dyatlov Pass. In Northern California in 1978, five friends left a basketball game they were attending on a Friday night, and none of the men ever came home.
Hot Topics: The Yuba Incident, Shout Out To Basketball, The Mercury Montego Was Fire, Running Into Time-Traveling Bigfoot, 20 Miles Uphill, Oh Fuck Run, Similarities to The Dyatlov Pass, Astonishing Legends.
Five Men Disappear
On February 24, 1978 five men from Yuba City, California (about 40 miles north of Sacramento) disappeared. Jack Huett, Gary Mathias, William Sterling, Jack Madruga, and Theodore Weiher were between the ages of 24 and 32. Three of the men had developmental disabilities, one had schizophrenia, and one was described by his family as “slow”.
On Friday, 2/24, they drove about 50 miles north to Chico to attend a college basketball game. When they did not return from the game, their families became concerned and called the police. By Saturday, the county sheriffs department began searching for the men. On Tuesday, 2/28, a forest ranger found Jack Madruga’s car. The men apparently abandoned the car on a gravel road near Oroville, in the Rogers Cow camp area. Authorities found the car at an elevation of 4,500 feet, about a 2.5 hour drive from Chico, in the opposite direction from the route they would have taken between Yuba City and Chico.
There was no evidence of foul play at the site of the car. The keys were not there. Candy wrappers and basketball programs were in the car. They found the car unlocked, with one window rolled down. There was no damage, there was gas in the tank, and it was not stuck in the snow. Forest rangers searched the area for five days and found no trace of the men. Soon after they started searching, a severe blizzard moved in, covering any potential tracks and making it impossible to continue.
Witnesses Contact Police
Joseph Schons claimed to have seen the car between 11:00–12:00 on Friday, 2/24. He was driving up the gravel road to his cabin when his car became stuck in the snow. While trying to push his car out, he suffered a heart attack. He laid in his car, in an attempt to stay warm until he could make it back down the road. At about 11:30, he saw two sets of headlights coming up behind him. One was a car, and the other a pickup truck. He got out of his car to flag them down. The two cars stopped about 20 feet behind him. The passengers then left together in one car. Joseph spent the rest of the night in his car before walking back down the mountain in the morning.
A woman reported seeing the five men in a red pickup truck on Saturday and Sunday, about an hour’s drive from the site of their abandoned car. She owned a store there, where two of the men came in to buy food. One of them made a phone call from a nearby phone booth, and the other two stayed in the truck.
Months Later, Authorities Find Four of the Men
In June, after all the snow had melted. A man riding his motorcycle through the area noticed a broken window on a forest service trailer. The trailer was located about 19 miles (up the mountain) from where the car was found. Inside the trailer, he found the body of Ted Weiher. Search and rescue teams then began combing the area around the trailer and found the remains of Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, and Jack Huett. Authorities never found Gary Mathias.
Based on his beard growth and weight loss, the pathologist estimated that Weiher had lived 8-13 weeks after his disappearance. When he disappeared, he weighed 200 pounds. He weighed just 120 at the time of his death. A bed sheet shroud laid over his body, indicating that at least one of the other men was in the trailer with him when he died.
Due to the elements and many animals in the area, the other men’s bodies decomposed considerably more. However, an autopsy determined that the men likely died from exposure.
Once they entered the trailer, authorities found heavy clothing, matches, playing cards, books, wooden furniture, and other combustible materials strewn about. None of the men wore heavy clothing, and there had been no apparent attempt to start a fire. A propane tank connected to the trailer, which could have supplied them with heat and cooking fuel, was untouched.
Finally, there was a storage shed outside, containing a year’s supply of c-rations. (an individual canned, pre-cooked, and prepared meal. C-rations were issued to U.S. military land forces when fresh food or packaged unprepared food was not possible or not available). The men consumed 36 of the meals, but left the majority of them untouched.
Notes
This case remains unsolved, and very little information is available. The information found in this article comes primarily from two sources. The first is a Washington Post article from June 6, 1978. The second is an LA Times article from March of 1978. They ran an update in June, after the men were found.
Shoutout to Reddit and u/wordblender for bringing this story to light and for naming it The American Dyatlov.
Basic information on the Dyatlov Pass incident can be found here. Astonishing Legends also did a very thorough retelling of the story.
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