Historical Strangeness

The most mysterious outdoor stories from history

StrangeOutdoors.com 12/18/20 StrangeOutdoors.com 12/18/20

The strange disappearance of Jim Carter in Ape Canyon

Jim Carter, disappeared May 1950, Ape Canyon, Mt. Saint Helens, Washington

Revised December 2023

Jim Carter, 32, was with a 20-member climbing party from Seattle who were on Mount St. Helens in Washington in May 1950. On the way down the mountain, he left the other climbers near a landmark called Dog's Head at around 8,000 feet.

Carter was an experienced skier and mountaineer, and he told the rest of the climbers that he would ski around to the left and take a picture of the group as they skied down to the timberline.

From here, Carter took off down the mountain in a wild, death-defying dash, apparently taking chances that no skier of his caliber would take unless something was terribly wrong or he was being pursued. He jumped over two or three large crevasses and was going like the devil down the slope, seemingly frightened of something.

That was the last time that anyone saw Carter alive. Was his disappearance linked to the famous “Giant Ape” attack of 1924?

The search for Jim Carter

Despite a large search of the area for weeks by experienced search and rescue teams, no trace of Carter was found. Only a discarded film box at the point where he had taken a picture was discovered.

When Carter's tracks reached the steep side of Ape Canyon, the searchers were amazed to see that Carter had been in such a hurry that he went right down the steep canyon walls. But they did not find him at the bottom of the canyon as they expected. The tracks were traced by plane again towards the Eagle Crick ranger station before they disappeared into complete wilderness.

"Carter's complete disappearance is an unsolved mystery to this day," declared Bob Lee, a Seattle Mountain Search and Rescue unit member who was involved in the operation to find Carter. Lee was a very experienced Portland mountaineer, and his credentials included that he was a member of the exclusive worldwide Alpine Club as well as the leader of the 1961 Himalayan expedition, and adviser to the 1963 American expedition.

Lee said that every time he got cut off from the rest of the searchers during the long search, he felt that "somebody was watching me….and there was something strange on the high slopes of the mountain." He described the search as "the most eerie experience I have ever had", “I could feel the hair on my neck standing up. It was eerie. I was unarmed, except for my ice axe, and, believe me, I never let go of that."

"We combed the canyon, one end to the other, for five days. Sometimes there were as many as 75 persons in the search party, but no sign of Carter or his equipment was found," Lee said. After two weeks, the search was called off.

Seventy years later Jim’s remains or equipment have never been found.

Where is Ape Canyon and where did its name come from?

Ape Canyon is a gorge along the edge of the Plains of Abraham, on the southeast shoulder of Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington. The gorge narrows to as close as eight feet (2.5 m) at one point.

Ape Canyon was heavily impacted by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and it is near the steep rocky canyon that is the present Ape Canyon trail. On the south side of the mountain is another feature named Ape Cave.

The Canyon was reportedly the site of a violent encounter in 1924 between a group of miners and several "apemen" or BigFoot, Sasquatch in 1924, an event later incorporated into Bigfoot folklore. These allegations were reported in the July 16, 1924, issue of The Oregonian.

Fred Beck, Gabe Lefever, John Peterson, Marion Smith and Smith’s son Roy described coming upon “gorilla men” near where they had built a small cabin for their gold mining trips. They claimed they were eight miles from Spirit Lake when they encountered four giant animals moving through the forest with erect, human-like strides. “They are covered with long, black hair. Their ears are about four inches long and stick straight up. They have four toes, short and stubby.” The witnesses estimated each animal weighed about 400 pounds.

Scared witless by the giant creatures, Fred Beck or one of his companions fired his rifle at one of the creatures and struck three times. The wounded animal then fell off the cliff. But that was not the end of the story.

That night, the men woke up when huge stones began hitting the outside of the cabin. Then they heard and felt giant bodies slamming against the walls and door before tearing a hole in the roof, allowing them to target Beck. Two of the rocks struck Beck, one of them rendering him unconscious for nearly two hours.

Finally, after an uncomfortable and frightening night in the cabin, the sun rose, and the attackers disappeared. The men ran for their lives out of the woods.

Rangers J.H. Huffman and William Welch hiked into the forest with Beck, who took them to the cliff where he said the wounded ape-man was shot. They found nothing. They then continued to the cabin, and Beck pointed out the large stones used in the attack. Huffman and Welch weren’t impressed, concluding that the gold prospectors had probably placed the large stones themselves and faked the story.

An Oregonian reporter asked the rangers about the 14-inch-long footprints near the cabin. They responded that they believed the gold prospectors had made the prints themselves.

But friends of the men reported that they believed the story and saw something that could not be explained.

William Halliday, director of the Western Speleological Survey, claimed in his 1983 pamphlet Ape Cave and the Mount Saint Helens Apes that the miner's attackers were local youths. Until the eruption of Mount St. Helens, counselors from the YMCA's Camp Meehan on nearby Spirit Lake brought hikers to the canyon's edge. They related a tradition that the 1924 incident resulted from young campers throwing light pumice stones into the canyon, not realizing miners were at the bottom. Looking up, the miners would have only seen dark, moonlit figures throwing rocks at their cabin. The canyon's narrow walls would have distorted the voices of the YMCA campers enough to frighten the men below.

StrangeOutdoors Exclusive Members Only Area

$15.99

One time

Exclusive articles for members of StrangeOutdoors that are not available elsewhere on the site.

✓ 64 articles as of December 2024

✓ One time fee

✓ Exclusive members-only multi-blog articles

See the latest Exclusive members-only articles on StrangeOutdoors.com

Read more Historical Strangeness stories

The terrible events of the Batavia Shipwreck on Murder Island

The Great Mull Air Mystery - The death of Peter Gibbs on the Isle of Mull in Scotland

The strange story of Pauline Picard