The mysterious disappearance of cyclist Marty Leger in Nova Scotia
Marty Leger, disappeared May 29, 2014, Spider Lake, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Revised January 2024
Marty Leger, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was 30 years old when he rode a bike at a popular trail network at Spider Lake on May 29, 2014.
There isn’t anything extremely remote about the area; the trailhead is even in a residential area. Marty was familiar with the trails and was riding a new black Santa Cruz Heckler bike.
Later that day, RCMP received the call that he was missing at 8.40 pm after failing to return home in Halifax at 4 pm. His vehicle was parked near the trailhead at the end of Spider Lake Road.
Marty remains missing.
The search for Marty Leger near Spider Lake
Tony Mancini, an avid biker familiar with the trails near Spider Lake, came out to help. “I live in the neighbourhood, I ride, and because I’m familiar with [the trails] — probably more so than many of even the trained searchers — I figured if I can point them in the right direction, that [would] be great.” Mancini said the trails weave through dense woods. “There’s lots of trails, so it’s easy to get lost and turned around if you’re not familiar with them. We refer to [these trails] in the biking world as single-track, meaning one bike at a time. You couldn’t bike side by side. So a lot of ups and downs, what we call rock gardens — which are a lot of roots and rocks, and so you have to have experience to be able to ride them because it’s not smooth riding.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) mounted a search that included nearly 500 people. Volunteers, dogs, and helicopters searched a zone of almost 60 square miles and the operation to look for Marty Leger was one of the largest in Canadian history. It involved search and rescue teams from Halifax and Eastern Shore, Joint Task Force Atlantic, Halifax Regional Police, and the Department of Natural Resources. Two hundred fifty members of the military also joined the SAR effort.
Volunteers said they scoured through thick shrubs and even scaled nine-metre cliffs. Tom Dyer of Chester Basin said, "It’s very rough. A lot of shrub brush keeps hanging around your legs. Lots of dead falls, boulders you have to climb over. You sit there and think there’s no way the person could be here, but you've got to eliminate it and be positive that the person you’re searching for isn’t in that area. Usually, it’s the roughest stuff you’ve got to go through.”
RCMP Cpl. Scott MacRae said some searchers suffered injuries due to the rugged terrain and that crews were exhausted.
Nothing was found…no sign of a bike or Marty. The search for Marty Leger was called off on June 3, 2014.
Discovery of remains
Then, in October 2016, a hunter made a gruesome discovery in thick undergrowth. He found human remains near a bike trail in a rocky landscape in an area of a trail system about 0.6 miles (1 km) from the end of Spider Lake Road. The RCMP forensic identification section and the Medical Examiner's office attended the scene. Could this finally be the resting place of the missing cyclist?
However, the remains were not Marty, and they belonged to a 50-year-old Dartmouth man who went missing in 2013, Cordell Stephen Weare. On November 24, 2013, Cordell left his home on Montebello Drive without any money, identification or cellphone. At the time, his family told police he left the house upset. Police said they did not suspect foul play was a factor in Weare's death.
Location of remains - Cordell Stephen Weare
What happened to Marty Leger?
Was he hit by a vehicle?
The bike was never recovered; what happened to it? - it was brand new, and Marty was unlikely just to leave it.
A cyclist in the area said, “I used to ride those trails quite a bit and ran a dirt bike on the neighbouring logging road for a few years. A lot of people don’t realize that the spider lake trails dump out into that logging road in a few blind spots. I don’t know about the current state of that logging road but back then there were 4x4 lifted trucks that would fly through that trail as fast as 100+ km/h and a lot of the time they’d be drinking. Every weekend you’d see them go through.
I’ve always thought that he came out of one of those trail drops into the logging road and was hit by one of those trucks. They might have been drinking and put him in the back and took him and his bike somewhere else if they thought he was dead. Those trucks could drop him in a million places he’d never be seen. It’s the only way it makes sense to me. Traveling into the thick bush away from beaten trails isn’t something you see mountain bikers do very often and getting hit coming out of one of those intersections was always a big fear of mine. Just my 2 cents.”
Did he get lost and die of hypothermia?
It is not believed that Marty intended to ride very far that day. He brought a map, but it was found in the car, so perhaps he was comfortable enough with his intended route without it. The area is bordered on one side by a highway, but all other directions are densely wooded areas.
Marcel Leger, Marty’s brother, said, “With a bike, you can cover more ground... so you can likely get yourself out. Also, you tend to have to stick to the trails when biking.” Marty almost certainly went off-trail, perhaps in an attempt to take a shortcut. “I am not surprised they didn’t find his bike, because if they would have found it, they would have found him. I cannot imagine him leaving his new bike. It was maybe his third ride on it.”
Marcel said, “My best guess is that he got off trail and got lost. Once he realized he was lost, he found the nearest dirt road and tried to follow that until he hit a highway or a neighborhood. He likely went as far as he could and tried to sleep the night off and go back at it in the morning. My guess is that he tried hard to get out and covered a lot of ground, but unfortunately, that likely put him out of the radius they were searching. It was cold that night, and he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. So I’m thinking he went to bed and hypothermia set in and he simply didn’t wake up.”
According to Marcel, it’s possible the trail got too technical for Marty, and he fell hard and succumbed to injuries. That’s certainly possible, but if he’d fallen so hard that he was badly injured, it doesn’t make sense he’d have stumbled or crawled far from the trail; at least the bike would have been located. “I have a hard time believing he got hurt badly—he rode very conservatively, never did jumps or crazy lines he could not handle,” Marcel said
“I keep telling myself it would be easier if it were a heart attack or car accident—at least we could be angry at something,” he says. “Not knowing if or how much he suffered at the end is what haunts me. It might have been a quick ending, but the thought of him being really hurt and yelling for help will stay with me for a while. I try not to focus too much on the fact that he disappeared and more so just think of him as gone.” The family likely will never know what happened. “There is no getting past it or moving on,” Marcel says. “No being OK with it or getting over it. Closure isn’t an option, unfortunately.”
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Sources
https://www.outsideonline.com/2397398/meet-new-outdoor-all-stars
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-cyclist-marty-leger-s-disappearance-probe-continues-1-year-later-1.3092715
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/marty-leger-search-called-off-in-waverley-1.2662877
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/missing-mountain-biker-search-underway-near-spider-lake-1.2659178
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/human-remains-waverley-identified-dartmouth-man-1.3792690
