This Everest Disaster PISSES Me Off on a Visceral Level

I found another Everest story that pisses me off so much and once you hear it I think you're gonna be pissed too. I'll tell you the entire uncensored story and then, if you can handle it, I'm gonna tell you about one of the most disturbing disappearances to ever take place in the Alaskan wilderness. And finally, I'm gonna tell you a bonus story about one of Yosemite National Park's most haunting mysteries, one that baffles park rangers to this day. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a 5 star review and hit the follow button right now. If you've already done this, then thank you so much for helping us reach our goal of 1,000 5 star reviews. But as you can see, we still have a long ways to go and so if you haven't left that 5 star review, please do it right now and listen on if you dare. This story pisses me off and speaking of being pissed off, in 2016, a woman named Anjali Kulkarni became very pissed off when she noticed a strange post on Facebook. I promise this is all gonna make sense very soon. Anjali was casually scrolling on Facebook when she noticed this photograph posted by a Hindu media outlet. It claimed that the climbers pictured had just became the first Indian couple to successfully summit Mount Everest together. The comment section underneath the photograph was flooded with people offering congratulations to the couple, but Anjali felt no such desire to join them. You see, she had secretly hoped that this record would stay unbroken, and this photo crushed her. Because she and her husband had been actively planning to break that record for themselves. However, her disappointment quickly turned to skepticism and then anger because she realized that she knew something about this couple that no one in the world was reporting. So Anjali is looking at this Facebook post, this photo, and this news article, and she realized that she recognized the names and even the faces of the couple in this photo. They were Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, and Anjali knew them and had even spent time with them when they were all together in Australia as part of a climbing tour for folks attempting to summit the 10 tallest peaks on the continent. And because of all this time that she spent with them, she knew that Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod were frauds. And now she had to prove it. You need to understand that, Anjali and her husband Sharad Kulkarni had both done very well in their professional lives. They actually ran an advertising agency in Mumbai, India. And this business didn't just support their family, but it was also the fuel for pursuing their favorite activity together. That would be mountaineering and climbing. Now, India has a very rich climbing culture with, you know, the Himalayas forming the northern border of the country. And for the longest time, climbing was kind of seen as just like, man's activity. But the Kulkarnis, well, they were different. You're actually going to hear more about everything that made them different all throughout this video. But the main thing was that mountaineering was something they pursued together as a couple. By the time that Anjali saw the Facebook photo and saw that this other couple had broken this record, supposedly, well, she and her husband had already climbed some of the tallest mountains around the world. And they were two years deep into training for their biggest climb yet. Mount Everest, of course. Their plan was to work at their company RX Communications for another year or so. And then they would retire so they could focus solely on mountaineering together. Now, Anjali and Sharad often took group trips around the world with other Indians, you know, as part of their adventures and their training. They loved the difficulty of these climbs, you know, overcoming obstacles and, of course, checking achievements off of their list. And they took these expeditions very seriously. So, you know, they were able to do a lot of things. And they were so seriously, in fact, that they basically had zero room for nonsense, which might have annoyed some of the more casual climbers that they traveled with, such as Dinesh and Tara Keshwari Rathode, you know, the same couple that had supposedly just made history on Everest. According to Anjali's opinion, let's just say that the Rathodes liked the glory of summoning a lot more than the actual climbing itself. And the Rathodes were apparently willing to cut a few corners in order to reach that glory. For example, during the Aussie 10 challenge, which Anjali and Sharad did with the Rathodes, well, Anjali and Sharad documented every single summit that they reached in order to prove that they had actually completed it. While on the other hand, the Rathodes skipped a few of the less noteworthy mountains. At the time, Anjali didn't think to report the fraudulent claim that the Rathodes were making about completing the Aussie 10. I mean, why bother at that point? And so they basically got a hall pass. However, this time we're talking about Mount Everest, and Anjali knew that no one should get a hall pass for saying that they had summited the highest mountain in the world if they didn't. And plus, the Rathodes were claiming to have broken a record that Anjali and Sharad wanted for themselves. And so sitting at her desk that day, Anjali took out a pen and paper, and she began to write about the Rathodes. She began to fact check the timeline that the Rathodes claimed to have followed in their summit trek. She stayed late in the office that night, time stamping the Rathodes story down to the minute, and then she went back to the photographs on Facebook. She didn't comment on them. She didn't share them. She didn't do any of that. She simply took some screenshots and zoomed in for a little bit of a closer look. Anjali's eyes scanned these photographs even more carefully than she had done before. That night, Anjali realized that the Rathodes hadn't just lied, but they had actually done something criminal. And now, she needed to act quickly. They say that snitches get stitches, but Anjali clearly didn't care about this because she was one of the very first people to phone the Hindu newspapers, putting her reputation on the line as she basically called out the Rathodes for being liars. Anjali was the first person to call the Hindu newspapers, putting her reputation on the line as she basically called out the Rathodes for being liars. She became part of a growing investigation into the Rathodes' claims, and she was even interviewed for a BuzzFeed article in June of 2016. Finally, after two weeks of formal investigation, the truth fully came out. The Rathodes didn't just lie about their Everest summit, but they actually put together an entirely fake story accompanied by photoshopped pictures, which is just insane to me. Apparently, the Rathodes never even made it above base camp. They even went so far as to steal photos from other Everest summiters and then put themselves into them, which is just wild to me. I mean, can you imagine cutting out an actual Everest summit from their own picture and then plopping your own face on top of there? I mean, it's funny, but it's also incredibly disrespectful. And so, the climbing community clearly felt that disrespect. According to my research, later that year, the Rathodes were actually banned from climbing anywhere in Nepal for an entire decade, which is a little bit harsh, but F around and find out, I guess. And many people within the Everest community were very grateful for Anjali's amateur detective work. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that the only reason the Rathodes were exposed and their lies were exposed is because of Anjali. I mean, there were a lot of other people that were involved with this, but this story is about Anjali, and she definitely had a big role in this. And I can only imagine that she felt like she had done a really good deed for the legacy of Mount Everest. And I also imagine that it gave her fresh hope that she and her husband Sharad would one day reach the summit of the world's highest peak together and actually set that record the right way. And as weirdly entertaining as the story of exposing fraud on Mount Everest is, I'm actually telling you that part of the story for a completely different reason. And basically, I just want to illustrate how much Anjali fought for the purity of mountaineering and how seriously she took her passion for this sport. I mean, she was already out there protecting the legacy of Mount Everest, and she and her husband hadn't even climbed it yet. But three years later in 2019, when it was finally their turn to summit Mount Everest, unfortunately, the mountain proved that it didn't care about everything Anjali had done to preserve its legacy. Everest didn't care about the six years of training that the couple had put in or the hundreds of other mountains that they had summited before. Let's just say that Everest had a few surprises in store that would make Anjali and Sharad's climb a living nightmare. It's now 2019, three years after Anjali had exposed the Rathodes, and a lot had changed for her and her husband. They were now officially retirees, but instead of getting fat and lazy, they got into the best shape of their lives. No offense if you're retired, by the way. That was kind of a low blow right there. Anjali and Sharad were more motivated than ever because the Everest record that they hoped to achieve was still unbroken. And frankly, they probably would have been ready to climb Mount Everest the previous year in 2018, but 2019 marked kind of a milestone for Anjali. It was the 30th year that she had officially been a mountaineer. Now, for an Indian woman, this was just a rare achievement. To be honest, Indian women of Anjali's generation weren't really courage to pursue that many things outside of the home that's my understanding anyways i could be wrong but it certainly wasn't very common for them to be doing extreme sports like climbing mount everest for instance however with several marathons the aussie 10 challenge and summits like kilimanjaro under her belt anjali had already proven that she was special but folks hindsight is 2020 and i say that because i think they might have been better off climbing in 2018 instead of 2019 and for a quick recap 2018 was one of the stranger years on everest because it featured an unusually long calm weather window for 11 straight days there was hardly any wind or snow hardly even any clouds and the number of climbers who reached the summit in 2018 broke the previous record by over 150 people and there was very little you the mountain broke when anjali and sharad applied for their climbing permits they didn't know that they were going to be part of the largest group of people ever to be on the mountain with nepal and china competing against each other for business uh more permits were made and the more permits than ever were issued in 2019 and this was all with the hope that 2018's weather patterns would repeat themselves and like i don't think betting on predictable weather at 27 000 feet above sea level is the most responsible move out there and even though these governments undoubtedly made a lot of money on permit fees they were now gambling with hundreds of people's lives praying that everest's weather would cooperate and if the weather experts were even slightly wrong in their predictions it would obviously mean disaster and as you probably guessed their predictions were very very wrong the headline of the 2019 climbing season thus far was one word delays delays that were caused by inexperienced climbers who probably felt more confident that they could summit everest because of how easy 2018 was and the fact that they were able to do so was a huge relief for climbers it was a big deal for climbers to be able to jump off the mountain and be able to climb the mountain and be able to climb the mountain and be able to climb the mountain and be able to climb the mountain and be able to climb the mountain due to medical issues but above all of that delays due to terrible weather like really bad throughout the month of may high-speed jet stream winds shut down the mountain for for days at a time while climbers were kind of just stuck up there miserably waiting for their chance to ascend the mountain the weather also was causing a lot of trouble for climbers who were not able to climb the mountain because of equipment issues sherpas would have to scramble up everest in the middle of the night to repair all of these broken ropes before their clients reached those pivotal points in the route it was just chaotic and dangerous and it just didn't seem like there was a lot of confidence that very many people at all would be summoning everest this year this would have been a disaster for people like anjali and sharad who had invested tens of thousands of dollars for the chance to climb the world's tallest mountain and the chance to break that record however by the grace of mother nature on may 2nd 2019 a very short calm weather window opened up which meant that climbers who had been waiting their turn for weeks would finally be able to make a summit push now this window occurred the very same morning that anjali and sharad woke up in camp four by all reports the couple was not only feeling good they were they were feeling quite antsy to finally reach the summit they've been climbing up everest for over a month and every single night the couple would bundle up in their sleeping bags and just talk about how excited they were to finally achieve this feat together i almost think of it like like a date night but with half the amount of oxygen that you'd normally have the couple were also both very big planners and anjali was even starting to talk about the next climb that they would do together after everest was already in the rearview mirror they had already stood atop three of the seven summits which are the tallest peaks on each continent and they had already been able to climb the top three of the summit and after everest they only had three more to go the sun rose on mount everest as the first few climbers began to summit the mountain it was quiet even a little bit somber almost as if the mountain knew what was coming for the climbers the calm before the storm that's probably the best way to describe it now anjali and sharad had had these little rituals that they would do before starting their summit pushes they checked each other's gear they gave each other last looks before putting on maybe one of them made stupid little inside jokes anything to calm the nerves however there wasn't anything that they could do to prepare for the summit push ahead of them on this particular day and honestly they had no idea the hell that they were about to walk into or i should actually say wait in and if you don't know what i mean by that i just have to show you this this photograph of the hillary step was taken by nim's die purja in the late morning of may 22nd the same day that anjali and charad were making their summit push you've probably seen this viral photo before i mean it's just ridiculous it shows over 100 climbers trying to descend from the summit passing by a literal traffic jam of over 150 other climbers trying to get to the summit and so if you do the math which i'm not great at by the way that's over 250 climbers crossing through the death zone which is just insane i mean i don't know about you but this is a photo just blows my mind and it's no wonder that as soon as nim's die purja posted it it went completely viral now i'm sure that a lot of you know this already especially if you've watched other everest videos that i've made other stories i've told but long delays like this aren't just annoying they're not just an inconvenience they are deadly this photo doesn't just mean delays it literally means death and the craziest part is that all of these people were attached to one safety line which is at least what i researched is that actually true is that that's insane by the late morning anjali and charad hadn't even reached this nightmare traffic jam yet they were a part of an even later group set to summit and so this disaster of a crowd and delays and lines well this is what they were walking into the average time from camp 4 to the summit and then back down is roughly around 10 hours and taking any longer than that means that your odds of making it out of the death zone a lot of people are going to be able to get to the summit and then back down and you're going to be able to get to the summit and then get to the top of the mountain and you're going to be able to get to the top of the mountain and you're going to be able to get to the top of the summit and you're going to be able to get to the top of the mountain and you're going to be able to up in the death zone every single minute that you wait could potentially cost you something that you can't ever get back and so keep that in mind while i tell you that on this day of mount everest history the average turnaround time was pushing 18 hours and in case i haven't made it obvious already well this isn't just like being tired on a hike right this is being on a timer where your body is actively deteriorating while you stand still freezing on the side of the mount and because of this some climbers began to turn around early well before reaching the summit which objectively at least i think again i've never climbed mount everest but i don't know that that sounds like the right move and it almost sounds like not that big of a deal especially if it means you uh don't die but you just have to imagine for a second what these people were giving up they were essentially abandoning their dream of climbing mount everest reaching the their entire climb again this is incredibly expensive like that is a very difficult decision to make but it goes to show that so many of these climbers were genuinely afraid i mean maybe they were running low on supplemental oxygen cans or maybe they were feeling claustrophobic or they were just skeptical that everyone waiting in this line was actually going to be able to reach the summit now i wish as as sad as it would be i wish that anjali and charad had turned around but that's not what they did they were on a mission and if it meant that they had to wait in line a little bit then they would wait maybe they were thinking of the rethoughts maybe anjali was just so determined to summit everest the right way that she wasn't bothered by the challenges that they faced on this particular morning or maybe she was just so focused on the record that she and her husband were chasing together either way they kept moving slowly and they did eventually make some progress however just before the hillary step things started to take a turn we'll say charad noticed that anjali was no longer by his side he turned around to see his wife kind of catching her breath and she gave him a quick hand gesture basically kind of just saying that he should go on further without her and this was almost like nonchalant kind of like how married couples know what each other means even without actually saying any words at all this is a very important moment in the story and there's actually a lot of stuff that's going on in the story that's going on in the story that's actually a fork here with two competing versions of what happened next and so i'm going to go ahead and give you the first version of the story which has been reported more popularly and then i'm going to tell you about this second story out there so according to this report anjali gave charad the hand wave and charad continued up you know up into the congo line right but a few moments later as he realized that his wife was no longer with him he kind of like nervously looked back and sure enough there was anjali hunched over with their sherpas so charad waited for anjali to gather some energy and together they entered the line and continued waiting their turn to summit everest hours passed by and to be clear i'm not talking about minutes that felt like hours i'm talking about hours that felt like days that was actually clear right probably not but this line was painfully slow that's obviously what i'm trying to get at there was zero talking between anjali and sharad during this wait because every bit of energy that they had left had to be focused on the summit and folks even though the the views around them the scenery was absolutely stunning obviously this was not a pretty scene at all climbers were fainting all around them yelling at their guides about the long wait times and sucking down as many canisters of supplemental oxygen as they possibly could imagine just standing there for hours watching this go on i mean it's just brutal but after over 12 hours ascending mount everest and a lot of that spent waiting in line anjali and sharad were finally hand waved up by the sherpas and for the first time in over a month there was no mountain left to climb the couple stood atop the summit of everest the highest mountain on earth advertising agents parents and now everesters oh and record breakers pretty freaking cool this was obviously an amazing moment their shared dream had finally been achieved after so many years in the making the headlines in mumbai would surely celebrate them as heroes just like they had done when the rethodes faked their everest climb years earlier this should have been a literal high point of their entire lives but before anjali and sharad could even let that feeling set in they had to make sure that they avoided becoming part of a much more brutal headline and so they began to descend this is where i'm sure they wished that they had somehow saved more of their energy for later the line down the mountain was almost as slow as the line up as as climber after climber clipped and unclipped from the narrow rope on the hillary step sharad was laser focused on getting down the mountain because he knew that they had hardly any supplemental oxygen left especially with these delays i'm sure they went through way more of it than they anticipated and so he looked back at anjali once again who was doing her best to keep up and once again she waved him on without saying a word she would catch up but maybe anjali should have said something before sharad continued down without her because just moments after sharad disappeared from her sight anjali started breathing heavily her sherpas asked if she could even continue on and in response she collapsed into the snow she was horizontal laying on the icy face of the mountain and usually when this happens other climbers on the mountain are like forced to step over the person unclipping and then re-clipping themselves to the fixed ropes but this time was a little bit different because just a few moments after she collapsed a passerby pulled out their phone and they hit record almost like they were documenting something that just looked wrong and before i show you this footage in full i mean you've already seen parts of it in the intro but it's not gory it's not graphic but that doesn't mean that it's not disturbing it shows anjali kalkarni clipped into the safety rope trying to like regain her footing i mean you can even see her balling her hands up and releasing them like like she's trying to keep any feeling that she had left in them the two sherpas position above anjali are trying and unfortunately failing to pull her to her feet this video blew my mind i mean it's just shocking she just looks so helpless and the sherpas are are definitely trying to help but maybe not in the best spot to to do this and right here is where it's important for me to tell you the second version of what might have happened to anjali so remember how earlier in the day before the crazy line at the hillary step charade was kind of waved on by his wife to continue up right well this second version of the story which was reported in the publication indian express claims that charade didn't wait for anjali to catch up instead he went up to the summit of everest alone trusting that the sherpas would help anjali to to get to the summit in her own time which apparently according to this story she actually never did in this report it says that when charade started to come back down from the summit of everest around 150 feet below the summit he ran straight into the scene that you just watched his wife struggling to get to her feet and then being dragged around by the sherpas now i don't know which version of this story is true i don't know if anjali was coming down from the summit or still trying to climb up the mountain when she collapsed but to me either version of the story is definitely entirely possible and of course if i was rooting for one version more than the other it would be that anjali reached the summit before all of this chaos started but i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know because when i watch that video it's possible that her sherpas were still trying to get her up the mountain like they're they're kind of pulling her up which would obviously be terrible but i mean i don't know what happened obviously and you also have to remember that over 250 people had crossed through the death zone on this particular day sherpas are almost always the heroes in the stories that i cover from mount everest but it just seems like on this this day they were maybe a little bit more than that but i don't know if that's true or not i don't know more overwhelmed uh than they would have liked to be and you know that's not their fault look whether anjali was coming up the mountain or coming down from the summit it really didn't matter because now in this moment she was most definitely not going anywhere and as the afternoon turned into evening things were looking worse and worse for her she stayed on the ground despite the efforts to drag her down the mountain and panic officially started to set in the sherpas had to get anjali back to camp four but of course getting a person down mount everest is way easier said than done it's extremely dangerous to just exist in the death zone on everest let alone carry an entire person and while yes sherpas are paid to bring their clients down the mountain safely i think we could all agree that they shouldn't have to kill themselves in the process in order to achieve that each time the sherpas tried to inch anjali down they realized that she was becoming heavier and heavier the altitudes of the mountain were getting heavier and heavier and heavier and the sickness and exhaustion that anjali was experiencing was so severe that she was starting to flow in and out of consciousness unable to take in any further supplemental oxygen unable to stand on her own power as hard as it is to say this i mean i'm just going to be blunt she was essentially dead weight at this point dead weight in the death zone now there's mixed reports about whether sharad was by anjali's side during this whole ordeal but anyone who was around anjali at this time would have known that there just there wasn't much that they could do as the sun went down anjali's body started to relax she even started to feel a little bit warm and maybe that sounds a little comforting but you know where i'm going with this that just meant that the end was near and so anjali kulkarni took her final breath that evening about 20 hours she and her husband began their ascent the sherpas had to leave her body on the mountain and then return for it a few days later and while this was tragically the end of anjali's story at least her story on earth anyways it's not the end of our story or the story of what actually happened on everest on may 22nd and during the days that followed if it looks like i'm struggling to get through this a little bit i honestly am because it just doesn't sit right with me that on anjali did and i don't know what to do with it but i'm going to keep going and i'm going to keep going and i'm going to keep going and i'm going to keep going and i'm going to keep going in such a brutal way i mean of course she and her husband knew the risks of climbing mount everest but i just find myself pissed off honestly and i don't even really know who i'm supposed to be pissed off at and clearly um this emotion was shared by a lot of other people at the time because just a few days later this story the story of what went wrong began to come together all around a shocking number the death toll so during this period where people had the green light to summit which was only about five days between may 22nd and may 27th 2019 nine people died and while that number is just shocking and crazy by itself the crazier part is that pretty much everyone on the mountain chalked up these deaths to one factor a factor that you've probably already been mulling over in your head a factor we've talked about for a lot of this video the delays the long wait times and this just pisses me off and it sent shock waves across the everest climbing community clearly they had gotten it wrong the weather did not cooperate with the government's plan to put as many people on the mountain as they possibly could and now they had to pay for it in body retrieval efforts again everyone who climbs mount everest knows the risk that they're taking but it's still just crazy to me how this dream of summoning the mountain can be disrupted by so many other factors that are out of the climbers control i mean anjali and sharad were climbers in the sport as a couple we also know that they did everything together that they had a ton of experience and by the way you know i don't want to hear anything about if charade abandoned on jolly because if you know their love story he would never have actively made that choice to me it was the chaos of everest in 2019 the year that the mountain broke that made people almost forget who they were and definitely made climbers forget what they were up against it's just so sad to me man and speaking of charade what he did after this tragic loss of his wife even months and years later might be the most heartbreaking yet inspiring part of this story might be the only inspiring part honestly after 2019 you might think that there would be a bunch of investigations and lots of reform and restructuring but 2020 was as we all remember a lost year for everyone including people on mount everest and so by the time 2021 rolled around the same issues were once again appearing on the mountain long lines at the hillary step short summit windows overwhelmed sherpas all of that stuff and even the best rescuers in the world can't fix a system that's overloaded like this it's almost like everyone just forgot about the tragic events that happened in may of 2019 not just for the events of anjali but the other people that died as well however while people might have forgotten the mountain most definitely did not and that's the key which which is sort of why to me it doesn't actually matter if anjali officially formally reached the summit that day like i don't really care about the record books for 2019 obviously it's great for those who did summit everest but in the year that everest broke anjali was an everest climber who cared about the purity and the legacy of the mountain that she was climbing and so to me she climbed that mountain that day whether she did or didn't break that record she cherished so much she climbed the mountain and she did it the right way and as for sharad well after losing his wife in such a horrible way well he he had a choice would he let the devastation of losing anjali on everest be the end of his climbing career or would he say hell no and get back to climbing back out there and you're probably not surprised to hear that sharad dedicated the rest of his climbing career to the memory of his wife and just seven months later he stood atop the tallest peak in south america akinkagua and then in 2022 he didn't only complete the seven summits challenge but he also climbed mount vincent in antarctica which is just completely badass and then finally in 2023 sharad returned to mount everest now he had of course already summited it officially once but for him reaching the summit you know in 2019 was obviously overshadowed by what has to be the lowest point of his entire life when he lost anjali just moments later and so for sharad 2023 was his chance at redemption but predictably 2023 also proved to be an insane year on mount everest over 1200 people pursued the summit once again he was able to make it to the top of the ranking records and on top of this the spring season proved to be the deadliest in history it almost seemed like sharad's everest climbs were just cursed right but in a testament to his strength and his skills sharad carried the memory of his wife with him he persevered and on may 23rd 2023 he reached the summit of mount everest for the second time in his life sharad sent out a prayer to his wife wishing that she was there alongside him before safely descending the mountain oh and for good measure uh sharad also broke a record with this climb as he became the oldest indian to ever summit mount everest from what it sounds like to me sharad was able to make the best of a truly horrible situation um that 20 second video unfortunately may be how the world will remember anjali which sucks to say um but it did go very viral it's not fair but that's kind of just how it is um but sharad will spend the rest of his life trying to make sure that isn't the only version of her story and that's why i wanted to tell the full story behind this viral video and i really hope that we don't ever see any more videos like that on everest in 2026 as always guys please be respectful about the people involved in these stories when you're commenting not just sharad and anjali but also the sherpas and the guides and everyone we talked about may anjali and the rest of the climbers that perished in may of 2019 on mount everest may they all rest in peace my heart goes out to them and my heart also goes out to sharad i can't decide what's more dangerous mount everest or the alaskan wilderness where our next story takes place you can ponder that while you listen the alaskan interior is one of the most deadly places in the world unpredictable weather dangerous wild animals and extreme remoteness makes it an incredibly difficult place to survive and i'm sure that nobody understood this better than survival expert thomas seibold and with that said perhaps the danger and challenges of alaska were what drew him to it in the first place unfortunately we'll never know the answer to that question because in the late fall of 2012 seibold left his cabin and trekked directly into the alaskan wilderness only to never be seen again dead or alive after his disappearance questions began to emerge where was seibold headed when he left his cabin how did such a competent and experienced survivalist just vanish and given all of his experience should seibold have known better than to do what he did in the first place all attempts to answer these questions and many more in this video but the truth is that most of the questions surrounding this story will probably go unanswered forever and you're gonna understand why by the end of this video this is the baffling disappearance of thomas seibold from gates of the arctic national park now i need to give a disclaimer before we get into this story and this is a disclaimer that i almost never have to give in these videos i found a number of inconsistencies in the reporting on this story during my research as far as i can tell none of them are hugely important to like the meat of the story but they're still concerning enough that i wanted to tell you about this before we begin i don't know just make sure that you take a lot of the events in the story with a grain of salt but with that said i still think this is an intriguing and important story to tell thomas seibold was a native german but he had been living in three lakes wisconsin for six years prior to 2012. while living in wisconsin he had spent extensive time training at the teaching drum outdoor school which describes its mission as quote to offer wilderness immersion and personal development experiences where you can learn directly from nature and discover what it means to be fully human seibold was also an instructor at teaching drum now in other places online teaching drum has been described as essentially a survival school they teach things like fire starting shelter building wild plant gathering and a lot more now that's certainly a very basic summary of what they do but what i really want to illustrate here is that after six years at teaching drum thomas seibold was a very competent even expert level survivalist and his experience was not just limited to the woods of northern wisconsin seibold had spent time camping in the extreme north of norway so he was no stranger to surviving in extremely cold harsh conditions and according to one source i read apparently seibold had nearly died in the boundary waters of minnesota when he accidentally injured his leg with an axe he was bleeding profusely but was eventually reached by emergency personnel i'm not sure if this is true but if it is it either shows that seibold was strong and able to survive in dire situations or that he was a little reckless and capable of putting himself in danger or even perhaps it shows a little bit of both in june of 2012 thomas seibold flew to alaska and began what was supposed to be a five-month journey in the state he spent some time at a fish camp in the southeast portion of the state and then made his way to the tanana river near fairbanks i apologize if i got that name wrong by the way the river not fairbanks compared to most cities in the united states fairbanks is small and isolated however for alaskan standards fairbanks is a pretty big city it's actually the second most populated city in the state of alaska and in the state in september seibold made a big leap leaving the relatively populated fairbanks area behind when he traveled to the arctic village of ambler alaska remote isolated villages exist all throughout alaska and most of them can only be accessed by plane these villages are largely inhabited by alaskan natives and have very very small populations ambler only had a population of 258 people in 2010 ambler is also right on the border of gates of the arctic national park now when a lot of people think of u.s national parks they obviously think of beauty and nature but they also think of crowded tourist destinations buses full of people gift shops and overpriced cafeterias now don't get me wrong i've been to a lot of national parks and there's definitely some very interesting things to see here and there's definitely some very interesting things to see here and there's definitely some very interesting things to see here and there's very remote territory within the national park system but the truth is that many national parks these days feel crowded gates of the arctic national park however is very different the park encompasses some eight million plus acres of terrain and has exactly zero established roads let alone hiking trails within its border i believe it's the second largest national park much like the villages that it borders the vast majority of its visitors have to fly in in order to access it this results in gates of the arctic consistently being ranked as the least or second least visited national park in the entire united states after arriving in the village of ambler cybold made his way some 30 miles north up the ambler river eventually arriving at a cabin owned by a woman and her 13 year old son i believe they were contacts cybold had made through t. some reports stated cybold walked the 30 miles to the cabin other reports said he paddled there with the woman and her son so i'm not really sure what the truth is but either way we definitely know that cybold made his way to this remote cabin and we also know that this cabin would end up being the last place that cybold was ever seen alive he arrived and stayed with the women for a specified amount of time but eventually they parted ways some articles state that the woman and her son left the cabin at the end of september trying to make it back to civilization before the rivers froze over other articles state that cybold left the cabin before the others departed and hiked out by himself into gates of the arctic national park i don't know which story is true but my hunch is that cybold stuck around for some time after the others left and left the cabin at the gates of the arctic national park all the way into early october and you're gonna see why i think this very shortly cybold had shared some vague plans with others before he disappeared apparently he was planning on exploring gates of the arctic national park by himself all the way until early november at which point he would hike the 25 or 30 miles to the village of kobuk he had a flight out of kobuk scheduled for november 11th which would be the first leg of his journey all the way back to wisconsin but cybold never showed up for that flight and was reported missing shortly afterwards at first confidence that he was still alive was very high after all he was a student of survival if this was some random tourist trapped out in the alaskan wilderness especially at the end of the year when the temperatures are dropping i'm sure everyone would have assumed the worst pretty much right away but once again cybold was just about as prepared as you could possibly be for a situation like this and even though the temperatures were getting very cold and the weather was getting worse by the day as i stated earlier he had literally spent nights camping in the winter in far north norway obviously something must have gone wrong for him to miss the flight but everyone hoped that he was still out there alive searchers quickly descended upon the cabin cybold had been staying in and it is here that they discovered their first clues the biggest of which was a makeshift journal now i wasn't able to find the entirety of cybold's writings but the last date that appeared in the journal was october 7th 2012 this date is the reason that i personally believe cybold stuck around at the cabin after the mother and daughter that he was staying with had left in his last journal entry cybold wrote that he was going to leave the cabin after the mother and daughter that he was staying with had left in his last journal entry cybold wrote that he was going to leave the cabin for a few days and hike around the national park and explore there was no indication that he ever made it back to the cabin and so the obvious question is when cybold left the cabin where did he go unfortunately we don't really know the answer to that question there was some reports that his journal mentioned hiking and camping higher up in the mountains and also that he wrote about prepping firewood for the cabin which indicates that he was planning on returning my understanding is that when cybold left he did not take his 22 caliber rifle or his 30-06 caliber rifle both of which would have been very useful in a survival situation another clue was found on day three of the search for cybold a large o marked into a gravel bar was spotted from a plane roughly eight miles north of the intersection between the ambler river and lake creek upon further inspection searchers believe that this o was possibly made by cybold to mark a spot where he left supplies in reference to this discovery one of cybold's colleagues at teaching drum said quote because the circle has such strong meeting to tomas we think there's a high likelihood that he etched the sign alaska state troopers along with local police departments search and rescue volunteers among lots of other people who were involved in the search for cybold groups searched extensively for tomas cybold the area that they covered was approximately 3 500 square miles of incredibly remote and harsh terrain it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack and as if the search wasn't already difficult enough the weather was taking a turn for the worst searchers experienced temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees fahrenheit rivers froze over but not enough to be safely traversed without risking submersion which slowed them down in many locations the frozen ground made using four-wheelers all but impossible and so given how difficult the conditions were search and rescue's best bet was to explore the area via planes and helicopters sergeant duane stone one of the troopers leading the search was quoted saying we've flown low enough to see wolverine wolf and bear tracks we haven't found any sign of a human moving around at all in the area in fact the only sign of a human found throughout the entire search was the o marked in the ground searchers believed that cybold may have built a base camp in the area near the intersection of the ambler river and the olenek olenek creek sorry therefore this spot was searched extensively but yielded zero additional clues after 13 days troopers called off the official search citing dangerous conditions and lack of evidence as the two main reasons but even after the official search was cancelled friends family members and colleagues from teaching drum continued to search to the best of their abilities and one interesting part of this case is that as the search dragged on people began drawing parallels between cybold's story and the search's results and the story of christopher mccandless i'm guessing that many of you have heard of the book slash movie into the wild which is based on the true story of a young man who decided to live off the land in alaska all by himself mccandless would end up living in an abandoned bus but only survived about three and a half months before dying of starvation hunters eventually found his body and when they did he only weighed about six pounds due to how famous the christopher mccandless story was it was easy for people to compare it to that of cybold's after all both stories featured young men who had wandered off into the alaskan wilderness all by themselves both men appeared to be on some sort of personal spiritual journey and by this point in the search it seemed likely that both men had met similar tragic fates however despite these obvious similarities there are also some key differences between cybold and mccandless's stories the most obvious difference is that cybold at least on paper was prepared for the journey that he was undertaking and this is due to all his survival training cybold also had a solid plan and an exit strategy obviously something had gone horribly wrong when he left the cabin after october 7th and that brings us to the biggest question of this entire video what the hell happened to tomas Seibold. And obviously, we don't have a solid answer to this question, but there are a few different theories that I think are worth exploring, even if they're just speculation. So anytime somebody disappears without a trace, there's always going to be a theory about them running away to start a new life somewhere. And though this is technically possible, because I mean, we don't really know what happened, it does seem unlikely that this was the case with Seibold, and many of those who knew him don't really consider this a possibility. It seems like Seibold didn't really have any reason to run away, and I did read one article that said that he actually had a wife waiting for him back in Wisconsin, but once again, that's a piece of information I wasn't able to verify. And so if Seibold didn't run away, it's most likely that he died out there somewhere in the Alaskan backcountry. So what could have happened? Well, it's always possible that he could have been the tragic victim of a bear attack. It's probably no secret to most of you that Alaska is crawling with bears. Both black bears and grizzly bears inhabit gates of the Arctic National Park. We know that Seibold did not take his guns with him when he left the cabin, which could have left him vulnerable to a bear attack. Now, this is unlikely. Bear attacks are extremely rare after all, but my understanding is that in the fall, bears can be a little extra dangerous due to increased hunger. These bears need to fatten themselves up before they go into hibernation for the winter. So this is a possibility, but in my opinion, the most likely scenario is that Seibold got injured or horribly lost and simply succumbed to the elements. Even with all of his survival experience, I still think this is entirely plausible. And that's because the area, that he was traveling in, is extremely dangerous in the fall and early winter, even to the point where many experienced local hunters and trappers steer clear of it. In reference to the area that Seibold went missing, Sergeant Duane Stone was quoted saying, It is remote and it is hazardous even on Alaska standards. If trappers aren't going up there, it should give you kind of an idea. The final question I want to raise is, given Seibold's life, what would you do if he died? Should he have known better than to try and venture out on his own in an extremely remote location during a time of year known for volatile weather? To be clear, I'm not trying to victim blame here, but I do think this is a fair question. I'm sure Seibold understood the risks associated with his actions, but maybe he was being a little bit overconfident. Or maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to put himself up against the ultimate challenge, surviving in Alaska. Unfortunately, we'll never really know what exactly was going through his head. Due to how remote this area is, and due to the fact that it's been over 10 years now, I highly doubt we'll ever find a trace of Tomas Seibold and know the truth about what really happened to him. This story should serve as a cautionary tale. Even when you're extremely experienced in something, things can still go, horribly wrong. Be sure to keep your guard up, and be sure to be safe out there, everybody. My heart goes out to Tomas Seibold, his friends, and his family. For our next story, I'm going to finally tell you the full version of what has to be the strangest case in Yosemite National Park history. I told a very brief version of this story in a previous episode, but I only think it's right to give you guys the full story, and so if you can handle it, listen up. In 1983, an anonymous family took a trip to Yosemite National Park, and they were able to settle in for the day at an area known as Summit Meadow. The children were frolicking around, playing in the beautiful and unfamiliar terrain, when all of a sudden, something stopped them in their tracks. The children had accidentally stumbled upon a horrifying sight, one that would send shockwaves throughout Yosemite National Park. The children found a thawed human hand and forearm. Naturally, investigators immediately began working to identify these remains, and they also immediately ran into roadblocks. Nobody had been reported missing. They ended up making a recreation of the victim's face, but this produced absolutely no leads whatsoever. The case quickly went cold, and it stayed that way for literal decades. But then, nearly 40 years later, the authorities dropped an absolute bombshell. Finally, in the year 2021, the identity of the Yosemite National Park Jane Doe had been found. And when her name was released to the public, the story behind her disappearance and death instantly became even more bizarre and even more disturbing than it had already been. She was linked to a cult leader who would end up running from the law and then vanishing into thin air. After this, a notorious serial killer would go on to admit to killing her, even providing verifiable details about what happened. And the strangest part is that these two people were completely unconnected, and neither one of them was ever charged with the woman's murder. So with all that said, the obvious question is, what the hell happened here? I'll attempt to answer that and much more in this video. I will be doing my very best to tell the story behind what I believe is the weirdest death in National Park history. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Or if you haven't seen it, check it out. I don't use the word weird lightly, folks. I mean, a discovery of a human hand in a national park is already weird enough, and then the events that followed made this story literally a thousand times weirder. And not only is this story incredibly weird, but it's also incredibly disturbing. I find it particularly disturbing that such a tragic tale was launched from within the borders of a national park, which is obviously supposed to be a place of peace and beauty, not a place of death and mystery. So the year that we're starting off in is 1983. In the spring of that year, an anonymous family did what literally thousands of families had done before them and would go on to do after them. They took a vacation to the famous Yosemite National Park. So with that said, we're going to take a trip there now too, although it's, not really a vacation, but anyways, at some point during their trip to Yosemite, they stopped at an area that is known as Summit Meadow. Now I, I've been to Yosemite National Park before, but I have not been to Summit Meadow. So if you have been there, leave a comment and let us know what it's like. I mean, I would just imagine that it's incredibly beautiful. I mean, even serene, you could say just like the rest of the park. I mean, after all, Yosemite is one of the most popular national parks in the United States for, a reason, right? So this family was just relaxing. They're taking in the scenery of the meadow and the children in particular were doing what children do, especially on vacation. They were just running around. They're exploring. They're just soaking up the fun of this special and new place for them. But unfortunately things would not remain fun for very long because as I told you in the intro, these very children would end up finding something that no child, no person for that matter, should ever have to lay their eyes on. These children discovered a human hand and forearm just tucked away there in the meadow. I mean, just an absolutely horrifying sight. So obviously the family reported this, it was investigated and it was soon determined that the human remains had been there at least since the previous fall as they had been frozen over the winter apparently. And they were like I mean, they were like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. I mean, just a horrifying, disturbing thing to happen on your vacation. And so as soon as the discovery of the hand and the forearm were reported to the authorities, they obviously began searching for the rest of the body. They searched and they searched, but it would end up taking years before they found anything else connected to this case. So five years, actually five years go by after this initial discovery. And then a skull with no jawbone, interestingly enough, was discovered near the area where the hand and the forearm had previously been found by the children. They find this skull, but that was it. The rest of the body was still missing. And perhaps even more disturbingly than that is the fact that the identity of the body was undetermined and missing as well. Investigators poured through missing anything that could be linked to the mysterious case in Yosemite National Park. Nobody came forward to report that the remains may have belonged to somebody they knew. I mean, the authorities tried everything. They even made various facial reconstructions, which they then shared with the media, hoping that somebody, anybody would recognize this woman. All of this effort proved absolutely fruitless. And so after 1988, the case truly went cold. I mean, just continuing to haunt Yosemite with each pass. passing year pretty weird right well wait until you hear this we're now going to flash forward in time 38 years in time to be exact now if you subscribe to cover your admission to the trip to Yosemite it's this time travel it's already included but if you didn't subscribe you can go ahead and do that now and then that will include your time travel okay ready to time travel here we go ready three two one all right now it's 2021 you heard that right 2021 and there's a lot of new forensic technology that did not exist in 1983 one of these tools is called forensic genealogy and I am obviously not an expert on this I'm far from an expert my only forensic experience consists of binge watching forensic files when I was in college but I'm gonna try to do my best to explain this concept in layman's terms investigators were able to obtain a DNA profile from the remains that were found and they were able to use this profile to create like a family tree right and so they're studying this family tree getting closer and closer to the identity of the Yosemite Jane Doe through this process which again I don't really understand obviously they were eventually able to come up with a list of potential matches and then test DNA from these matches until they were able to confirm that the remains were that of a woman named Patricia Hicks so I mean this is just crazy 38 years later and all of a sudden boom we have a major break in a cold case that most people had unfortunately long since forgotten about hopefully by now you're starting to understand why I keep calling this case so weird and by the way if you think everything I've said so far isn't weird enough wait until you hear the backstory of Patricia Hicks and her disappearance Patricia Hicks was a native of Washington State and was actually born in the 1950s she was very young middle school age I believe when her brother tragically took his own life which left a deep impact on the young Patricia one that she would pretty much never fully recover from she had a brief marriage in her early adult years before she finally up and left moving to Merced California and once she got there she met up with a man named Donald Eugene Gibson I have a feeling that some of you might actually recognize that name and not for good reason for those of you that are unfamiliar I was before I learned about this story Donald Gibson was or potentially is I don't know he was a famous or rather infamous cult leader who began gathering followers in the late 1970s in 1981 he was arrested and put on trial for drugging and I'm just gonna say essaying you could probably figure out what I mean there essaying multiple teenage boys which is just incredibly disturbing and if it's even possible to make this situation even more disturbing apparently these assaults would be done as part of his sick like cult ritual Gibson was found guilty and then subsequently released from custody while he awaited his sentence and after this happened he predictably took off he ran from the law he never reappeared in court and he was never seen ever again authorities believe that he fled to Mexico after this but I mean we're likely never going to know exactly what happened after he was released by the police so we know that Patricia Hicks was you know in proximity to Gibson she was kind of in his circle but we don't really know the extent of her relationship to him however it is highly suspected that she was a member of his cult and interestingly enough right after Gibson ran from the law and disappeared so too did Patricia Hicks according to one of her friends after Gibson ran away from the law Patricia took a bus from Merced to Yosemite National Park the year is 1982 and after she did this she was never seen alive ever again and at this point in her life she was only 27 years old so her connection to an infamous cult leader is obviously hard to ignore in this case I mean it's certainly possible that she was killed by Gibson or at least by one of his associates or something but this is only a theory and it has never been proven true it should be noted that the prosecutor in Gibson's case did say that Gibson would have been capable of violence against anyone who betrayed him but even with that said we just don't really have the necessary details to pin her disappearance and her death on Gibson himself pretty weird right I keep saying that it's super weird and folks the weirdness does not end here because there are actually a few other potential suspects in Patricia's death and all of them are every bit as infamous as Donald Eugene Gibson in fact one of them even confessed to killing her with that said let me introduce you to the monster that is Henry Lee Lucas Henry Lee Lucas was a serial killer who was convicted of 11 different killings most of which occurred in the state of Texas however like is the case in most serial killers it seems like there are many more victims that Lucas is suspected of killing even though he was never convicted for them and as you've probably predicted by now one of these potential suspected victims was Patricia Hicks Henry Lee Lucas told investigators that in the early 1980s he noticed a young woman hitchhiking near Yosemite National Park he allegedly picked her up drove her to a campsite nearby Summit Meadow where the two then drank beer ate fried chicken and eventually hooked up after all this happened because Lucas was a deranged lunatic he apparently killed her now it should be noted that Lucas confessed to all of this stuff long before Patricia Hicks was identified and he never actually gave like a real name for this victim however investigators did locate an abandoned campsite near Summit Meadow and this campsite contained beer cans and also scattered chicken bones and so that obviously seems pretty promising right like this this evidence has to be significant but with all that said there is a major red flag here that I have not mentioned yet after he was arrested Henry Lucas went on like a confession spree of sorts he basically realized that he would get special treatment from the police you know he'd get things like cigarettes and better food while authorities were investigating his involvement in these alleged murders he was basically trying to like cheat the system to get this special treatment and so he would go on to confess to over ready ready for it 600 murders in his life and most of these murders were quickly proven to be 100 false it's because of this that his confession to Patricia Hicks murder is just very difficult to take at face value but then again on the other hand investigators for the National Park Service apparently have come out and publicly stated that they believe he likely had something to do with Patricia Hicks death in 2020 the Park Service said quote he referring to Henry Lucas that is has information about this murder that had not been made public and could only be known by the person who committed the crime so that seems pretty promising of course but unfortunately Henry Lee Lucas was never charged let alone convicted of killing Patricia Hicks and at this rate I think it's safe to say that he probably would have been well actually I shouldn't even say probably I'll say definitely because in 2001 the 64 year old Henry Lucas died in prison from congestive heart failure this was a good 20 years before Patricia Hicks's remains were even identified and so his death essentially closed the door on the possibility of getting any additional potentially incriminating evidence out of him though he still remains a prime suspect obviously believe it or not there's actually another serial killer that could potentially be linked to Patricia Hicks's death and this man is perhaps the most infamous serial killer in all of Yosemite National Park history so a little while back I made a video telling the story of Carrie Stainer who would go on to be known as the Yosemite Park killer after he brutally murdered four women near the park in the year 1999. I mentioned at the end of that video that Stainer may have been responsible for more killings than he was actually convicted for and one of those killings was that of Patricia Hicks though Stainer committed his confirmed crimes years after Patricia Hicks had been killed he too had a strange connection to cult leader Donald Gibson that's right we're gonna kind of bring some of this full circle here now it's unclear to me exactly what the between the two men was, but Steiner was from Merced, California, and apparently his family actually knew the family of Donald Eugene Gibson. Now, I will say the following details are definitely unconfirmed, just to give a disclaimer here, but I did find a few sources which stated that Patricia Hicks had actually been arrested along with other associates of Gibson in the year 1980, and according to these same sources, she actually testified against Gibson at his trial, but again, I can't confirm whether or not this was true. It seemed a little shaky to me when I was researching it, so take that with a grain of salt. However, since we're already this deep, let's just assume for a second that it is true, and if that's the case, Carrie Steiner would have known that she testified, because apparently he actually attended Donald Gibson's trial, again, for unknown reasons. Since it's long been suspected that Carrie Steiner had killed more victims than he was ever held responsible for and convicted for, it seems, I don't know, somewhat reasonable, you could say, to suggest that Steiner may have killed Patricia Hicks in retaliation for her testimony against Donald Gibson. And this theory makes even more sense when you consider the fact that Carrie Steiner was extremely familiar with Yosemite National Park and, obviously, would later go on to commit his known murders against visitors and an employee of that park. But with all that said, Carrie Steiner never confessed to the killing, or even knowing Patricia Hicks, for that matter. No hard evidence has ever been found to connect him to her killing. Steiner is still alive in prison as of the making of this video, but unfortunately, it seems unlikely that he will make any more confessions. Now, those are all like the the murder theories, the the spicy stuff, the, you know, the disturbing stuff, I guess. But there is one more potential explanation for Patricia Hicks's death. Again, I think that murder and foul play is definitely likely here, especially given her connection to Gibson or even, again, Henry Lucas. But consider just for a moment that maybe her death was actually accidental. I have no idea what the purpose of Patricia's death was. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's likely that she wanted to experience its natural beauty, of course. In order to do this, it's plausible to assume that she would have been hiking or camping, which opens up the possibility that she fell or became injured in the backcountry and died as a result. Now, if you're hearing that, you're probably thinking something along the lines of, Kyle, come on, her hand and her arm were found by those children. How could that have happened? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But to that, I'll say, consider this. Is it possible that Patricia had a backcountry accident and then her remains were scavenged by animals in the park, which then led to her arm being separated from the rest of her body? This would also explain why her skull was found without a jawbone and the rest of her body was never found at all. Of course, there's also the, albeit unlikely, possibility that she was killed by an animal in the park. I mean, you got to consider that, of course. Could a bear or a mountain lion have killed her and then kind of scattered her remains afterwards? Again, we don't have any real evidence of this. I'm totally speculating right now, but it certainly is a possibility, even if it's remote. But to play devil's advocate against myself, if those theories were true, it would be a giant coincidence that Patricia just so happened to be tied to the cult leader Gibson and the serial killers led to her death. So, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And so, because of that, I personally believe that foul play was the most likely scenario that led to her disappearance and her death. But unfortunately, I find it really hard to believe that we're ever going to get a real answer to this case. But then again, I probably would have said the same thing about learning her identity prior to 2021. So, I don't know. You really never know, guys. So, with that said, what do you think happened to Patricia? I don't know. I don't know. Do you think the connection to the cult leader is so obvious that it must play a role in her death? Or do you believe Henry Lucas's confession about killing her? And of course, what do you think about the possibility of her accidentally dying in the backcountry? Hopefully, at this point, you all realize why I'm calling this the weirdest death in National Park history. The entire story is just so strange. And I hope that someday the world will get some answers about what the hell happened to Patricia Hicks. My heart goes out to Patricia Hicks and of course, to her friends and family. And again, thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart truly for supporting all of my content.