Missing Wesley Wamsganz
http://www.facebook.com/whereiswesleywamsganz?sk=wall

LAKE PLACID - Forest rangers and police are searching the High Peaks Wilderness south of the Adirondak Loj for a Saranac Lake man who went missing over the weekend.

Wesley A. Wamsganz, 22, was last seen early Saturday afternoon in the village of Lake Placid, after leaving the Downtown Diner, where he works. He was walking on Sentinel Road toward the Adirondak Loj area, according to village police Sgt. Chuck Dobson and Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman David Winchell. It isn't known why he was headed there, according to Dobson, but he told the last person he spoke to that was where he was going.

The search headquarters is at the Adirondack Loj, Winchell said this morning, and searchers are concentrating in the interior between Marcy Dam and Lake Colden. Winchell said there was some evidence found overnight, indicating Wamsganz may have been somewhere south of the Adirondak Loj, but declined to say what the evidence was. Forest rangers checked trailheads in the area earlier, when Wamsganz was first reported missing, but found no clues then.

Wamsganz's family reported him missing to Saranac Lake police Sunday. The last time he was seen he was wearing a green Carhartt jacket over a black Bob Marley hoodie, jeans, hiking boots and a yellow, red and green striped, brimmed winter beanie, Dobson said. He didn't have anything else with him, such as a backpack, Dobson said.

Dobson said Wamsganz does not own a vehicle, as far as police know.

Wamsganz is white, 6 feet, 2 inches tall and about 175 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.

The state police Bureau of Criminal Investigation is also looking into the matter, Winchell said, and state troopers and the state police Special Operations Unit are helping in the search.

Dobson asked anyone who was in the Adirondak Loj area on Saturday who may have seen something to contact police. Anyone with any information on Wamsganz's possible whereabouts is asked to call village police at 523-3306.
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Search crews in New York may be one step closer to finding a missing Saranac Lake man~

Twenty-two-year-old Wesley Wamsganz disappeared on Saturday. He was last seen at the Adirondack Loj, a popular Lake Placid hiking trailhead.

Search crews have found what they are a calling "an article" belonging to the missing man in a stretch of wilderness near Marcy Dam.

They're now trying to determine where Wamsganz may have gone from there.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=13561601

Still just a jacket for Wesley Wamsganz~

November 24, 2010

LAKE PLACID - More than 60 people in multiple search parties in the High Peaks Wilderness still hadn't found any more signs of Wesley Wamsganz as of Wednesday afternoon - four days after he went missing.

The only sign of him was his jacket, found in the woods Sunday, said state forest ranger Lt. Gary Friedrich.

Wamsganz's green Carhartt jacket was found on a trail headed toward Avalanche Pass. Friedrich said there wasn't any sign of what direction Wamsganz had gone from the jacket, other than that he was apparently headed toward the pass and Lake Colden. The jacket had been lying in the middle of the trail; a hiker who found it hung it up on the side, according to Friedrich.

Searchers tried to use a helicopter today but had to abandon that effort due to high winds; they will look for openings Thursday to use it, DEC spokesman Dave Winchell said.

Searchers are using dogs, Friedrich said, but their usefulness is limited since nobody has seen Wamsganz for several days. The dogs are being brought to areas where they don't think people have been, to see if they detect any human scent.

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Wamsganz search continues on Thanksgiving (update)~

SARANAC LAKE - A search for 22-year-old Wesley Wamsganz continues Thanksgiving Day, but authorities combing the High Peaks Wilderness had no new developments to report as of 2 p.m.
A state police helicopter has been used for aerial searching today , the first day that's been possible due to low clouds or high winds earlier this week.
On the ground, there are fewer search volunteers today than on Wednesday, due to the holiday, but there are still plenty of forest rangers and state police out in the woods, rangers said from the search command post at the Adirondack Mountain Club's High Peaks Information Center.
Officials are expecting an influx of search volunteers Friday and are advising anyone who chooses to do this to travel safely and dress properly with foul-weather gear, forest ranger Lt. Brian Dubay said Thursday afternoon. A wintry mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow are predicted. Dubay said people who want to join the search should first call the state Department of Environmental Conservation's dispatch center at 518-897-1300 for information on where to go and what to bring. The DEC is the lead agency in the High Peaks search.
Meanwhile, Lake Placid police are leading a missing-person investigation.
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Lake Placid, New York - November 26, 2010

The search continues for a missing man in the Adirondacks~

Wesley Wamsganz, 22 of Saranac Lake, was last seen Saturday along a trail near Marcy Dam. Crews found his jacket, meaning he is only wearing a hooded sweatshirt, pant and shoes.

Authorities spent Thanksgiving looking for Wamsganz. Weather conditions finally permitted a helicopter to be used.

Anyone who plans to volunteer in the search efforts Friday should first call the state Department of Environmental Conservation who is leading the search efforts.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=13570030

Missing NY man's father: There is still a chance

SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. — Alan Wamsganz is hopeful his son Wesley is alive, that the 22-year-old turned around and left the High Peaks Wilderness after going in 10 days ago.

"Even though all the signs point to Wesley being up there in that area, there is a chance that he could have come out of there without being seen," Alan Wamsganz told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

"To me, two possibilities, and nobody wants to hear this first possibility," he said. "The first is that he went up in there to make a sacrifice of himself. And if he went up there with that in mind, it's going to be very hard to find him. And the other possibility is that once he got up there and he was confronted with the elements, that he changed his mind and came back out. But either scenario, it's going to be hard to find him."

Wesley Wamsganz hasn't been seen since Nov. 20, when he left work at Lake Placid's Downtown Diner and started walking to the Adirondak Loj trailhead — without food, water or outdoor gear, as far as searchers and his family know. Several hiking parties saw him in the High Peaks as darkness fell that evening; he was last seen at Marcy Dam, about 2 miles in.

A little past that, on a trail to Avalanche Lake, Wesley's green Carhartt jacket was found the next day. Beneath it he was wearing only a hooded sweat shirt, a winter hat, cotton pants and hiking shoes. Overnight temperatures have been as low as the single digits since then.

The Wamsganz family is from Saranac Lake: father Alan, mother Lisa Zimmerman, sisters Siena and Alta and half brother Vladimir. Family members have been out every day looking for Wesley, joining a High Peaks manhunt coordinated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

On Sunday evening, after an intense week's effort, the DEC shifted the search's status to "limited continuous," which means the active search is over. DEC spokesman Dave Winchell said the search will be more active than just forest rangers doing it in their spare time, but they're not going to schedule search parties.

"They're going to be looking for opportunities," Winchell said. "We're not giving up. We're going to have guys out there this week ... searching off the trails into some areas we wanted to check and see what they can find."

Wamsganz said his wife is upset about the search being scaled back but the family appreciates the efforts of the searchers, professional and volunteer.

"These rangers are phenomenal," he said. "The effort of the volunteers has just been spectacular. I can't thank those people enough for taking time out of their lives to help look for Wesley."

Alan Wamsganz hiked the Northville-Placid Trail after a friend told him his son had been talking about taking that trail. He's hiked in the High Peaks Wilderness looking for his son and, with friends Billy Allen and Dan Woodruff, searched back to Avalanche Lake.

Thanksgiving Day found Alan Wamsganz, his wife, Allen and another woman hiking from Tahawus to the Flowed Lands and on Friday Wamsganz and Woodruff went up the side of the Angel Slide (in Avalanche Pass), over the top, and down the other side.

"... Apparently one of my cousins in North Carolina had contacted a psychic, and she had told him she thought Wesley was near the Angel Slide, so we decided to hit that as thoroughly as we could," Wamsganz said.

Asked how the forest rangers reacted when told the family had a psychic involved, he said: "They let me go."

Wamsganz said he joined the search because he thought he could be useful.

"I've done a lot of (backcountry) skiing back there, and I'm very familiar with that country," he said. "I thought I might have some insight to where Wesley might be headed."

Asked if he felt mentally prepared to deal with the prospect of Wesley being found dead, his father said: "I thought about it. I certainly didn't want that to happen. I expected that if we found him, he would not be alive."

"Hopefully, he might be alive and out of the woods. Maybe one of his friends is keeping quiet."

Now, he said, "I'm just going to try to live my life as normally as I can. I'm probably going to try to do a lot of skiing up there this winter. I don't know why; I just feel like I'm back in touch with it again.

"He could be lying face-down somewhere ... but I like to think he may have come to his senses and got out of there."

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP24c0...5d57864ce.html

Father keeps hope alive

November 30, 2010 - By PETER CROWLEY, Enterprise Managing Editor
SARANAC LAKE - Alan Wamsganz is hopeful that his son Wesley is alive, that the 22-year-old turned around and left the High Peaks Wilderness after going in 10 days ago.

"Even though all the signs point to Wesley being up there in that area, there is a chance that he could have come out of there without being seen," Alan told the Enterprise Monday in a phone interview.


http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise....html?nav=5008

Wamsganz was ‘super-spiritual’ just before departure, friend says~
December 1, 2010 - By NATHAN BROWN, Enterprise Staff Writer
LAKE PLACID - Wesley Wamsganz's co-workers at the Downtown Diner say he wasn't acting like himself on Saturday, Nov. 20.

"He was definitely different that day," said Jason Curtis. "I guess you could say he was super-spiritual."

Curtis said he has known Wamsganz, who is 22, for about 10 years, and has been best friends with him for the last two-and-a-half to three. He said Wamsganz always believed in God but that he was talking about religion and the Bible obsessively that day, "almost preaching," which was not normal for him, Curtis said.

Kayleigh Small, who also works at the diner on Main Street, has known Wamsganz for about a year-and-a-half. She also said he didn't seem like himself that day.

"He was very quiet," Small said. "He wasn't joking around with me at all."

Wamsganz usually made a point of saying goodbye to her, Small said, but he left that day without doing so. She said he didn't tell her where he was going or what was bothering him that day. She said she asked him if he was tired; he said no.

Some customers came in late, just before the diner was supposed to close at 2 p.m., and the cooks had to stay later than they normally would have to prepare their meals. While Curtis and co-worker Hubert Tyler were standing in the kitchen, complaining about having to stay later, Wamsganz came up from the basement and said, "Let's leave it in God's hands."

Curtis said he gave his friend a confused look, unsure what he was talking about, and said he had to stay and cook. Wamsganz then said, "So I've got to go by myself?"

Curtis said he shrugged again, and Wamsganz headed down the basement stairs. The building's back exit is in the basement; it leads to McKinley Street. Less than a minute later, Curtis looked out the windows in the kitchen, which face McKinley, but didn't see Wamsganz.

Wamsganz set out on foot for the High Peaks Wilderness and apparently walked the 10 miles to the trailhead. The last people to see him were some hikers that evening at Marcy Dam, about 2 miles in from the trailhead. He has been missing since then, prompting an intensive weeklong search of the High Peaks by forest rangers, police and numerous local volunteers.

The only trace of him found has been a jacket left in the trail, found by a hiker on Nov. 21. The search was scaled back to "limited continuous" this past Sunday evening, meaning the active portion of it is over.

Wamsganz had been working at the diner for about a year-and-a-half, according to the owner, Gioia DiChristina.

"It didn't take him long to become one of the family," DiChristina said, adding that he talked about how much he liked his job on his Facebook page.

"We all love Wesley to death," DiChristina said. "He's just the coolest kid ever. We're all kind of sick about it."

The diner closed on Saturday, and five diner employees spent the day in the woods, searching for Wamsganz. Small said the five were in a group with two other people, walking in a staggered diagonal line with 8 to 10 feet between each of them. Starting at Marcy Dam, they walked slowly through the woods, toward the south, through thick brush and pine trees, scouring the ground for "anything that might help in any way."

Small said they found a few things, such as canisters for protecting food from bears, but nothing that turned out to be connected to Wamsganz. She said the rangers were helpful and seemed optimistic, and she was impressed by the number of volunteers who turned out to help in the search.

"There was an amazing amount of people who didn't know him that were out there," Small said.

Last week's grid searches were concentrated in the corridor between Lake Colden and Marcy Dam, said state Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman David Winchell, but he said there were searches of every trail and lean-to in the High Peaks Wilderness.

The searchers needed crampons to go into the icy mountains.

"It's another world up there compared what's down here," said Dan Woodruff, one of the volunteers. "We were going hand over hand just to get out of there."

Woodruff, of Saranac Lake, is a friend of the Wamsganz family who joined the search effort for several of its seven days.

"It's the right thing to do," he said. "I just picture my son up there." Woodruff has a 21-year-old son and a 26-year-old daughter who were friends with Wamsganz.

His wife Karen, while not physically able to join the search, did her part by keeping a network of family and friends updated on Facebook.

Forest Ranger Kevin Burns loaned Dan Woodruff his GPS unit to track where he searched, and at the end of the day he would take the information from the GPS and superimpose his movements on a map, adding to the collection of others' search efforts.

The more they searched, the more little pockets they thought of where he might be - countless, and far beyond the possibility of their efforts.

"You can't search everywhere" Dan Woodruff said.

"At this point, I think they've gone about as far as they really can," he added. "It was a massive effort they put out."

Curtis echoed what Wamsganz's older sister Siena told the Enterprise, that Wesley always went into the woods prepared and told someone where he was going.

"He wasn't in the frame of mind to be going in the woods," Curtis said, pointing to his behavior, such as apparently leaving his jacket on a trail.

Winchell said forest rangers will check some areas this week and continue to look for signs of Wamsganz when they're on patrol. When they have time, they will also double-check some areas or look in some areas that weren't searched. Aviation units passing over will also be on the lookout, Winchell said.

"Not necessarily that area (where they searched for Wamsganz), but some part of the High Peaks wilderness is being patrolled every day by a forest ranger," Winchell said.

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