Missing Hiker's Remains Identified 15 Years After Grand Canyon Disappearance

For almost fifteen years, William Ott's disappearance was one of those cases that just never closed. He walked into a remote stretch of the Grand Canyon in 2012 and never walked back out. Now, authorities have confirmed what his friends and family feared all along.

The Coconino County Sheriff's Office announced Tuesday, July 21, that human remains discovered back in December belong to Ott, now confirmed through DNA analysis conducted alongside the Arizona Department of Public Safety. He was 65 at the time he vanished.

A Solo Trek That Never Ended

Ott set out on April 5, 2012, for what was supposed to be a three-week solo through-hike across a remote section of the Hualapai Indian reservation, according to details logged with the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. He was due back by April 28. When he didn't show, and 12 days passed with no word, he was officially reported missing.

Search efforts kicked off almost immediately, pulling in the National Park Service and Arizona's Department of Public Safety. But the terrain won. Despite an extensive search, investigators came up empty for over a decade.

That changed this past December, when members of the Hualapai Tribe stumbled on human remains not far from where the original search had concentrated years earlier. The remains were handed over to the sheriff's office and the Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office, setting off the DNA testing that would finally close the case.

Chasing Ancient Art In Impossible Terrain

Ott wasn't some casual weekend hiker who got in over his head. Friend Scott Thybony, who joined the original search effort, described him as one of the most seasoned canyon hikers around — someone who, back in 1981, spent 78 days walking the entire length of the Grand Canyon and became the first person to complete that traverse along the north side.

What pulled Ott back into the canyon, year after year, was something more specific than the scenery. He was chasing thousand-year-old rock art — pictographs painted in a style Thybony called otherworldly, tucked into corners of the canyon that were brutally difficult to reach. Thybony recalled Ott stopping by his office more than once just to talk about the obsession, drawn as much to the difficulty of finding the art as to the art itself.

By the time he disappeared, Ott had already stepped mostly outside conventional life. He'd sold off nearly everything he owned and built his own cabin by hand in Cave Junction, Oregon, living largely off the grid. But the canyon kept calling him back — roughly once a year, he'd return to Arizona to hike and search for more of the ancient artwork that had captivated him for decades.

What's Still Unknown

Authorities haven't released a cause of death. But speaking to Outside magazine, Thybony — an anthropologist by training — said Ott's body was ultimately found at the base of a 15-foot cliff, and that his main backpack was missing at the scene. Whatever happened in those final days remains, for now, still not fully pieced together.

For a case that sat cold for nearly fifteen years, the identification at least gives Ott's loved ones something they'd been waiting a long time for: an answer. 

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