In the summer of 2012, 44-year-old Garrett Beckwith and his 19-year-old daughter Della went on a journey that they thought would be the best father-daughter trip ever. They were both good at hiking and climbing, and they loved being outside and tackling challenges. They were traveling to Mount Hooker, a single granite rock in the Wind River Range in Wyoming.
There were supposed to be long days, thin air, and the peace that comes from being alone on this trip. But Della and Garrett never returned.
You have to be brave to climb Mount Hooker. It is one of the tallest peaks in the lower 48 states, rising more than 12,500 feet. The north face is straight up and down, and it contains 1,800 feet of granite that has humbled even the strongest climbers. You have to walk for days over rugged ground, rivers, and high-altitude passes where the weather can turn deadly in minutes to get to the base.
Garrett, who had been camping for a long time, knew all of this. He taught Della to love the wild and to be disciplined and amazed by it. Everyone agrees that they were ready, with the right clothing, supplies, and a plan to check in after they reached the top. But as they started climbing, they stopped talking to each other.
When they didn’t come back as planned, family and friends quickly raised the alarm. There were search and rescue teams, like helicopters, K-9 units, competent climbers, and rangers who knew the area better than anybody else. The work took weeks and involved searching for ridgelines, crevasses, and valleys that were hard to find. But there was no sign of the Beckwiths. There was no proof, no tools, and no rope to show what happened.
The official search ended after months, but the mystery only grew stronger. Some of the people who helped thought that the two might have fallen while climbing, maybe because a rockslide happened or they were buried under a mound of rocks. A lot of people said they got lost in one of the unexpected storms that hit the Wind River Range all the time. These storms threw climbers off and made them change their plans.
The fact that Mount Hooker is so far away simply adds to the intrigue. Only a few climbers tackle it each year, and big searches typically miss important information since the place is so far away. In this kind of environment, nature quickly hides signs of people.
Emily, Garrett’s wife, and the rest of their family feared they would never be able to move on because they didn’t have closure. She added in an interview, “Not knowing is its own kind of hell.” “I still hope that every time the phone rings, it’s someone calling to say they found them, even though it’s been so long.”
People who knew Garrett said he was patient, organized, and very protective of his child. Another climber said, “He wasn’t careless.” “He knew what he could and couldn’t do.” If something went wrong, it wasn’t because someone wasn’t paying attention; it was because the mountain chose to do something different.
Della, who is studying environmental science at Colorado State University, kept close to her dad the whole way. She loved being outside like he did, and she was already good at climbing on her own. Climbing Mount Hooker was both demanding and a rite of passage for her. It was a way to show that she could stand up to the man who had taught her how to be tough, survive, and appreciate nature.
As time went by, the story of their kidnapping became well-known among climbers in Wyoming. People talked about their ideas at the campfire and on the internet. A few other people thought they had made it to the summit, but on the way down, they ran into a snowfall that came out of nowhere. Others were afraid that they might have found a spot to hide in one of the area’s many caves or overhangs and never come back. Some people even came up with weirder theories, including that they had decided to leave the world behind and never come back.
But the ones who knew them best completely disagreed with that idea. A friend of his who climbed commented, “Garrett wouldn’t do that to his family.” He enjoyed to go on adventures, but he loved his wife and daughter more. He would never leave them on purpose.
Mount Hooker held its secret for a long time, eleven years.
Then, in late 2023, a new set of climbers found something amazing. They discovered what seemed like the remains of an old camp deep in the eastern part of the mountain, near a path that isn’t used very often. They found old climbing gear, bits of rope, and a cooking kettle that was rusting and half-buried under a rock ledge. There were weak signs of a nearby bivouac. When they need to, climbers use these makeshift houses.
They alerted the rangers, and an investigative team arrived to look into it a few days later. Later, forensic experts found that the equipment was the same as what Garrett and Della Beckwith possessed. The accident site demonstrated that they had made a lot of progress on their way. Experts suspect that a storm trapped them there, which might have killed them by exposing them to the weather or by falling while trying to get away.
It wasn’t the finale they wanted, but it was the end for their family.
“We lived in a state of hope and heartbreak for eleven years,” Emily Beckwith said in a short statement after the revelation. Finally, we have peace. Garrett and Della are together now, always in the wilds they loved.
They took the job of aiding very seriously and with a lot of respect. At the bottom of Mount Hooker, there is a little inscription that says, “They went to climb and never came down, but they reached the sky all the same.”
The Beckwiths’ story is a quiet reminder of how lovely and perilous the high places in the earth can be. People who climb leave flowers, carabiners, or comments at the memorial every year.
Mount Hooker is still beautiful, harsh, and quiet. The granite face of it stands strong against the Wyoming sky, and the cracks in it hold the memory of two people who loved it enough to risk all.
It shows that something bad and holy happened in the surroundings when they went missing and were found years later. It doesn’t give up easily. It gives and takes. And those who want its edge know that sometimes the cost of adventure is the peace it leaves behind.
Garrett and Della Beckwith will never forget how serene it seemed. It also illustrates how close a father and daughter are who found freedom not in safety but in the wild places where only the brave dare to go.
