Carlin Party

This included serving as a photographer on Army Lieutenant James A. Leyden's expedition through parts of Idaho and British Columbia.

[5] John Harvey Pierce, 30, Carlin's brother-in-law[6] from White Plains, New York, was the 3rd hunter who joined the party.

[9] Midway through their journey the group encountered and hired trapper Ben Keeley to assist them in rafting down the Lochsa river.

When Keeley joined the party, he brought with him a "big wooly shepherd mixed with a strain of hound" named "Riley".

The group purchased additional food supplies and encountered a local farmer who questioned their ability to complete the trip before the winter snows came.

[15] The group continued on, and reached the Indian Post Office Rock Cairns on September 25, where Spencer measured the average snow depth to be 8 inches.

During this descent, Himmelwright writes that Colegate became exhausted, and alarmed other members of the party with his considerably swollen feet and legs.

The party then purchased the supplies, and assistance of the trapper Ben Keeley, and spent several additional days helping Jerry Johnson to finish his cabin where they hoped to store their un-needed gear and hunting trophies over the winter.

Unsure of their ability to survive their evacuation attempt, the group left letters with Johnson which he was to deliver the following summer when he went to Missoula.

It was at this point that the party made the decision that would lead to their infamy: choosing to abandon George Colegate while he was still alive, yet unable to proceed on the journey down the river.

Himmelwright would take a lead role in defending the party's decision, first in newspaper articles[24] and then later in the book he wrote on the expedition.

[26] However, in an interview with the Weekley Missoulian Newspaper,[27] Ben Keeley stated that the group left him with a blanket, matches and salt, a tin cup and fishing tackle, but no food.

On November 7,[28] Wright wrote to a contact in Spokane, "If Spencer has not got out of the mountains before now, he will not get out before spring [...] General Carlin had better send out a relief party to hunt them up.

[31] The Missoula search party would be led by Captain George Andrews of the 25th Infantry, and guided by Spencer's partner William Wright.

By November 21, it was reported[34] that the rescuers had met with deep snow storms, and were forced to turn back "in danger of their own lives."

Following General Carlin's orders, Lieutenant Clough Overton of the 4th Cavalry, based out of the Vancouver barracks, led a search party that passed through Colefax, Washington on November 10,[35] and then continued on to Weippe, Idaho.

The party's plan was to "head to Lolo pass and establish a camp" from which they would "radiate on snow shoes in all directions seeking traces of the unfortunate men.

Vorhees objective was to establish a camp to supply provisions for Overton, and the other parties in the region searching for the missing hunters.

[40] During this same time, the remaining members of the Carlin party were continuing downriver, largely out of food and subsisting on the little fish and game they could successfully obtain.

"Initial newspaper accounts described the men as "in most pitiable condition[45]" and that they could "scarcely survived 36 hours longer without relief.

[47] After learning about the abandonment of Colegate 9-days earlier, Elliot initially planned to continue up the river to recover either him or his remains, but the surviving members of the Carlin party were able to convince him that, "such a course was not only extremely dangerous but probably improbable."

These, coupled with other conditions, would have made trip up the river and through the canyon in search of Colgate at that season of the year extremely hazardous, if at all possible.

I told him he could make the trip but to continue the use of the catheters, and from the history of the case and symptoms described by the Carlin party, I am satisfied Colgate’s illness would have resulted in fatality under any circumstances, and when he was left behind in the condition described, he could not have survived 24 hours.

[51]"By December 13, the trapper Ben Keely had begun to give accounts of the abandonment of Colegate that differed from the narrative of other members of the party.

[55]"By January 1894, the citizens of Post Falls had organized an expedition to search for George Colegate, led by his son Charles.

However, during the expedition one of the party's members, Bill Martin, was injured when a snag fell on him, broke his collar bone, and nearly killed him.

[56] The first expedition successful in finding evidence of Colegate's remains was led by the Carlin Party's guide, Martin Spencer, in May 1894.

Spencer concluded that Carlin's body must have been washed further downstream[57] On August 23 of 1894, it was a party led by Lieutenant Elliott who found Colegate's remains, approximately 8 miles below where he had been abandoned.

The party found a thigh bone and one leg, "mangled and gnawed by the wild beasts infesting that region."

[58] Today, Colegate's gravesite is marked with a Forest Service marker, by the side of U.S. Highway 12[59] near the Colgate Licks Recreation Trail.