William Ott, 65, was looking for rock art panels in a remote area of the Grand Canyon when he disappeared, a friend said
Credit: National Missing and Unidentified Persons System; Patrick J. Endres/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- William Ott, an experienced hiker, disappeared in 2012 while on a trek in the Grand Canyon
- In December of last year, members of a Native American tribe found human remains in the vicinity of where the original search for Ott began, authorities said
- DNA analysis of the remains matched them to Ott, the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office announced on July 21
Arizona authorities said that human remains found in December belonged to a man who disappeared while hiking the Grand Canyon nearly 15 years ago.
William Anthony Ott, 65, was reported missing in May 2012, the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office said in a Tuesday, July 21, news release. After he failed to return from his hike of the Canyon, agencies including the National Park Service and the Arizona Department of Public Safety began searching for him. However, they were unsuccessful in determining his whereabouts.
This past December, Hualapai Tribe members found human remains in the vicinity of where the initial search for Ott began, the sheriff’s office added. The remains were then transferred to the sheriff’s office and the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Working with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, authorities confirmed through DNA analysis that the remains belonged to Ott.
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), Ott had embarked on a three-week, solo through-hike of a remote area of the Hualapai Indian reservation on April 5, 2012, officials said. He was supposed to return from his trek on April 28 but never turned up, and he was reported missing 12 days after he was overdue.
Scott Thybony, a friend of Ott who took part in the original search, said in 2017 that Ott was an experienced hiker, public radio station KNAU reported. Thybony noted that Ott “spent 78 days walking the length of Grand Canyon in 1981, becoming the first to complete the traverse on the north side.”
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He said that Ott was searching for thousand-year-old rock art panels in a remote area of the Grand Canyon when he disappeared.
“Several times Ott had stopped by my office to talk about his passion, a style of otherworldly rock art painted thousands of years ago,” Thybony told KNAU. “The multi-colored pictographs fascinated him, and being hard to find and even harder to reach added to the attraction.”
In an interview with Outside, Thybony, an anthropologist, said that long before he vanished, Ott was living off the grid after he sold nearly all of his possessions and built a cabin with his own tools in Cave Junction, Ore. He added that Ott would return to Arizona about once a year to hike the Grand Canyon and look for ancient rock art.
A cause of death has not yet been shared by authorities, but Thybony told Outside that his friend’s body was found at the base of a 15-foot cliff and his main backpack was missing.
PEOPLE contacted the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday, July 22, but did not receive an immediate reply.
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