Missing hunter may be hurt, searchers say

Searchers on Thursday said they suspect that a lost Spokane man is injured. Otherwise, he would have emerged by now from the woods where he had gone to hunt deer.

“He’s experienced and he’s never been lost while hunting,” Pend Oreille County Search and Rescue Capt. Frank Capehart said.

Those looking for 49-year-old Nathan Swagel have scoured about 20 square miles of the Colville National Forest.

Swagel was camped in a travel trailer in an area known as Hanlon Flats, and another group saw him leave to go hunting on Monday morning, heading up Monumental Mountain, elevation 5,700 feet. He was supposed to be in Spokane on Monday evening, and was reported missing shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Searchers say there was about a foot of snow in the upper elevations where Swagel has hunted mule deer in the past. It was raining – hard at times – down lower, including where Swagel’s truck was found near milepost 13 on Forest Road 1935. That road is unpaved, washboarded and muddy with this week’s rain.

Ted Boggs, a lieutenant with Pend Oreille County Search and Rescue, said searchers were using “feet, legs and hands,” but hoped for clearer weather today so they could get some helicopters in the air.

“The most important part is to cover all the ground you can with the resources you have on hand,” Boggs said. “We never give up hope.”

Searchers Paul Williams and Mark Bridges described conditions Thursday as awful. Visibility was severely limited by fog, they said, and the ground was slick even where there was no snow.

Bridges, 43, was compelled to volunteer because he’s a hunter himself and is friends with someone who knows the lost man.

Williams knows Swagel through volunteer work they do together for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Like others who know him, Williams said he can’t imagine a man of Swagel’s skill becoming lost for so long in an area he’s hunted for years.

“This is like a bad dream,” said the 62-year-old Colbert man.

In all, about 40 people were searching Thursday, including some of Swagel’s relatives, said Capehart. His organization was working with its Spokane County counterpart, the U.S. Border Patrol and the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Office. A helicopter that had helped with the search earlier in the week was grounded Thursday because of the bad weather.

The team is expected to grow to at least 65 people today, said Pend Oreille County Undersheriff Mike Cress, and the work will continue through Saturday, if necessary.

After that, he said, officials will evaluate their options.

Authorities say Swagel is about 6 feet 2 inches tall, 190 pounds and in good physical condition. He drives a delivery truck for Schwans, the national company that delivers frozen food directly to customers’ homes.

Customer Tim Adair said that every time Swagel makes a delivery to his Spokane Valley home, the two men end up chatting for about an hour, mostly about hunting.

Adair, who joined the search Thursday, said it was his first time helping with any such effort.

“I had other things to do, but nothing more important than this,” Adair said.