The finder, a 23-year-old volunteer searcher named Keith Denton, photographed it in place before picking it up with gloved hands and placing it in an evidence bag.
He called it in. Chief Ranger Parish drove out with Ranger Casillas within the hour.
The three of them stood around the dried apricot on its riolyte shelf in the afternoon light and said very little.
The apricot matched in type, in brand, in the packing style, the dried apricots that Daniel Voss had purchased two days before his disappearance at the park’s general store in Canyon Village.
The receipt was found in his cabin’s waste basket. Six apricots of the same batch had been in his pack.Browse Reference
No others were found on or near any section of trail. It was a breadcrumb.
It was, as Ranger Casillas noted in his incident report filed on August 22nd, the only physical evidence identified in 11 days of coordinated search operations across approximately 240 square miles of terrain.
