SignOnSanDiego.com: April 15, 2006
New book tells the tale of vanished park ranger
By By John Marshall
A veteran ranger of 28 seasons living alone in remote places, Randy Morgenson had an innate ability to locate a lost hiker or climber in the wilderness.
Then he went missing.
Morgenson vanished in 1996 after leaving his ranger station in the backcountry near Yosemite National Park in California. Eric Blehm was part of the team that searched the area right after Morgenson's disappearance and spent nine years chasing his ghost. He chronicles the hunt in his new book, “The Last Season.”
Morgenson gave off a sort of mystical aura within the National Park Service; his romanticism for the wilderness and never-ending quest to protect it made him one of the most respected rangers around. “The Last Season,” published by Harper Collins, details the massive search-and-rescue effort to find him, and how difficult it was for the rangers to search for one of their own.
It also looks at the inner demons that haunted Morgenson just before his disappearance, and provides several theories – an accident, martyrdom to save the wild, suicide meant to look like an accident so his widow could receive benefits – on what might have happened. (We're not telling whether he was found.)
Using information gleaned from park rangers, along with Morgenson's family and friends, Blehm skillfully weaves the ranger's past with the rescue effort, providing meticulous details that could only come from an author who clearly respected his subject.
Blehm is a free-lance writer who frequently writes about snowboard, mountaineering and adventure travel. He is the former editor of TransWorld SNOWboarding and the author of “Agents of Change.”
“The Last Season,” $24.95 from Harper Collins, is scheduled for release this month.
