Harvard Extension School – Capstone Project Journalism Graduate Program Advisor: Angelia Herrin May 15, 2015 Missing in Mammot
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Harvard Extension School – Capstone Project Journalism Graduate Program Advisor: Angelia Herrin May 15, 2015 Missing in Mammoth By Monica Prelle Normally the first snowfall of the year is a beautiful and joyous celebration in Mammoth Lakes, a small ski town situated in California’s Eastern Sierra, but the early-October snow was disheartening for the searchers of a missing Pennsylvania man. Hope faded with the inevitable change in season, and the family and close friends of Matthew Greene started to understand the grave reality that he may never be found. Each was going through the motions of their daily lives, living in a tug-of- war between despair and optimism, and feeling helpless from across the country. On July 29, 2013, Matthew Greene was reported missing. A few weeks earlier, the 39-year-old high school math teacher dropped his car off at a Mammoth auto shop for repairs. He was in the area on a summer climbing vacation when the car blew a head gasket. The friends Greene was traveling with headed home as scheduled, and Greene planned to drive to Colorado to join other friends for more climbing as soon as his car was ready. Anxious to get on with his trip, Greene started to get mad that his car was taking so long to be fixed. “I may have to spend the rest of my life here in Mammoth,” he texted to a friend. At the time, Mammoth Lakes was experiencing characteristic sunshine and above average temperatures. No one has heard from Greene since he last talked to his parents on July 16, 2013. He never picked his car up. His campsite was left tidy, and his credit cards and phone have not been used. He did not tell anyone his plans for the following day. The only clue—a few pages torn from a mountaineering guidebook, pointed toward the Minarets and Ritter Range, a rugged mountain massif in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. His body has not been found. In 2013, more than 600,000 Americans were reported missing, according to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. At the end of the year, nearly 85,000 of those cases were still active. Matthew Greene is the only unsolved missing person case in Mammoth Lakes. In January 2014, Greene’s family filed for a death certificate in Pennsylvania, but the case is still open with the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. “Most people assume that Matt was a victim of some sort of climbing accident—a fall of some sort,” says John Greco, Greene’s climbing partner and good friend. “In reality, there are many other plausible explanations for his disappearance that no one is considering.” -- Born September 8, 1973 to Robert and Patricia Greene, Matthew is the second of four children. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, Greene’s love for the outdoors started at a young age. He went hunting and fishing with his dad and was in the Boy Scouts. “Growing up in the boondocks of Franklin Township was a blessing,” Greene later wrote in a letter to his sister Tiffany Minto. “I came out of there with independence, a love of nature, and the determination needed to succeed in track, school, or whatever.” Minto remembers her brother taking her fishing, and target shooting at the lake. They’d stay until bugs feasted on their arms. They went hiking together often— sometimes even in winter. “I remember thinking I was going to die,” Minto said. “There was ice and it didn’t slow him down one bit; I struggled to keep up.” They built forts in the backyard and had snowball fights. The family teased Greene about how much food he could eat, so much that they joked, “his plate needed sides.” His sister dared him to eat dog bones—he accepted the challenge. He loved to run. Greene was on the track team in high school and competed in the Boston Marathon a few times as an adult. In his high school graduation speech, Greene urged his classmates to take chances. “The time has come to fulfill out current goals and to set new ones to be conquered later,” he said. “In our future travels and endeavors, no matter where they take us, we must not lose our youthful imaginations. We must not be too scared to take risks, and most of all, we must live life to the fullest.” Greene went on to study at Clemson University before transferring to and graduating from Pennsylvania State University. From 1999 to 2000 Greene was a Peace Corps volunteer in Papua New Guinea. He regularly wrote letters to his sister, giving her advice on life, college and relationships. Any associations you have in your life can be lumped into one of these three categories—people who push you forward, people who drag you down, and people who do neither. He wrote to friends telling tales of his adventures. He regularly walked 6-hours to fix a radio transceiver, describing the work as “no big deal.” The more challenging adventure in his “anti-city hiking tour” was a 9-hour trek across uninhabited bush and mountainous terrain where he found himself “crossing a roaring hundred foot waterfall, wading through shallow rivers, carefully walking on top of scores of muddy mossy logs, ascending countless ridges and descending countless valleys.” In his letters, Greene not only told tales of his work with the Peace Corps, and adventures in the bush, but also contemplated life and its greater meaning. It's a pitiful thing when people reach the point in their lives where passionate inclinations no longer win out over regular routine. I don't know why our minds always gravitate to reason. It's a nuisance. At least for me, it takes a lot of mental effort to give into my passions; though once I've devoted myself to them I'm never plagued with regret. When he returned from the Peace Corps, Greene got a job as a high school math teacher in Pennsylvania and he fulfilled his yearning for adventure during his summer climbing trips. He often traveled to the West, camping, hiking and climbing, mostly solo, but meeting up with friends along the way. In 2006 he road-tripped from Pennsylvania to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, to the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, and on to Red Lodge, Montana. When his car broke down at the end of that trip, he tooled around town and hitchhiked to a trailhead. In his trip log he wrote: Put in an awesome 10-hour hike. The rock was surprisingly solid. Yet, some big pieces moved. Returned to find that rodents had tore into my engine—plug wires, vacuum hoses, mostly wire sheathing. Coasted into town…took my car to Ronning’s. They should get to it tomorrow morning… Same as yesterday—no car yet. Hitched a ride out to the Bear Track and hiked up the Silver Plateau. It’s awesome up there—good mix of pines and open fields… More town. More reading. More net searching. Coming up with a plan. Yellowstone, climb Teewinot, Wind River Range, Ring the Bells, Arrow, Vestal, possibly Eolus, Sunshine and Wisdom, Great Sand Dunes, Jessica and Long’s Peak, then home. Still waiting on that car. -- For his summer vacation in 2013, Greene planned to meet friends John and Jill Greco in Mammoth Lakes for ten days. John was a regular climbing partner at home and the two often planned summer vacations around John’s work trips. In 2012 they visited Bishop, a small town 45 minutes south of Mammoth Lakes, and after spending a day in Mammoth on that trip, they decided to make the town their destination for the following year. Greene arrived in Mammoth Lakes a few days before he met up with his friends on June 28, 2013. He setup camp at New Shady Rest Campground and paid through July 7. John, Jill, and their 9-year-old son checked in to a hotel nearby. Over the next ten days Matt and John climbed many of the region’s classic alpine, sport, and ice routes. They climbed Crystal Crag, the prominent granite monolith in the Mammoth Lakes Basin. They ticked off popular sport climbing spots in the area like Clark’s Canyon, the Benton Crags, and the Gong Show Crag. They climbed a few of the Eastern Sierra’s classic alpine routes including the North Couloir on North Peak near Yosemite National Park and V-Notch on Polemonium Peak in the Palisades near Big Pine. On previous trips Greene kept a hand-scribbled log of his climbs, sometimes elaborate and other times brief. He often checked and reported conditions on climbing websites. He wrote on Summit Post: Did the V-Notch on Saturday, July 6th. We easily crossed the schrund via a snow bridge at the far left side. We studied the route well for signs of rockfall before committing, and only had one baseball sized rock rocket down during our ascent. Tons of rocks were falling down the U-Notch, though. During Greene’s time in Mammoth, his Subaru was in and out of the auto repair shop. It would be fixed, and then when he drove up a steep grade it would overheat, so he would take it back to the mechanic. It was finally diagnosed as a blown head gasket, which would take additional time to repair. On July 7, John and Jill were scheduled to leave Mammoth Lakes. John had a work meeting in Southern California the next day and Matt planned to leave for Colorado to meet up with other friends.