Crews scour Siskiyou County in search of missing cyclist
Jun. 25—Agencies from three states — including resources from Jackson, Klamath, and Josephine counties — have scoured more than 100 square miles in Siskiyou County, California, over the past three days in search of a mountain biker missing in a heavily wooded area.
At least seven ground crews, 11 dog teams, six mountain bike teams, three off-road vehicle teams, an ATV and Jeep crew and helicopter crews from the more than a dozen search-and-rescue agencies from Oregon, California and Nevada continued the search Saturday for 66-year-old Terry Knight of McCloud, California.
Knight was last seen Wednesday, June 22, when he was captured on surveillance video on his blue Giant mountain bike with orange accents and large gravel tires. He did not bring his phone with him or any other GPS device, according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office social media pages.
McCloud High School has been transformed into an incident command center in the search for Knight, sheltering more than 70 volunteers from 13 county search-and-rescue teams.
The California National Guard and the California Highway Patrol's Northern Division Air Operations have been using the school's baseball field as a helicopter base for grid searches since Friday.
Rescuers are particularly concerned because Knight has a heart condition and does not have access to his medication. Further, searchers have spotted bears and mountain lions, and the area is known to contain rattlesnakes and wolves.
Knight typically biked in the area of the McCloud Mill, and would often cut new trails in the wilderness that search-and-rescue crews described as remote and heavily wooded, with loose terrain and few markings.
Because of heavy tree cover in the area, rescuers aren't able to use infrared technology in their searches for Knight, but said in a Saturday morning post that with that exception "all possible methods and tools are being used in the search efforts to locate Mr. Knight."
Knight was last seen wearing a light-colored camouflage long-sleeve shirt and yellow and black cycling shoes. Police believe he carried trail-cutting tools in his backpack that included a shovel.
