KTLA-5 Report

Missing UCLA Student’s Body Found Buried Under Avalanche in John Muir Wilderness

Posted 11:41 AM, November 23, 2015, by Tracy Bloom, Updated at 01:58pm, November 23, 2015

An Inyo County’s coroner’s office official confirmed Monday that the body of a missing UCLA graduate student was found in the Sierra Nevada mountains over the weekend, and authorities and his mother said he was discovered in an avalanche area.

Michael Meyers was found dead shortly before 1:30 p.m. Saturday, about 11,000 feet up in the mountains in an area of the John Muir Wilderness, according to Deputy Coroner Investigator Jeff Mullenhour.

Meyers, an experienced hiker and climber, was hiking the area by himself. He was due back in Los Angeles on Nov. 11, according to his family.

The UCLA physics student was driving a Dodge SUV, which was discovered Thursday at the Mount Whitney trailhead.

Items belonging to Meyers were found Friday in a recent avalanche debris field near Mount Irvine, the Los Angeles Police Department stated in a brief update to the initial request for help finding the young man. Mount Irvine, at 13,770 feet, is about 2 miles southeast of 14,505-foot Mount Whitney.

Using a dog team and sonar, search-and-rescue crews found the 25-year-old man’s body on Saturday.

His mother told KTLA that he was the victim of an avalanche that occurred on Nov. 9, something the Inyo County Sheriff later confirmed to the Los Angeles Times.

Sheriff William Lutze told the newspaper that Meyers was found buried under a 60- to 70-foot-long avalanche area.

He suffered major injuries during his fall, which Lutze described as being like “in a head-on accident at 100 mph.”

The last time anyone heard from Lutze was on Nov. 5, when he texted his roommate to tell him he was hiking Mount Russell, which is north of Mount Whitney.

The area was hit with winter weather conditions — including heavy snow and winds with speeds of up to 100 mph in canyon areas — at the time, the Times reported.

The coroner’s office has not yet determined a cause of death, Mullenhour said, adding that an autopsy was still pending.

The federally managed wilderness area encompasses about 650,000 acres, about 100 miles along Sierra Nevada crest.