BRINNON — An Olympia man who had received some “upsetting medical news” asked a friend to take him to his favorite spot in the woods, on a cliff overlooking the Duckabush River, about 4 miles from Brinnon.
He said he wanted to meditate and perhaps write some poetry.
“He wanted to be alone in his favorite spot,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Detective Ryan Menday said Friday, recounting an interview with the friend.
The two men, after hiking to the area Thursday, had agreed to meet in an hour or two at the trailhead near the Interrorem Cabin in Olympic National Forest.
When the 66-year-old man didn’t show, the friend hiked back up the eight-of-a-mile trail and saw his body below in the river.
“The preliminary investigation would indicate suicide,” although it’s possible he fell, Menday said.
Menday declined to release the man’s name, citing the open investigation, which is expected to wrap up the middle of this week.
Authorities were contacted at about 1 p.m. by the friend, who had hiked back to a logging operation to find a phone.
Law enforcement personnel and medical personnel arrived about a half-hour after the 9-1-1 call, Menday said.
They found the body downstream of a narrow whitewater chute bounded by steep cliffs some 30 to 40 feet high, Menday said.
A Jefferson County Search and Rescue team rappelled down and hoisted the body up to the trail before carrying it out, an operation that took three to four hours.
The body is now at Kosec Funeral Home in Port Townsend, Menday said.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or at leah.leach@peninsula
dailynews.com.
