Tate Morell

After nearly a week of intense searching for a missing hiker in the mountains near Red Lodge, Montana, rescuers now believe it is unlikely she is still alive. 

Authorities announced Saturday that they were scaling back their search for 23-year-old Tatum “Tate” Morell, after searching extensively since Monday, July 5.

“After the extensive search efforts, we do not believe she survived,” said incident commander Tom Kuntz of Red Lodge Fire Rescue.

Morell’s family said in a statement that she “was a fiercely independent, adventurous soul who loved the mountains. We find some solace in knowing she passed in a place she loved.”

Mountain rescue teams, search dog teams, and ground search teams put in hundreds of rescue hours into searching the area, including searching all possible routes, mountain peaks, ridges, as well as the area around her tent. Search efforts included multiple aerial searches along with multiple high resolution visual and infrared cameras, cellphone tracking, and Recco technologies. 

Morell, a Montana State University student from Idaho, was “an avid and experienced hiker” who planned to climb five mountain peaks in the West Fork of Rock Creek. She backpacked into the area, camped at Shadow Lake on July 1, and contacted her family via an InReach satellite communicator that evening.

While Morell was not due to return from her trip until July 5, search managers determined that she left her tent on the morning of July 2 to summit a 12,000-foot peak and never returned. Authorities believe Tatum suffered some kind of accident.

“Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of places that Tate could have gotten into trouble on these rugged mountains when the storms came into the area on [July 2],” said Kuntz.

The challenging search area contains countless rock fields, car-sized boulders, scree fields, and snowfields. Searching the area requires technical experience and advanced backcountry knowledge, Red Lodge Fire Rescue said in a news release. The size of the search area and the difficulty of the terrain makes searching extremely dangerous to rescuers, the agency said. 

Red Lodge Fire Rescue and the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office said they’ll continue search efforts “on a limited but continuous basis for the foreseeable future.” There will be limited area searches by trained rescuers, investigation of specific identified targets, and periodic searches by search dog teams.

“I am impressed with the outstanding commitment of all the volunteers on this search operation. Every search technique and technical capability was utilized,” said Carbon County Sheriff Josh McQuillan. “We had support from local, state, regional and federal resources.”

Tatum’s family, the Carbon County Sheriff’s office and Red Lodge Fire Rescue expressed appreciation for all of the efforts of the supporting agencies and organizations that assisted. The long list included Park County Search and Rescue personnel from Wyoming, Gallatin and Big Horn County Search and Rescue, the Yellowstone, Gallatin and Coconino County sheriff’s offices, Two Bear Air, the Army National Guard, the U.S. Forest Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Palisades Ranches, Jackson Hole Search Dogs, Absaroka Search Dogs, Western Montana Search Dogs, Montana State University Police, Garmin InReach, Gaia GPS and many individual volunteers.

For those wanting to help with the search or to commemorate Morell’s life, her family is asking they make donations in her honor to Red Lodge Fire Rescue at www.redlodgefire.com.