Officials are searching for a 25-year-old woman who never showed up for a camping reservation at Big Bend National Park.
The National Park Service said that Christy Perry picked up a car rental in Midland, Texas on Nov. 8. The vehicle was seen parked at the trailhead for Big Bend’s Lost Mine trail the next day, but Perry did not arrive for a camping reservation at the park’s Chisos Basin Campground that same day.
Her family later reported that she did not return home from the camping trip, park officials said.
According to a flyer from the National Park Service, Perry is a Korean woman with brown hair and brown eyes who is approximately five feet and two inches tall and weighs about 100 pounds. Anyone who may have seen her while hiking the Lost Mine trail on Nov. 8 or 9 is asked to contact the NPS.
Park rangers and U.S. Border Patrol Agents searched the Lost Mine trail on Nov. 15, with a National Park Service airplane surveying the area from above. An expanded search occurred on Thursday, with NPS employees and Border Patrol agents joined by Texas Game Wardens and local fire crews. Two helicopters from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Border Patrol also joined the search.
The trail is currently closed “to allow searchers room to work efficiently and quickly,” park officials said.
The park described the Lost Mine trail as a very popular hiking trail that’s about 4.8 miles round trip. The steep trail goes through wooded areas.
Big Bend National Park is in west Texas and has views of the Texas and Mexico deserts. The park shares 118 miles of border with Mexico, running alongside the states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, and is “one of the largest transboundary protected areas in North America,” according to the NPS. The park covers over 1,250 square miles, has three river canyons, and contains 196 miles of the Rio Grande.
