Utah canyons swallow professor

Shawn Thomas would like nothing better than to hear that her partner of eight years has found his way out of the Utah wilderness after being listed as missing for nearly a week.

"But I'm resigned to the fact that it's not going to happen," she said from the Sartell, Minn., home she shares with Jerry O. Wolff, a St. Cloud State professor and avid outdoorsman.

Still, she hopes.

Wolff, 65, started a solo backpacking trek into the Needles area of Canyonlands National Park on May 10. He was scheduled to come out May 15, when his recreational permit expired.

When he didn't return, search crews began to scour a 3-square-mile area of very rough and rugged terrain in what is known as Salt Creek Drainage, said Denny Ziemann, chief park ranger for the Canyonlands and Arches national parks. With help from dogs and helicopters, 25 to 30 rescuers searched the park.

With searchers saturating an area, an ambulatory person will often be able to find his way to being rescued, Ziemann said.

But there's been no sign of Wolff, Ziemann said. "This is just on the upper end of difficult places to find somebody. The topography and geography are varied and extreme," he said. "There are canyons, caves, crevices, overhangs and small trees that cover areas."

Said park spokesman, Paul Henderson: "He literally could be anywhere."

The National Park Service has scaled back its search for Wolff, signaling a dimming prospect that he'll be found.

"We wish in the search business that we found everybody we were looking for,'' Zieman said. "But it's not uncommon that we don't. ... As each day passes, the likelihood is greatly reduced that he'll be found alive."

The back country is isolated and "fairly easy country to get lost in," he said.

Wolff, an internationally known expert on animal behavior, joined the St. Cloud faculty in 2006 after two years with the National Science Foundation. Wolff's park permit was strictly for recreational purposes, Henderson said.

Thomas, an assistant professor who teaches biology at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict, often accompanied Wolff on trips but stayed behind this time because her two daughters were still in school.

She said she was comfortable with Wolff venturing out on a solo trip because he is in excellent health and was experienced in hiking through remote areas. He was very familiar with the canyon lands, Thomas said. "He was used to rugged terrain," she said.

And if he became lost, he would know how to survive. "He was not adverse to eating bugs," Thomas said.

Wolff is known for his intensity, always thinking about science and asking a million questions, she said. "He actually could be quite tiring that way," Thomas said. To some of his students, his intensity made him scary, she said.

"I never found that to be the case. He's a very caring person," Thomas said, adding that he has a brilliant mind and is an outstanding researcher who works seven days a week.

"He didn't want people to see that he was human," she said. "He's very stoic. It's the German and Norwegian in him. He was all about work."

And the outdoors. "It was where he found solace,'' Thomas said. "He was able to reconnect with nature and de-stress."

Canyonlands has at least one fatality a year among its visitors, most often resulting from a preexisting medical condition, Henderson said. Others have died after falling or due to exposure to the heat and a lack of water.

Temperatures have been in the upper 90s lately, but the weather turned cooler on Wednesday with high winds and rain, Ziemann said. It has been getting down to about 60 degrees at night.

Thomas has spent the last week adjusting to the grim possibilities.

"I got to this point because I know him," she said. "This is out of character. His resiliency, his personality would have made him get to a place where he could be seen or at least a place he could be found."

At 65 years of age, Wolff made a point of preparing Thomas, who is 38, for "the time I would have to go on without him."

Thomas said she's concentrating on remembering the good times and the cherished memories. "There's always going to be hope until he comes home in whatever condition he comes home in."

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