Two friends disappeared on a 2022 camp trip, a year later, his GoPro revealed chilling images …
The northwest of the Pacific is famous for its endless forests, sinuous rivers and the type of wild beauty that seems intact by time. He is also known for his mysteries. But few stories have grabbed the locals, and eventually the entire nation, such as the disappearance of Alex and Ryan, two best friends who disappeared during a routine camp trip in the summer of 2022.
For months, their families sought answers, clinging to hope when the days became weeks and then months. But it was not until a mistreated goopro appeared on a muddy shore a year after the true depth of the mystery, and its chilling nuances, they light up to light.
This is the story of two young people, a camera and a forest that seems determined to maintain their secrets.
A weekend like any other
Alex and Ryan were inseparable. At 22, they had been best friends from high school, balancing perfectly: Alex was the meticulous planner, always making lists and verifying paths of paths, while Ryan was the improviser, joking even when they were lost. His adventures were documented on phones and cameras, not for fame, but for the simple joy of remembering.
The weekend of his disappearance began as hundreds before. They packed the light: two backpacks, a green tent, snacks, bottled water and a goopro that they had promised to use for Vlogging.
The early morning of Saturday, they accumulated in the old sub -Ryan sub -lounge, music at full volume, laughter resonating on the road. They filmed fragments while driving, the path that was rolled towards the deep green of the forest, Ryan holding energy drinks such as trophies, the goopro mounted on the board capturing its jokes.
In the afternoon, they arrived at the beginning of the path, a land extractor where the car would expect its return. The walk was short, its voices faded in the trees. The camp they chose was idyllic: a clear next to a river, high pines that rise above. They launched the store, extended their team and established the Gopro in their tripod.
A recovered clip shows them smiling in the lens, joking about who would catch the biggest fish, although neither had brought a cane. That night, Hot Dogs cooked on a small fire. Ryan, always the music lover, kept a white airpod in his ear, even while shaking the flames. Alex mocked him about missing the sounds of nature, but Ryan simply smiled and took advantage of the rhythm of a song that only he could hear.
Before delivering, they established the Gopro to record a period of burning fire, the store shines weakly behind them. It should have been a weekend like any other. But at some point at night, everything changed.
The sudden silence
When Alex’s parents did not find out about him on Monday afternoon, they assumed that the children had extended their trip. For Tuesday, Ryan’s employer called his family to tell him that he had not presented work. The concern began to spread. For Wednesday, both families went to the beginning of the path and found that the Subaru still parked where the children had left it.
Inside the forest, the search engines found the camp. The tent was still standing, sleeping bags, half with buzzs, as they were abandoned in a hurry. Water bottles, sandwiches and a phone charger sat on the picnic table, without a telephone in sight. The Gopro tripod remained, but the camera itself was missing. The fire well had cooled, but not completely extinguished, which suggests that it had left abruptly. One of Ryan’s sneakers was carefully next to the store, the other inside. A flashlight lay on the ground, its beam pointed to the trees, dead batteries.
Alex’s last activity was at 11:42 p.m. Saturday: A photo published in its Instagram story that shows the brilliant campfire, Ryan in Silhouette with his hood. After that, nothing. Ryan’s phone darkened at the same time.
Search teams combed the area for days. The helicopters in previous slices, the volunteers called their names through the trees. The dogs collected weak aromas near the riverbank, but lost them on the edge of the water. Some believed that children could have drowned, but no bodies arose. The river was fast, but had renounced the victims before. The complete absence of clothes, backpacks or even garbage caused the drowning theory to feel incomplete.
The lost GoPro became an obsession. The researchers reasoned that if the device had been recording when the children disappeared, it could contain the only answers. But despite dragging the river, traveling the banks and verifying the efforts in the nearby cities, the camera never found.
A year of rumors and pain
The weeks became months. The story fell from the headlines, surpassed by new tragedies. The families maintained vigils, clinging to candles and photographs, their voices broke while they begged for information. Rumors extend online. The hikers whispered on strange sounds in those forests, voices in the dark that did not belong. Internet detectives said the children had stumbled upon something that were not destined to see.
For the summer of 2023, the case was cold. Until, at the end of July, two kayakistas rowed a remote stretch of the river noticed a plastic flash trapped in the mud near the shore. As they approached, they found a little GoPro Beaten, their marked housing, the moss growing through their buttons. When they pressed the ignition button, a faint red light blinked once before dying. The memory card inside was still intact.
The Testimony of the Gopro
The discovery revived the case. The detectives handled the GoPro as if it were made of glass. A technician carefully dried it under sterile lights before removing the small memory card. There was a collective breath content when the card slipped into a reader. With all the probabilities, the files appeared, corrupt at first sight, but not erased. The camera had survived a year underwater.
The first clips were harmless, almost cheerful. Alex and Ryan laugh while walking, exchanging the camera from one place to another, making faces in the lens, showing their camp, tracking the river shining in daylight. His voices were strong, easy, intact because of the restlessness that would come later. Hours of images painted an ordinary camp trip, establishing the store, organizing snacks, joking about Ryan’s musical habits while his white airpod shone in his ear. The timeline of the fire was also there, it turns on spiral until night, their shadows extend against the trees.
But as the files continued, the tone changed. Around midnight, the camera had been collected again. The lens showed only black at the beginning, then swayed towards the walls of the store, shining weakly from the inside. A whisper, Alex’s voice, died something indistinct.
Then Ryan, Sharper: “Did you hear that?” The camera shook towards the forest, nothing more than darkness, the occasional brightness of the origins of some night animal. But the microphone, sensitive and implacable, picked up something else: a low, almost rhythmic sound. No wind, not the river babbling. Something like words that speak too far to understand.
The footage cut, then resumed minutes later. This time, the children were inside the store. The Gopro balanced awkwardly against a sleeping bag, caught both in the frame, they face pale in the dim light of a lighthouse. Ryan whispered: “Voices! I swear I heard voices.” Alex tried to calm him, insisting that they were only echoes, water that transported the sound. But he kept looking towards the zipper as if he wanted to screw himself.
Then came the clip that made even experienced detectives change in their seats. The camera, lying aside, caught the nylon wall of the tent as something pressed against her from outside. Five forms, like fingers, were briefly applied against the fabric before moving away. Ryan gasped, throwing himself into the camera, hitting her side. The shot turned and landed on the ground, catching only the darkness and damping voices.
After that, the images grew chaotic. The flashlights swing wildly through the trees, you bounce in the cortex. The voices of the children rose, panic now, stumbling with each other. “Who is there?” “We go.” “Don’t run. Stay together.” The camera swing as if it were tied to someone’s chest or clung to trembling hands. Crunken leaves, broken branches, and always in the background, that low rhythmic murmur, now closed, as if surrounding them.
The final clip lasted less than a minute. The Gopro leaned down, pointed to the running river, the pale foamy water under the beams of the flashlight. Ryan’s voice shouted Alex’s name. There was a splash. The camera fell, and for a moment, the lens caught a blur of water and mud. Then, briefly, only enough to ask more questions, a couple of boots appeared on the edge of the frame. No sneakers, or any of the boys. Heavy, dark, motionless.
And then the video ended.
Fragments and theories
The images did not offer clear answers. He showed no violence, he did not capture faces, only fragments, whispers, shadows, a hand pressed against Nylon, boots on the edge of the river. Enough to terrorize, but not enough to solve anything.
Forensic teams dissected the audio, improving, isolating, trying to interpret the rhythmic sound. Some swore that it was only water and wind distorted by fear. Others claimed to hear words, a song in an unknown language. Online, when the fragments inevitably filtered, theories extend as the forest fire: worship activity, a stalker in the forest or somewhat less human completely.
The families were divided between relief and anguish. Relief that at least they knew how Alex and Ryan’s last hours were seen. Anguish that the footage stopped just before revealing what had really happened. The Gopro, once destined to capture laughs and memories, had become its only witness. And like any witness, he had chosen the silence where the truth was more needed.
The forest keeps its secrets
The search teams returned to the banks of the river, improving the evidence near the place where the device had been found. The dogs alerted near a swirl where debris gathered, but the dredging converted nothing more than trunks and stones. If the children had been dragged into the current, their bodies should have appeared. They never did.
The Gopro had emerged after a year, but Alex and Ryan remained missing. And in the silence left behind, the forest seemed to grow heavier with secrets, such as protecting what had shown them that night.
The release of the images divided the pair box. National Networks issued blurred images of the store wall, fingers by pressing in Nylon. YouTube channels dissected each painting, improving the shadows until they seemed to reveal faces that may or may not have been there. Reddit’s threads full of theories, each more wild than the previous one.
The Sheriff’s office, flooded with calls, tried to moderate the frenzy. Officially, they described the video as an non -conclusive evidence of an encounter with unknown individuals or wildlife. Not officially, several deputies admitted in private that the boots in the last clip kept them awake at night.
Artifacts in the current
As months passed, the river continued to renounce its secrets. In the spring of 2024, a hiker who crossed a downstream catwalk realized something hooked on the rocks: an apple airpod, flooded but unmistakable. Ryan’s family recognized him instantly; He wore those white headphones everywhere, even in the forest. The serial number, weak but readable, confirmed it. The device was too damaged to work, but its presence had weight. If it had appeared a year after the Gopro, housed in the same current that passed through the children’s camp, it meant that at least one of them had reached the river.
A torn black hoodie was found half a mile downstream, trapped in a branch that stood out from the riverbank. Ryan’s parents immediately recognized him: it was the same hood sweatshirt he had used in the last Instagram story that Alex published. The evidence did not reveal anything conclusive. Without blood, without fibers that can point to an attacker. Only mud, river water and weak traces of Savia de Pino. The hoodie had been in the river for a long time, too degraded for its certainty. However, his presence was undeniable. Another piece of their children had appeared, but never the children themselves.
A legend in Los Pinos
The pain of the families became heavier with each article. It was as if the forest were playing with them, releasing chips at their own schedule, a camera, an airpod, a hoodie, always enough to remind them of what was lost, never enough to return what really mattered.
The researchers expanded their search to the surrounding caves and sewers, remembering how objects could travel miles through invisible river paths. The specialists mapped hydrology, tracking how articles could have moved. The conclusion was alerting: if Alex and Ryan had been dragged to those underground systems, their bodies could never return. Even so, that did not explain the boots, the pressing hand or the whispering voices.
The interest in the case reached a high point. Series of documents released. Podcasters caused theories. Ghost hunters camped overnight, daring the same stretch of the river. Most returned empty -handed, humiliated by the silence of the forest.
For families, the footage was unbearable. Alex’s parents maintained a copy but could not see it again. Ryan’s brother admitted that he repeated him late at night, looking for a somewhat new static, convinced that the truth must be hidden in sight.
By 2025, the case had been reduced to category researchers who fear the most: not resolved, but unforgettable. The goopro, the airpods, the hoodie, all recovered from the forest as if the earth was rationing pieces of a puzzle. Always enough to keep the story alive. Never enough to close it.
The forest remains silent
In April 2025, a group of campers on the same place reported that their own bullage nylon walls inward, as if someone pressed a hand against the fabric from the outside. The Sheriff noticed the account, but a follow -up was not possible. The forest remained indifferent, giving anything else.
For the families of Alex and Ryan, the only certainty was absence. His laugh, once so strong, now resonates only in memory. His faces remain in photographs, smiling in a camp that seemed too ordinary to become the stage of a nightmare.
Its history has become more than a disappearance. It is an interwoven legend in Los Pinos, a disturbing reminder that in some places, the trees listen, the water speaks and the earth itself maintains much more secrets than we are willing to expect.
What really happened to Alex and Ryan on that summer night in 2022 is still an unanswered question. Were they simply two young men overwhelmed by the indifference of nature, or victims of something more strange, something that the forest conspired to hide?
The forest contains the answer, somewhere between the river race and the whispers that take the wind. But for now, he has chosen the silence, leaving behind only fragments: a camera, a hoodie, a couple of headphones and the chilling knowledge that sometimes the last thing you hear is not enough to save you.
And so, the story lasts, not as a resolved case, but as a warning story for anyone who dares to listen to the quiet and mysterious heart of the forest.
