Horror in the High Desert 3: Firewatch 2024

The film opens with a reconstruction of events surrounding the disappearance of Gary Hinge, Eric Mencis, an amateur hiker who vanished in the remote Great Basin Desert of Nevada in July 2017. His planned route had taken him from the small town of Ruth to a cabin he had visited on a previous expedition, and he was expected to return within a certain timeframe. When he failed to come back—two days past his anticipated arrival—his housemate, Simon Rodgers, alerted Gary’s sister Beverly Hinge, Tonya Williams Ogden, who promptly notified local authorities. With more than a week having passed since his last sighting, the investigation was already burdened with uncertainty.

Initial search and rescue efforts were organized based on the last recorded GPS location from Gary’s cell phone. Local and state police, park rangers, and volunteer groups joined forces to scour the desert landscape. A breakthrough came only a few days later when Gary’s truck was discovered 55 miles from Ruth, at the end of a dirt road, at the base of a small hill. This unexpected find shifted the focus of the investigation; search parties, employing on-foot teams, helicopters, and drones, meticulously combed the surrounding area. Despite these intensive efforts, no trace of Gary was found.

As days turned into weeks, authorities declared the likelihood of finding Gary alive to be minimal. They weighed the harsh conditions of the desert in peak summer, Gary’s known habit of traveling with minimal supplies, and the inherent dangers of the terrain—including local wildlife and numerous abandoned mining pits. With the official search winding down and media interest dwindling, Beverly Hinge decided to take matters into her own hands by hiring private investigator William “Bill” Salerno, David Morales. Concurrently, local reporter Gal Roberts, Suziey Block, pushed for continued media coverage, fearing that the case would be forgotten as just another cold case.

The investigation then pivoted to the clues available from Gary’s abandoned truck, treated as a crime scene. Forensic analysis revealed an array of unidentified fingerprints—particularly on the steering wheel—and a trail of barefoot footprints that did not match Gary’s prints. The inability to match these prints to any known individual left the police with few leads, essentially stalling the official inquiry.

Meanwhile, Salerno began scrutinizing Gary’s online presence, uncovering a digital trail that was both surprising and revealing. Under the pseudonym “Scorpion Sam,” Gary had cultivated a following of approximately 50,000 on his video blog, where he documented his hiking and survival adventures. One of his later videos, uploaded shortly before his disappearance, recounted an unnerving experience during his last excursion. In that video, Gary described a three-day hike in an unfamiliar area where he detected the smell of smoke and discovered a seemingly abandoned cabin with an active chimney. Disturbed by a sense of imminent danger, he camped at a safe distance. The next day, he noticed a trail of barefoot footprints and felt as though he was being followed—a claim that elicited a mix of skepticism, criticism, and even challenges from his online audience.

In a final, emotionally charged video, Gary explained that he would not disclose the exact location of the cabin, fearing that it might attract inexperienced adventurers to the perilous terrain. Instead, he promised to return with additional equipment, including a video camera and a firearm for protection. Weeks after the truck was found, hikers in White Pine County discovered a backpack—later identified as Gary’s—at their campsite. The contents of the bag shocked investigators when they found Gary’s severed hand clutching his video camera. Forensic analysis suggested that the hand had been severed while Gary was still alive, within a window of no more than five weeks. The memory card from the camera, when examined, revealed footage of Gary’s final night at the mysterious cabin—a sequence that has since fueled intense speculation and a multitude of conspiracy theories linking his disappearance to phenomena ranging from secret government projects and atomic testing to Indigenous rituals, satanic cults, and extraterrestrial encounters.