Emergency responders from a number of agencies are assisting with the recovery effort for missing canoeist Ty Sitter, 23, Janesville, Wisconsin.
When the first announcement was issued for a missing paddler—Ty Sitter, 23, Janesville, Wisconsin—it was hoped that he would be found in the woods of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) where he had been camping with his father and brother. However, as the search continued, evidence led emergency responders to believe Sitter never left the lake.
Sitter was last seen by his family at approximately 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 9, fishing by himself in a canoe on Swan Lake. At approximately 9:00 p.m., his family became concerned when he had not returned to the campsite. They found Sitter’s canoe upright and unoccupied on the northwest side of the lake. Sitter’s life jacket, fishing gear and an anchor were in the canoe but there was no sign of Sitter. His fishing pole was also missing.
After a fruitless search, Sitter’s father and brother paddled out and alerted the Cook County Sheriff ‘s Office at around midnight. An immediate search was launched with assistance of the Sheriff ‘s Response Unit, the U.S. Forest Service, and a Minnesota State Patrol helicopter.
Other resources were requested and additional personnel, dog teams and equipment arrived throughout the day on Friday and Saturday morning. Assisting were search and water cadaver dog teams from Central Lakes Search and Rescue and NorthStar Search and Rescue Dog Association; personnel from the Minnesota DNR; U.S. Forest Service; Cook County SRU; Grand Marais First Responders; air support from the Forest Service, Life Link II and Civil Air Patrol; as well as side scan sonar and underwater camera from the St. Louis County Sheriff ‘s Search and Rescue. Cook County Sheriff Mark Falk said the side-scan sonar spotted an “image of interest” in 90 – 100 feet of water.
Based on the side-scan sonar and an exhaustive search of the area, Falk reported Monday, June 13 that the focus was on the lake itself. Falk said that all of the evidence—the initial sonar search, the knowledge of where Sitter was last seen, where the canoe was found, the response of the water cadaver dog teams to a specific area of the lake—leads to the belief that Sitter had drowned.
On Tuesday, June 14, equipment from St. Louis County, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV), was used in an attempt to confirm the image was Sitter’s body and to make a recovery. Unfortunately the efforts were hampered by winds.
Falk said normally a three-party team on a pontoon boat uses the ROV, which is operated by a laptop computer. There is no way to bring a pontoon boat into this remote wilderness lake, so the rescuers attempted the recovery using an 11-foot Zodiac with canoes lashed to the side for the ROV equipment, computer, and a 2000-watt generator.
At press time on Thursday, June 16, an eightperson team—four responders from St. Louis County, two from Cook County, and two from the U.S. Forest Service—was re-entering the Boundary Waters. The team planned to take in enough supplies to stay at the wilderness lake for three days. Falk explained that a lot of daylight hours were wasted getting equipment and supplies in. A second Zodiac was also to be taken in which would hopefully make the ROV work easier.
“It is a challenge to do this sort of thing in the wilderness,” said Falk after the first effort was unsuccessful. “But we really need to find him, to get closure for the family, for all of us.”
Swan Lake is located in the BWCA approximately 15 miles northwest of Grand Marais, accessible only by water.
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