{"id":343623,"date":"2026-06-02T23:42:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T23:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/343623\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T23:42:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T23:42:22","slug":"california-crews-search-rugged-lake-tahoe-wilderness-for-hiker-missing-since-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/343623\/","title":{"rendered":"California crews search rugged Lake Tahoe wilderness for hiker missing since Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

A massive search effort is ongoing for a man missing since Memorial Day weekend in the Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe.<\/p>\n

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said Jason Coughran<\/a>, 60, was last heard from around 4 p.m. on May 25. He had set out from Fallen Leaf Lake, a smaller lake near the southern shore of Lake Tahoe, that morning and was last believed to be hiking near Angora Peak.<\/p>\n

Coughran was later reported overdue, prompting a search complicated by the remote terrain and poor weather.<\/p>\n

Search crews have been looking for Coughran since May 26, but the region was hit by a late-season cold snap later that week.<\/p>\n

By May 30, nearly 200 search and rescue crews<\/a> and volunteers from 20 counties had assembled to look for Coughran. As of Tuesday, he had not been found.<\/p>\n

\"desolation-wilderness-search-tahoe2<\/p>\n

The search effort briefing on May 30.<\/p>\n

California Office of Emergency Services<\/p>\n

“We have kind of a big area that this gentleman was hiking in,” said Sgt. Bryan Souza with California Highway Patrol in a video<\/a> release about the search.<\/p>\n

More than two dozen agencies have been helping in the search, including the National Guard, which deployed a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to the area. Officials said drones have also been deployed, and investigators have been using cellphone forensics.<\/p>\n

California’s Office of Emergency Services has been coordinating the search effort.<\/p>\n

The Desolation Wilderness is a 63,960-acre, sparsely populated section of the Eldorado National Forest west of South Lake Tahoe. It is dotted with dense foliage, granite peaks, glacially formed valleys and lakes.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive search effort is ongoing for a man missing since Memorial Day weekend in the Desolation Wilderness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8921,5845,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-343623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-el-dorado-county","tag-missing-person","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}