Sometimes we come across things or events in our lives that defy explanation and forever remain a mystery. The following true tale is such a quandary...

...It happened many years ago high in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. My old high school buddy Toren and I liked to take off every chance we could and find difficult to get to lakes. Most mountain lakes are not too hard getting into in the summer months so we would challenge ourselves and hike into them in late winter or early spring.

Such was the case when we picked Barclay Lake from our 101 Hikes of Washington book. Early March and it was the first real warm day Seattle had seen for more than half a year and we were stoked to use our long weekend seeking out a new lake.

Following the books directions we drove to the end of a high elevation logging road, parked, grabbed our backpacks and headed into the forest. The book said the trail was rustic but I guess that is a summer summery because we found ourselves mostly lost the first hour or two. I used my compass to gain our bearings from surrounding ice-covered peaks that rose straight up all around us and matched those with the map I had.
By the time we reached Barclay Lake we were trudging through mud & snow and very tired. ---But we like adventure. That night we were woken by water in the tent. The half-frozen lake had risen from melting snows in the unusually hot days.
On our first morning, while Toren successfully tried trout fishing the ice-less portions, I wandered around the lake on the bare matted grass patches where the snow had just receded, camera in hand. And that is when I found the ‘wooden leg’.

At first I just stared at it in disbelief. I mean what a weird thing to find anywhere just lying around. But the more I looked at it the weirder I felt about looking at it—it creeped me out! There it was, a full-length prosthetic leg with a friggen sock still on the foot! Laces above the knee still tied nicely; something I imagine is only done AFTER you stick your stub into there. Upon even closer inspection I notice that it has three bullet holes through the lower ‘leg’. I surveyed all around the immediate vicinity but there is nothing else except two small white flowers newly emerging on the edge of the melting snow. The lake is only about forty feet away. Above the leg the ground sweeps upwards fast to meet nearly vertical rock cliffs that go up forever.

So here are the questions that came to mind then and still are valid today for you to ponder:
Why was there a prosthetic leg on the side of a remote mountain lake without the human that it belonged to?
Which brings up a whole bunch of questions itself like who would walk up a difficult trail, summer or winter, with a prosthetic? They likely wouldn’t but say they did; who would leave their leg behind and hop all the way back—they wouldn’t.
--Did the occupier of this leg fall off the step slopes above while climbing? ---Did they drown in the lake the previous year and only the leg-- which was made of a type of plastic-- float on high water levels to this spot and then become covered by snow until the day I found it? --A more likely scenario. The sock looked as if it had seen a season or two.

But then the bullet holes put yet another twist to it all doesn’t it...
...Murder? Quite possibly. Perhaps the shooter was unaware that his victim had a ‘wooden’ leg, after all, pants would cover it.
Shot and sunk in the lake?
Maybe the leg was shot at after its occupant left.
Shot and thrown from a plane?
We will never no the answer. I reported the incident to the King County Police and showed them this picture asking them to search the files for either a missing person with a prosthetic or a missing prosthetic without a human.
I checked back later but nothing turned up.

What do you think happened????