This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake County Search and Rescue teams on Wednesday found a missing 43-year-old South Jordan woman dead below a cliff in the Lone Peak area, the apparent victim of a fall.
Kerry Elizabeth Crowley's remains were spotted by a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at the bottom of a 200- to 300-foot cliff, near the Cirque of Lone Peak, said Unified Police Lt. Lex Bell.
By 9:30 a.m., a helicopter had ferried in search and rescue workers, who confirmed the woman had died.
Crowley had left about 7:45 a.m. Tuesday to take the Jacobs Ladder Trail, a rugged, 12-mile route running above the Corner Canyon. She told her family that she would be done in around 11 hours.
When she had not returned by nightfall, family members located her vehicle at the trailhead in Corner Canyon and called Draper police. After a preliminary search by Draper officers, they contacted UPD and requested that they deploy their search and rescue team.
At 11:00 p.m. Tuesday, the team began searching, with help from the DPS helicopter.
Team members searched through the night in treacherous terrain, Bell said. Then, at around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the helicopter located the woman at the bottom of the cliff.
"She was located at the bottom of very steep terrain and would have had to have left the established trail and walked out toward a ledge in this area to have fallen here," Bell said, adding that the searchers estimate she fell and died sometime on Tuesday.
Bell said Crowley was a "very experienced hiker, [who] often hiked on her own and had hiked more difficult trails than this in the past."
However, this was her first attempt on this particular trail, which has several forks to different destinations at the top of the canyon that could confuse the unfamiliar.
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