The Forest’s Secret: A Hunter Finds a Missing Hiker’s Remains and a Chilling Photo After a Decade.

The Sawtooth Wilderness of Northwest Idaho is a place of jagged beauty and unforgiving terrain. Among its many peaks, one stands with a name that serves as a warning: Seven Devils. It was here, in September 2010, that an experienced 39-year-old outdoorsman named Todd Holland vanished into the thin mountain air, leaving behind a mystery that would take a decade to unearth—and a photograph that would haunt the Pacific Northwest forever.

The Ascent into the Devils

On September 25, 2010, Todd Holland set out for a four-day hunting trip. He wasn’t alone; he was accompanied by his longtime friend, Jeff, and his loyal black Labrador Retriever, Ruby. Todd was a man of the woods—prepared, cautious, and armed with a .357 Magnum revolver for protection. Their goal was to trek through the Seven Devils range to hunt Blacktail deer and witness the awe-inspiring depths of Hell’s Canyon.

But by the third day, the mountain began to take its toll. Todd developed a debilitating knee injury. Movement became agony. To save the hunt, Jeff made a decision that many survival experts would later call a “death sentence”: he suggested Todd stay behind at McFaul Ridge to rest while Jeff and his father, Steve (who was joining them), pushed on to the destination. Jeff promised to return for Todd in two days.

When Jeff and Steve returned to the ridge on September 28th, the campsite was silent. Todd’s gear was gone. Todd was gone. Only the wind whistled through the pines.

The Search and the Suspicions

The initial search was one of the largest in Idaho’s history. Helicopters swept the valleys, and teams of bloodhounds combed the ridges. As the days turned into weeks with zero results, the focus shifted from a rescue mission to a criminal investigation.

The Sheriff turned his gaze toward Jeff. During a polygraph test, Jeff’s answers were inconsistent, and he eventually failed the exam. Todd’s wife, Julie, painted a dark picture of the “friendship,” describing Jeff as an aggressive, unreliable man who often mocked Todd and had a history of mistreating animals.

Yet, without a body or a weapon, there was no crime. The investigation hit a wall until a mysterious phone call changed everything.

A week after Todd vanished, a couple hiking miles away found Ruby, Todd’s black Lab. She was dehydrated but alive. Strangely, her collar and her dog-pack—the harness she used to carry supplies—had been removed. When searchers took Ruby back to the mountains to see if she could lead them to her master, the dog’s reaction was bone-chilling. She refused to enter certain valleys, trembling and whimpering in a state of absolute terror, as if she sensed a predator that wasn’t supposed to exist.

Despite bringing in a celebrity clairvoyant who claimed Todd had been “killed by a tall man and buried at the base of the mountain,” the search officially ended on October 21, 2010. Todd Holland was declared a missing person, lost to the devils.

The Discovery in the Valley

Ten years passed. The world moved on, but the mountains held their secret.

In April 2020, a hunter tracking game near the Barnard River mouth—dozens of miles from where Todd was last seen—spotted the unmistakable gleam of white bone. Scattered in a lush, remote valley were the skeletal remains of Todd Holland.

Nearby lay his backpack, his binoculars, and his sleeping bag. But two things stood out to the investigators:

The .357 Magnum was missing. For an experienced hunter, the sidearm is the last thing you lose.

His camera was found. Badly corroded by a decade of snow and rain, it was sent to a forensic lab in a desperate attempt to recover the memory card.

The Final Photograph

Digital forensics managed to pull several dozen photos from the card. Most were Scenic landscapes: the sunset over Hell’s Canyon, Jeff sitting by the fire, the rugged peaks of the Seven Devils. But the very last photo on the card was different.

It was blurry, taken with a shaking hand in low light. It wasn’t a landscape. It captured a dark, towering silhouette standing at the edge of the treeline. The scale was terrifying—compared to the surrounding saplings, the figure stood nearly eight feet tall. It didn’t look like a bear. It had a heavy, bipedal frame and long, Shaggy limbs.

Online researchers and cryptozoologists soon linked the image to legends of the “Grassman”. While often associated with Ohio, sightings of this specific subspecies of Bigfoot—named for its long, Shaggy, grass-like fur—have been reported in the deep, unmapped valleys of Idaho. Witnesses describe the Grassman as nocturnal, emitting a foul odor, and being far more aggressive toward humans and dogs than the standard Sasquatch.

The Unanswered Questions

The discovery of the bones and the photo only deepened the mystery:

The Distance: Todd Holland had a severe knee injury. How did he travel dozens of miles across vertical terrain to the Barnard River mouth?

The Dog: If a creature killed Todd, why was Ruby spared but left traumatized? And who—or what—removed her collar?

The Gun: If Todd took a photo of his attacker, did he also fire his .357? No spent shell casings were found, and the gun has never been recovered.

The official ruling remains “accidental disappearance,” but the local community is divided. Some believe Jeff and his father accidentally shot Todd and moved the body to a remote valley to stage a disappearance. Others believe Todd was stalked by the creature in the photo, eventually succumbing to a predator that doesn’t belong in the modern world.

Conclusion: The Ghost of McFaul Ridge

Todd Holland was described as a man who never said no to a friend. That kindness may have been his undoing. By agreeing to let Jeff push on while he waited alone and injured, he became a target in a territory where the “devils” aren’t just names on a map.

The Seven Devils mountains remain as beautiful and dangerous as they were in 2010. But hikers in the Sawtooth range now tell a new story—the story of a hunter who looked into the eyes of the sinister, took a single, final photograph, and became a part of the mountain’s dark history.