I am writing this because I need people to know what happened to us on Elk Summit Road in the Clearwater National Forest.

I need someone to believe me, because the Shoshone County Sheriff's Department does not,

and the Idaho County Search and Rescue Team closed their file on December 19, 2003, with the note,

inconclusive, no evidence of foul play. They are wrong. Something happened to my friends in that cabin.

I know what I saw, and I know what I heard, and I am not crazy. My name is Nolan Ashby.

I am 22 years old, and I was born and raised in Boise, Idaho.

I grew up hunting mule deer with my father and camping along the Salmon River every summer

with my family.

I am not the kind of person who gets scared in the woods.

The woods have been a part of my life since I could

walk. I need you to understand that, because what I am about to tell you does not sound like

something a person with my background would say. It started in the second week of November,

2003. My friend Derek Pruitt called me on a Tuesday night, November 7th, and told me his uncle had a cabin up past the town of Elk City, Idaho, on a forest service road called Elk Summit Road, which runs deep into the Clearwater National Forest toward the gospel hump wilderness.

Derek said his uncle hadn't used the cabin in three years, but the place still had

a wood stove, a hand pump for well water, and a generator that ran on diesel. He wanted to get

a group together for a long weekend of elk hunting. The rifle season for Elk in Unit 20 was open,

and Derek had drawn a tag. I said yes immediately. Derek also invited two of

our other friends, Cole Bettinger, who I had known since middle school at North Junior High in Boise,

and a guy named Travis Wyn, who Derek had met at Boise State. Travis was from Pocatello, and I had only

hung out with him a few times, but he seemed like a

solid guy. He was quiet and he knew how to handle a rifle. We left Boise on the morning of Thursday,

November 9th, at 4.30 in the morning. Derek drove his 2019 Ford F-250. We took Interstate 84 West to Highway 55 north through Horseshoe Bend and Macaul, then cut

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