Search for Analy High School grad Riley Zickel continues in Oregon with help of volunteer pilot

A private citizen and helicopter pilot who has made a habit of helping Bay Area families search for missing loved ones has joined the Zickel family in Oregon as they embark on day nine of a search for their missing 21-year-old son Riley.

The official search was suspended Saturday night, according to the Sheriff’s Office in Marion County, Oregon.

The helicopter pilot, Jim Higgins, of Chico, joined the search Sunday, taking off about 11:45 a.m. from an airstrip near the Mount Jefferson Wilderness toward an area where Riley Zickel’s family believes he might be.

“So awesome to meet Jim Higgins and see that beautiful helicopter take off,” wrote Riley’s dad, Robin Zickel, in a Facebook post.

The Zickel family was introduced to Higgins through Carrie Morris of Windsor, whose husband, Morris, disappeared on Aug. 2, 2014, while on a hiking trip in the Trinity Alps. Higgins contacted Carrie Morris eight days after Steve Morris went missing on the slopes of Billy’s Peak, high above Stoddard Lake in rugged Trinity County.

When asked what Higgins would charge for the expedition, he said, “I don’t want any money. Just pay it forward someday,” Carrie Morris wrote in a March 2016 news release, recounting the experience.

When Carrie Morris heard of the Analy High School graduate’s disappearance in the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, Cheryl Alterman, a mutual friend, put her in touch with Riley Zickel’s parents to give them Higgins’ phone number.

“She reached out to me as a pay-it-forward kind of thing, and Jim has just been really wonderful,” Alterman said.

Higgins and a co-pilot made two passes over glacier-capped Mount Jefferson Sunday.

“We pray that this is the right location and that our boy is alive,” Robin Zickel wrote.

A Corvallis search-and-rescue climbing team from Corvallis, which works for free and has been involved in the search for Zickel, began their ascent of Mount Jefferson Sunday and set up their base camp at just under 6,000 feet. On Monday, team members started their ascent up the glacier, and reached their target area of 9,000 feet by early afternoon, but the search Monday afternoon was called off due to wind and snow, Zickel wrote.

Reached Monday, Higgins declined comment.

After joining the search for Steve Morris in August 2014, Higgins told the San Francisco Chronicle he “heard about what Carrie was going through and thought, ‘How can I not help?’ ... She needs the help, and there aren’t a lot of people with helicopters who have outdoor experience like me.” According to the Chronicle, he uses his helicopter to install internet and phone equipment in remote areas.

Higgins flew his helicopter low along Billy’s Peak to search for Steve Morris, and was able to find a slide area descending from the mountain where Steve Morris was last seen. At the base of the slide, searchers found footprints. Over the course of 10 months, the search team conducted 21 expeditions tracking Steve Morris’s more than two-mile route down the mountain, eventually finding evidence of a body. Just months before Steve Morris went missing, in January 2014, Higgins helped out a San Jose family after Dale Smith, a 51-year-old tech executive and four of his family members crashed in their private plane after a Thanksgiving getaway.

Higgins towed his Sno-Cat from Chico, and when he couldn’t get any farther into the snowy wilderness, drove the machine itself the rest of the way to meet the search effort.

Zickel is an experienced backpacker and chemistry major at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. He headed to the Mount Jefferson Wilderness southeast of Portland on July 27, after wrapping up a summer internship. He was expected to meet up with a friend in Seattle, but never showed up. After multiple attempts to contact him failed, he was reported missing July 30. The Marion County, Oregon, Sheriff’s Office began its search that day. Zickel’s silver Mazda SUV was found on July 30 at a trailhead near Breitenbush Lake. He was last seen by a fellow hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail just north of Jefferson Park in the Willamette National Forest.

Robin Zickel posted a plea to Facebook Sunday night after Higgins’ flight.

“Please help (Riley) with strength and the will to survive, warmth and love,” he wrote.

You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 707-521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdem?ocrat.com. On Twitter @SeaWarren.