"For a lot of local hikers, it's an extreme loss," said Greg Johnston, who edited a "Trail of the Week" column she wrote for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "For decades, she showed us the way, and now that's gone."

"It was a real healing thing for her," Johnston said. "Once she found hiking, she never stopped."

She had been hiking with her boyfriend, Bob Morthorst, on Wednesday in the Owyhigh Lakes area east of Rainier's 14,410-foot summit when they encountered snow on the trail at about 5,000 feet. He stopped and she went on, friends and park officials said.

When she didn't return as planned, he made it safely down the trail and reported her missing.

The body found Saturday was off-trail, about halfway down a steep hillside above Boundary Creek, park spokeswoman Patti Wold said. She didn't know whether it was apparent that the woman had fallen or what caused the death. It remains under investigation.

"It's a time to be cautious when you're in the backcountry on snow, but we don't know if that was a contributing factor or not," Wold said.

Michael Fagin, a meteorologist who specializes in mountain weather forecasts, said Sykes invited him on the hike, but he had to work. Often during hikes with Sykes and her boyfriend, she'd continue walking around and taking pictures when Fagin and Morthorst stopped to eat or rest. "Bob and I would stop and eat lunch, and she'd be crawling in the dirt taking pictures of flowers," Fagin said. "She couldn't sit still."

"After lunch on the ridge we continued, climbing from one high point to the next facing the mountain," she wrote in a piece about snowshoeing on Mazama Ridge. "As much as we love the forest there is something that stirs the restless soul to go further, to go higher.
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