Searchers scouring the rugged Uinta Mountains on Wednesday for a missing 12-year-old Boy Scout believed they found a sock belonging to Garrett Bardsley.
The Nike sock was found in a boulder field about a half-mile from the last place the boy was seen on Friday, when he left a nearby lake to go back and change clothes after they became wet.
"The sock appears that it was taken off of a wet foot, wadded up, very consistent with what we know about Garrett," Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said.
Because of where the sock was found, Edmunds said it would be in line with the assumption that he sought shelter in the cold weather, maybe by going into the boulder field for a crevasse or outcropping, "something to try and get out of the weather."
Edmunds said rescuers would concentrate their efforts in and near the boulder field for the boy, who is presumed dead.
Garrett, of Elk Ridge, was last seen about 8 a.m. Friday, when his father sent him back to camp after the boy got his shoes and pants wet while fishing in a pond near a lake.
The campsite was about a quarter-mile from the lake on a well-established path that connected with a road another quarter-mile away. A family friend said the distance to camp from where they had been fishing was "no more than 150 paces" distant.
Eighteen Scouts and six or seven adults had camped Thursday and had planned to leave Saturday.
More than 200 volunteers and search and rescue team members searched into the night Sunday for Garrett, who was wearing sweat pants, a T-shirt and a black hooded sweat shirt and tennis shoes. He had no provisions or backpack. That effort was scaled back to more than 50 professional search and rescue personnel working on foot and horseback this week.
Authorities believe the boy may have become disoriented on his way back to camp, and might have sought shelter as temperatures plummeted to near 18 degrees at night. The mountainous terrain about 50 miles east of Salt Lake City has altitudes between 9,000 and 10,000 feet.
Utah's bowhunting season has started, and hunters have been told to be on the lookout for the boy, Edmunds said.
The sheriff's office has tacked up posters of Garrett near trailheads and distributed them to businesses in the area.
The official search likely will tail off by the end of the week, Edmunds said, "but we're never going to stop looking."