The Lake Where Drowned People Are Never Found

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Tucked in the Sierra Nevada mountains between California and Nevada, Lake Tahoe is a famous vacation destination with a chilling secret. The lake itself is massive and deep, descending 501 meters (1,645 ft). During the summer months, it is a paradise for swimmers, boaters, and water skiers. What these fun seekers fail to realize is that they have a huge graveyard beneath them.

Anyone who has watched a crime show is familiar with the term “floaters” —corpses found bobbing on the surface of the water. In a traditional drowning, the victim becomes submerged and dies, the lungs filling with water. Soon, bacterial activity inside the dead body results in accumulation of gases, and the body floats to the top like a cork. Lake Tahoe is so cold that it inhibits the bacteria, and bodies rarely rise to the surface. Because of the lake’s elevation— 1.9 kilometers (6,225 ft) above sea level, divers cannot descend as deep as they typically could in other bodies of water, and the missing are often never found.

In 2011, some “mixed gas” divers, whose specialized equipment allows them to go down some 107 meters (350 ft), discovered the body of Donald Windecker, who’d been missing since 1995. Windecker was found in cold water — 1.67 degrees Centigrade (35 °F) — at 81 meters (265 ft). The body was in surprisingly good condition. The ice-cold depths preserved the body and did not allow bacteria to flourish. There is no need to tell how many thousands more corpses lie on the floor of Lake Tahoe, perpetually left to their last summer vacation.

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