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22-year-old Jesse Galganov hoped to see the world before he began a grueling journey through medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He decided that the perfect plan was to take a gap year from the fall of 2017 to the spring of 2018 before fully immersing himself for at least the next eight years of his life through med school followed by residency.
When Jesse’s mom dropped him off at the airport in Montreal, Canada, she never fathomed that it would be the last time she would ever see her son. Sadly, one week later, Jesse vanished without a single trace & nearly nine years have gone by since he was last seen.
Jesse was raised by his mother, Alisa Clamen, who essentially raised Jesse & his sister, Sammi, as a single parent after her divorce when Jesse was two & her daughter was one. While she worked hard as a lawyer to support her family, her friends stepped in to help with the children.
While Jesse was a student at Lower Canada College, a private Montreal high school, he formed deep friendships with amazing boys, the group eventually dubbed Da Boyz. After high school, he attended Wesleyan University, a selective liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut, where Jesse continued to form close friendships.
After he received his undergraduate degree in May 2017, he was accepted into Sidney Kimmel Medical School, the medical faculty of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. After he was granted a deferral, he worked three jobs over the summer of 2017 & worked with his mom to plan a tight budget that allowed him to travel for the next eight months. It was by no means going to be a glamorous trip since Jesse was basically allotted about $10/day, but he was thrilled with the idea of an extended solo backpacking trip through South America & Southeast Asia.
Jesse packed, unpacked & repacked his backpack to perfection before leaving Montreal. He planned to first travel to South America, then he would fly to Asia in December for a friend’s wedding in India, ultimately ending his trip in Bangkok on May 15, 2018 so he could start med school in July. He packed his hiking shoes, a one-person tent, a mattress, a small camping stove, utensils, clothing, a headlamp, medication, a Kindle & a journal. Altogether, his backpack weighed 24#.
When Alisa dropped Jesse off at the airport on Sunday, September 24, 2017, he was flying to Toronto with his final destination of Lima, Peru. During the first few days of his trip he stayed at the Loki Hostel & enjoyed the city. He & his mom were in constant contact during this time & the last text Alisa received from her son was four days later on Thursday, September 28.
Jesse discussed the 31-mile hike he had planned along the Santa Cruz trail through the Cordillera Blanca Mountains of Northern Peru. Alisa was aware that he would be out of touch for the next four days until October 2.
By October 7, five days after Alisa expected to hear from Jesse, she began reaching out to his friends to see if anyone had heard from him. According to his high school friend, Julien Miller, at the start of his trip, Jesse had been messaging & Snapchatting friends consistently, but after September 29, all communication stopped.
When Jesse spoke to his close friend, Ben Libman, a few days before he left for his trip, he voiced how meaningful the trip was for him; a chance to be on his own before embarking on his career path in the medical field. Since he was going to be out hiking in the wilderness, it was a chance to unplug from technology for a short reprieve.
Everyone who knew Jesse was aware that he was an experienced traveler & an excellent communicator & if he had any access to communication, he would have definitely reached out to his loved ones. When she initially didn’t hear from her son as expected, Alisa wasn’t overly concerned, believing that he simply extended his hike for a few days. She later admitted that she didn’t want to be a helicopter parent, but when ten days turned into eleven & twelve, Alisa knew in her heart that something was wrong.
Since Jesse is a dual citizen of both the United States & Canada, when she reported her son missing on October 14, 2017, she contacted both the Canadian & American embassies in Lima, Peru.
As an investigation began, it was discovered that on September 27, the day before Alisa last spoke with her son, Jesse had taken an eight-hour ride on a Cruz del Sur Bus from Lima to Huaraz, a popular tourist spot for hikers. Security cameras showed him arriving at 6:30 am on September 28 & heading toward the Kame House Backpacker Hostel. He spent the day getting his supplies together & spent the night before setting out on his 31-mile hike through Huascaran National Park, the world’s highest tropical mountain range.
The next morning, on September 29, Jesse left for the trailhead early & a number of people recalled seeing him along the trail.
Alisa flew down to Peru on October 17, three days after she reported Jesse missing, to help with the search. The initial concern for local authorities was that Jesse may have been kidnapped. The U.S. State Department’s travel advisory about Peru says that robberies that turn violent have been on the rise.
Alisa spent months fighting with technology companies, including Apple, T-Mobile & Amazon, hoping to get information from her son’s cell phone as well as his Kindle e-reader to track him down with location technology. Because they weren’t cooperating, Alisa set up a Change.org petition to put pressure on them. She’s also tried to get assistance from the governments of Canada, the U.S & Peru, with little success.
After Alisa flew to Peru to speak with authorities in hopes of retracing Jesse’s steps, she also posted a $10,000 reward for any information that could lead to finding him. Although she was utterly terrified & she allowed herself to break down & sob every once in a while, she tried her best to stay focused in order to find him.
Jesse’s father, Todd Galganov, also flew down to Peru to help with the search. Meanwhile, Peruvian authorities organized multiple search parties, including high-altitude as well as low-level searches. Alisa posted more than 500 flyers throughout the area to spread awareness about her son’s disappearance. She knew that he hadn’t vanished into thin air & that someone knew something.
After more than 60,000 people signed the online petition, Apple, Amazon as well as T-Mobile each responded to the Peruvian National Police request to release information on Jesse’s electronic devices. This would allow them to see the last timestamp of photos to understand where Jesse was which could potentially lead investigators to those who may know more information regarding his whereabouts.
According to T-Mobile, they don’t have location information on their partner networks when customers are roaming so they have little information to provide. The information that Apple provided shows that Jesse’s phone was active in Lima on September 29, the day he was supposed to start his hike seven hours away in Huaraz.
The investigation focused on the hostel where Jesse stayed, Kame House. When they first spoke with the owner, he confirmed that Jesse had stayed there, but later changed his story & said that he hadn’t. Because he’d Snapchatted a friend from the hostel before he disappeared, authorities believed that this was a lie.
Other hostel employees gave various reports as to when Jesse arrived & when he left which is why the hostel was under investigation by the local District Attorney’s Office. Once Apple released Jesse’s information & his friends in Montreal worked to put a timeline together, they realized that rather than staying at Kame House as he’d planned, he ended up staying at Casablanca Hostel.
Once they realized that he stayed there instead, they were able to find CCTV footage that showed Jesse leaving the hostel at 4:30 am & walking toward an area where there was communal transportation. He was taken up to the Cashapampa entrance of the park where he was set to hike from the west to the east along the 31-mile Santa Cruz trail that would take four days & three nights.
Jesse didn’t register for his hike & Alisa eventually learned that the people who were working that day weren’t actually employees of the park. They provided forged records of the park & she planned to work on a civil lawsuit against the park for negligence.
Jesse didn’t show up for his bus back to Lima on October 2, nor did he use his ticket to fly to Bolivia on October 5. Since he was on such a tight, thoroughly planned out budget, his friends & family were highly doubtful that he would have intentionally veered from his agenda.
According to Alisa, the last known sighting of Jesse was on October 1 at about 3:30 pm approximately 1 km below Punta Union, the highest point of the Santa Cruz Trek, at 15,580 feet (4,750 meters) within the Cordillera Blanca mountain range, which is part of the Andes mountains, within northern Peru.
However, Jesse nor a single trace of his belongings have ever been found.
People from social media, who were trying to help with the search for Jesse, began emailing Alisa photos of anyone that could potentially be Jesse, however, some of the travelers looked nothing like him, which only further complicated the search.
Ben Libman, along with Jesse’s two other friends, launched the Help Us Find Jesse Facebook page that currently has 39,000 followers as well as a GoFundMe to pay for targeted PR campaigns & specialized rescue teams. Of the $500,000 goal, $236,755 has been raised. Alisa has fundraised to pay for the search for her son that has exceeded $2 million. She has also fielded multiple fake extortion & ransom requests.
According to Alisa Clamen’s Blog, as of 2023, she had traveled to Peru twelve times & during her third trip in May 2018, she climbed the mountain where Jesse vanished. She walked the entirety of his planned trek & placed stickers with his photo along the trail. Meanwhile, she got an elite Israeli search & rescue team involved, Magnus International, who ran a Remote Operated Vehicle search of all the lakes in the area with underwater robots. Drones were also flown over locations unreachable on foot
In July 2018, Alisa spent over a week sleeping at an elevation of over 15,000 feet with a group of local guides that she hired to conduct a glacier search for Jesse. In August 2018, she spent another ten nights on the mountain with a human remains detection dog & her trainer.
Searches for Jesse tracked down two French tourists who had last camped with Jesse in the mountains on the night of September 30, two days after he arrived in Huaraz. They told authorities that Jesse came upon them at the Taulipampa Camp late at night after he had gotten disoriented. He had been feeling ill, suffering from diarrhea, a headache & vision issues so they suspected that he was suffering from altitude sickness. When he got up the next morning, the campers indicated that he seemed to be feeling better & he made himself coffee. After they had breakfast together, Jesse left them on the morning of October 1, heading in the opposite direction from where the men were going. Had they believed that something was wrong or Jesse had been in danger, they would have never allowed him to go off alone.
Anyone who was on the mountain at that time who Alisa’s team of investigators were able to track down, indicated that Jesse’s pace had been very slow when they saw him. At about 3:30 pm on that same day, October 1, Jesse was spotted asking a Czech hiking group for water near Punta Union Pass, the last confirmed sighting of him. The area had treacherous terrain with many crevices & places he could have gotten off track. He was also wearing black clothing at the time, making finding him like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Although it’s very plausible that Jesse became ill from altitude sickness, the lead searcher for Jesse is convinced that he did not develop altitude sickness, wander off the trail & collapse somewhere because they would have found him, had that been the case. They’ve done a comprehensive search, hiking several kilometers in about eight directions away from the trail where he was last seen. Every body of water has been checked as has every piece of terrain. They searched under rocks & used machetes to cut away the long grass, covering about 70% of the Santa Cruz Valley.
Because neither Jesse nor a single item of his belongings has been found, is indicative of something criminal. The fact that his body was not found along the trail suggests that he was either carried off the trail, possibly by a horse or donkey, or hidden very carefully. If Jesse had succumbed to altitude sickness & died while hiking, Alisa believes that he could have been robbed in his ill & confused state or even robbed after he died. Because the area is dangerous, unmonitored & unmarked, it’s common for people to go missing.
Altitude sickness occurs when a body doesn’t have time to adjust to lower oxygen availability that comes with higher elevation. The higher you climb, the thinner the atmosphere gets which means breathing in the same amount of air gets you less oxygen than at a lower altitude. Altitude sickness happens when your body struggles to adjust to the difference in how much oxygen you’re getting with each breath.
The most common form of altitude sickness is known as acute mountain sickness (AMS) which is also the mildest form. High altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is when the sickness affects a person’s lungs, causing them to fill with fluid. This is a medical emergency that requires immediate medical attention. Though it’s not the most severe form of altitude sickness, it can cause death faster than other forms. High altitude cerebral edema (HACE) is the most severe form & happens when the high altitude causes your brain to swell. It’s highly dangerous & requires emergency care.
When a person’s body is not acclimated to high altitude, altitude sickness is very common. AMS is rare at elevations less than 8,000 feet above sea level, but almost all who ascend quickly to elevations of 11,000 feet will develop AMS. Above 8,000 feet, a hiker shouldn’t climb more than 1,640 feet or 500 meters per day.
Symptoms include headaches, nausea & vomiting, loss of appetite, fatigue even when resting, a general feeling of malaise, difficulty sleeping, vision changes & dizziness or lightheadedness. The only cure for altitude sickness is descending to a lower altitude until symptoms improve.
Although Alisa is devastated that not a single trace of her son has been found, she is grateful for the connections she would have otherwise never made. She has received an outpouring of love & support from friends, family as well as strangers, something that has touched her heart.
According to Alisa, her son had a huge heart, a core empathy to him & he dreamed of one day working with Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian organization that provides emergency medical aid in areas of conflict, disaster & exclusion from healthcare. He was passionate about learning about other cultures & traveling to new places. Knowing that he had a long road ahead with medical school, he wanted to take a year to himself to explore, immerse himself in cultures & see part of the world.
When Jesse had been a junior, he spent one semester in Prague & seven weeks backpacking through Western Europe. Although the trip through South America & Southeast Asia was meant to be for self-discovery where he mostly planned to be alone, he did plan to meet up with friends along his travels.
Alisa continues to search for her son after he’s been missing for more than eight years. She says, Jesse, he’s my son, my best friend, my confidant, my ski buddy, my everything. So, I can’t give up. Even once I find him, I have to honor him. I can’t just give up on life because that’s something he would never, ever want me to do.
When Jesse vanished, he stood at 5’10” & weighed 170# with brown hair & brown eyes. Family members are asking anyone with any information in regards to Jesse’s whereabouts, to please contact helpusfindjesse@gmail.com.
References:
- Teen Vogue: How technology helps & hurts the search for missing persons
- Alisa Clamen’s Blog: My search for Jesse & the beginning of my story
- Daily Mail: Canadian hiker who vanished more than five weeks ago in Peru is still missing as officials open a criminal investigation
- Yeshiva World News: Jewish hiker from Montreal disappears in Peru; mother believes he may have been abducted
- Maisonneuve: The path forward
- NBC News: 22-year-old Jesse Galganov disappears during hiking trip in South America
- CBC News: Community rallies behind mom in ongoing search for missing son, Jesse Galganov
- Cleveland Clinic: Altitude sickness
- The Gazette: Searchers for Jesse Galganov in Peru suspect foul play
- CBC: ‘This is living hell’: Mother of missing Montrealer ramps up efforts to find son Jesse Galganov
- Vice: Why this mom retraced her missing son’s steps through Peru
- The Canadian Jewish News: Israeli company assists in search for Canadian missing in Peru
- Newspapers.com: Calgary Herald: ‘I have to know what happened’
- Fandom: Jesse Galganov
- Medium: Jesse Galganov: Missing Canadian hiker
- YouTube: Ville de Cote Saint-Luc: In conversation with Alisa Clamen
