A plea for help at 8:55 p.m. Aug. 11, 2015, was the last contact Jesse Farber of Tamaqua had with his loved ones. He told his girlfriend, Rachel Carroll, that he was in a tree on the mountain (Sharp Mountain) behind Tamaqua Area High School and there were coyotes after him. Farber's family began an immediate search and reported him missing to Tamaqua Police.

He hasn't been seen or heard from since.An official search began the morning of Aug. 13, but turned up no sign of the 29-year-old father of two. Additional searches were also unsuccessful. Farber's disappearance was complete.More than a year later, volunteer searchers were back on the mountain this Wednesday morning after a new lead was found late in 2016.It was near the end of hunting season when a Tamaqua man went in search of an elusive buck on the mountain. The hunt wasn't successful and he was on his way home when he spotted something unusual hanging from a tree. On closer inspection, that object turned out to be a pair of sweatpants.While that was a little unusual, Sharp Mountain attracts its fair share of hunters, four-wheelers and litter. The man picked up the sweatpants to toss in the trash instead of letting them litter the area.But the pants were kind of heavy, and one leg was tied in a knot. Inside that knotted leg was a rock. Looking around a bit more, he was stunned to see a backpack caught up on a limb higher in the tree. Using a downed tree limb, he was able to free the pack, which contained a pair of boots and a cellphone charger.Those boots and the backpack were identified by Farber's family as the ones he wore to work at his job in the Lewistown Valley.The new search area is 1 to 1½ miles west of the original search area, high on the mountain, accessible only by foot or four wheel drive vehicles.The terrain is rugged and many parts of the paths are bordered on one or both sides by steep coal stripping pits. At some points, the path leading to the area where the clues were found is about 2 feet wide, with the widest stretches no more than 30 feet wide. Stones, rocks, boulders and downed trees made even walking hazardous. As the first team went out to scout and mark the area to be searched, rocks and shale slipped off one of the pits walls, tumbling hundreds of feet below.The crews fanned out along the plateau, searching the gullies, washes and trails. They also were able to search one of the pits, but the sheer drop of the walls in the pit on the other side of the plateau would need specialized rappelling equipment.That didn't stop the volunteers, led by Jim Wilkins of Wolfpack Search and Rescue, based in the Lehigh Valley. Other rescuers hailed from Pocono Search and Rescue, Pennsylvania K-9 Search and Rescue and the New Jersey Rescue and Recovery K-9 Unit. Also lending their feet and eyes to the search were Tamaqua Police Cpl. Henry Woods, Schuylkill Township Sgt. Anthony Stanell and officer Christian DeAngelo, who is a patrolman for both departments.Despite their best efforts, no additional sign of Farber was found by the time the teams packed up to head home late Wednesday afternoon. The searchers will now review and reassess the information they have to determine if another search is feasible.