00:00Five friends drove home from a basketball game in February 1978.
00:05Days later, their car was found abandoned on a snowy mountain road,
00:09in perfect working order,
00:11and the five men had simply walked up the hill into the trees.
00:15What were they walking away from?
00:17Nearly 50 years later, no one knows.
00:20It started as an ordinary Friday night.
00:23On February 24, 1978,
00:26five young friends from Yuba County, California,
00:30Gary Mathias, Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jackie Hewitt, and Ted Weher,
00:36drove 50 miles to Chico to cheer on a basketball game.
00:39It was a routine trip they had made many times.
00:42They planned to drive straight home afterward.
00:45The game ended around 10.
00:47Witnesses saw the five buy snacks at a small market downtown,
00:51climb into Jack's 1969 Mercury Montego,
00:54and head south toward home.
00:56But somewhere in the dark, the car turned north.
00:59Off the highway, onto a winding dirt road into the Plumas National Forest,
01:0470 miles from home.
01:06Days later, rangers found the mercury wedged in a snowbank.
01:10Here is the strange part.
01:11The car started easily.
01:13The tank held fuel.
01:15Five strong men could have pushed it free in minutes.
01:17Instead, footprints led away from the car.
01:20One long line of tracks,
01:22climbing up the mountain and into the forest.
01:25Search planes, horses, and hundreds of volunteers scoured the frozen forest for months.
01:30Nothing.
01:31Then, in June, as the snow melted, the forest gave back its secrets.
01:37Twelve miles from the car, searchers found Ted Weha inside a forest service trailer.
01:42He had survived for weeks, perhaps as long as three months,
01:46starving to death beside a cabinet stocked with food,
01:49matches, and a full propane heater he never once used.
01:52Not far away, they found Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga.
01:56A little further on, Jackie Hewitt.
01:59And inside that trailer, investigators noticed something chilling.
02:03A pair of shoes.
02:04Gary Matthews' shoes, left behind on the floor.
02:07Gary himself has never been found.
02:10And one more detail still haunts investigators.
02:13A local man stranded on that same road, that same night,
02:17told police he saw people outside his car carrying flashlights.
02:20He called for help, and the lights went out.
02:23Silence.
02:24Who was on that mountain with the five friends that night?
02:27Almost half a century later,
02:29no one knows why five men would abandon a working car,
02:33walk twelve miles through knee-deep snow,
02:35and starve beside a stocked cabin.
02:37The Yuba County Five went to...
