I would hang onto hope until he is found....one way or the other.
However, finding his pants is not necessarily a good sign.
Some folks, when suffering from hypothermia, and all that comes from being lost, commonly begin to strip off their clothing. They become delirious and their body is shutting down, but they feel warm.
Panic also causes people to do strange things, such as a SCUBA diver that gets hung up in kelp and instead of thinking and cutting his way out, he rips off his mask, gets hung up even worse and dies with lots of air in his tank.
I do want you to be right. I hope he had extra pants and is found very soon.
I believe they will find him alive unless he had an unfortunate accident.
He left the pants as a marker and they have reported they have found some other items in a manner that would suggest he was leaving a trail to follow.
He probably saw a marker or sign for the bear lake lodge and try to get to it. Unfortunately the lodge is across the river and there is no bridge.
However he may have found a boat or made a makeshift raft or something to try to cross. The big problem is there are dangerous rapids down river from his position.
Also from what I understand there is no "trail" on the southbend of the river so I am sure it is a tough hike.
I may be wrong but I don't think he ditched his pants because of hypothermia. He also has two lighters and I am sure he would be able to light a fire as long as he wasn't injured.
Keep praying!
You are right about the signs of hypothermia. A young hunter was lost overnight just this weekend in frigid temps here in Wisconsin and he had started to discard clothing before he was rescued.<>Praise the Lord the young man is recovering.
I saw it mentioned on digg that he took a bag of extra clothing with him, and also that there's been a trail of personal effects that led to finding the jeans as a marker.
Someone on there did have a good point that it would have been more efficient to rip the jeans into pieces, creating more markers.