Natasha Thomason

TILTON, Ga. — The Whitfield County Sheriff’s Department has essentially ended the ground search for missing boater Brett Thomason, but volunteers continue to trek the woods Thursday.

Throughout the day, friends, family and neighbors trickled into the parking lot of Riverbend Baptist Church — the central meeting point since Brett Andrew Thomason, 19, disappeared on Feb. 19.

“I think he’s still alive somewhere,” said Natasha Thomason, 21, Brett’s older sister. “He’s tough enough and strong enough, and he knows he’s got way too many people who need him. I keep waiting for my phone to ring and it be him.”

She said some of the searchers had seen media coverage of the case and volunteered to help the family. One man came to help search because he had once been lost in the area himself, Ms. Thomason said.

Her brother had gone for a late evening boating trip on the Conasauga River and never came home. Searchers found the boat pulled ashore, and a bag of wet clothes with it. There was evidence Mr. Thomason had walked into the woods by the river bank, and a wooden oar was found in a nearby field.

At least four paved roads thread that area near the Conasauga, but to get to three of them on foot is several miles of open fields, steep embankments, dense underbrush and trees.

The road point closest to where the boat and oar were found is the dead end of Riverbend Road, about a mile through woods and farm fields.

Ms. Thomason thinks her brother got spooked and hid when he saw the police commotion as the initial search for him began.

She said he’d had some minor trouble in high school, but wasn’t wanted by the police. He may have just been scared because he was on someone else’s land in the middle of the night.

Ms. Thomason described her brother as her best friend — someone who liked to play poker, shoot pool and pick guitar. He had begun working out more, too, as he prepared to leave in April for Marine boot camp, she said.

While deputies are not searching still, Sheriff Scott Chitwood said the case is still open and any leads will be tracked. He said lab tests on a possible spot of blood searchers found won’t be back for at least two weeks, though.

Eddie Tompkins, with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said DNR rangers continued dragging operations by boat on the river Thursday. Rains made the river murkier, and he expected rain today will prevent boats from going out.

A group of family members, though, including Mr. Thomason’s mother and stepfather, spent part of their day on a boat looking for their son’s body.

Brett’s mother, Dana Massey, has said she needs some clue to find closure.