Melissa McDevitt, 39, went missing six months ago after entering a remote hiking trail in Sooke.
 
New information has led volunteers and the Sooke RCMP to resume that search on Saturday (8 Jul 2023).
 
The information has been gathered from Melissa's smartwatch, showing the route that she hiked the day before.
 
The Sooke RCMP now believe she may have returned the following day to hike the same trail, this time pushing farther into the backcountry.
 
The last known pictures of McDevitt were captured on a surveillance camera on 9 Dec 2022 at a nearby fish hatchery along Charters Creek.
 
Those pictures show her walking into the trails as she began her hike.
 
At the time, her family could not get ahold of her.
 
They contacted police who found her car abandoned in a parking lot in the area around the trails.
 
It's an area McDevitt was known to frequent often.
 
An exhaustive nine-day search followed but McDevitt was never found.
 
At the time, her father flew to Vancouver Island from North Carolina to help in the search that involved 17 search and rescue agencies, a police dog unit, and an RCMP helicopter.
 
That search was called off on 19 Dec 2022 after finding no trace of the missing woman.
 
Tom McDevitt says a small army of volunteers managed to obtain the new information from cloud recording from his daughter's watch.
 
"One member of our group who is pretty technologically savvy, using passwords and logins that I knew, until he hit the one that went in and all of her hikes and runs were documented," said McDevitt.
 
That information gives searchers a clearer picture of her hiking patterns and which trails she used.
 
Search teams will return to the Sea to Sea Regional Park on Saturday in the hopes this new information will turn up something that can finally give McDevitt's family some closure.
 
Brendan Strain.