Two college students who disappeared after embarking on a hike in central Colorado last week have been found dead, the authorities said, after teams traced their route to a remote mountain where they spotted a yellow boot jutting up from the snow.
The bodies of Kaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, were found near each other at about 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday in a basin of West Apostle Mountain, which rises more than 13,000 feet in Chaffee County. The Chaffee County sheriff, Andy Rohrich, said on social media that the authorities did not suspect foul play, but that it was not yet clear how they had died.
In an emailed statement on Thursday, Sheriff Rohrich said that teams on foot had spotted an item with binoculars. “This item (about 2 inches of a yellow boot sticking up out of the snow) would not have been visible from the air so it was extremely lucky the team spotted it,” he said.
The search teams had yet to reach the bodies on Thursday, he said. They were discovered in an area of boulder fields and jagged cliff faces packed with chest-deep snow, making the approach treacherous, he added.
Chaffee County, which is on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, is known as the “14er” region because it has more mountain peaks above 14,000 feet higher than any other county in the state.
Mr. Matsuda and Mr. Donlon were enrolled at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, which said in a statement the college community was “devastated” by the loss. The discovery came after nearly a week in which searchers examined clues that led them from the students’ dorms to the icy slopes of West Apostle Mountain, while racing to stay ahead of a storm forecast to start on Friday.
The search effort was a testament to the challenges of locating mountaineers and hikers who disappear while exploring craggy mountain terrain blanketed in snow and ice.
The Chaffee County teams had been full of hope: Mr. Matsuda was studying to be a wildland firefighter, and Mr. Donlon was studying to be a mountain guide. They were experienced hikers and had provided friends with a map indicating that Ice Mountain, in the same range as West Apostle, was their destination, the sheriff’s office said.
Sixty search and rescue personnel, gathered from surrounding counties, joined the Chaffee County force to comb both sides of the range. Dogs and handlers set off on foot, but boulder fields, ice and deep snow hampered their progress. Drones and helicopters supplemented the search from above.
Moose were highly aggressive in the area during the mating season, the sheriff said.
“It is an extremely dangerous area,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
The search was guided as much by what was found as it was by what was missing. Advanced climbing gear and a beacon were not found in the students’ dorm rooms — a hint that the mountain was the destination and that a technical climb was their goal, the sheriff’s statement said.
The authorities interviewed friends who suggested that the searchers also home in on an area near West Apostle Mountain where one of the students had previously camped. Detectives looked for signals from their cellphones and avalanche beacon, without luck.
After their tent was spotted from the air, the teams sifted through its contents for hints of their movements. Trash in the tent indicated that they had eaten before the hike. Their “walk-in” shoes, similar to tennis shoes, were in the tent, but footwear for advanced climbing was missing, making it clear they had set off with purpose.
But the weather apparently upended their plans.
Mr. Donlon and Mr. Matsuda arrived in northern Chaffee County from Leadville on Friday, when it was raining. Snow started to fall the next day, accumulating several feet deep. They did not return from the trip as expected on Sunday and the college informed the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office on Monday that they were missing.
When the authorities found Mr. Matsuda’s vehicle at the trailhead, it was surrounded by about eight inches of snow.
Their destination, Ice Mountain, is recommended for experienced climbers, the sheriff’s office said.
“That is when it is dry,” the sheriff’s statement said. “Although there was only about eight inches of snow around Kaden’s vehicle and in the lower basin, Ice Mountain received one to two feet of snow.” Heavy snow drifts deepened that accumulation by several feet, the sheriff’s office said.
At about noon on Tuesday, a helicopter spotted an object near Lake Ann, in the San Isabel National Forest in central Colorado. A search team was dispatched on foot and found the students’ tent, which had collapsed under the weight of heavy snow.
There was no snow under the tent. They had pitched it on clear ground.
On Thursday, Sheriff Rohrich said in the emailed statement that the teams had yet to recover the bodies because high winds also prevented the use of helicopters.
“They were found in an area that we did not want searchers going into because of the extreme danger,” Sheriff Rohrich said in his email. “From the tent they were found about one mile away, but that one mile is extremely deceiving.”
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