Michelle Vanek was last seen on September 24, 2005, near the 14,005-foot summit of Mount of the Holy Cross, a challenging endurance hike with more than a mile of elevation gain over 12 miles that begins at a trailhead high above the Town of Minturn. 

Although Vanek was a gifted triathlete, this was her first attempt at a fourteener. At 1:25 p.m., she and a family friend from Denver who had bagged many of Colorado's highest peaks, had arrived at Holy Cross's home stretch via the Halo Route, a tough ridgeline scramble requiring the ascent and descent of a trio of 13,000-foot false summits.

After six grueling hours on the trail, Vanek, exhausted and dehydrated, opted to contour around the pinnacle and keep moving toward the trailhead while her friend made the final push uphill for a selfie. When he returned to the trail, she was gone. For the next eight days, hundreds of volunteers scoured the mountain on foot, by horseback, in helicopters and with dogs in the largest manhunt in the history of Vail Mountain Rescue Group (Eagle County's nonprofit search and rescue team). The search was suspended after a final massive effort on October 1, 2005, a day 318 searchers spent a combined 4,327 hours combing the mountain. Vanek, 35, left behind a husband and four young children. Not a single clue was found.

Until nearly two decades later, when a coach from Ski & Snowboard Club Vail camping at the bottom of Angelica Couloir found a badly weathered woman's Sorel hiking boot (the brand Vanek had been wearing in 2005) at the base of a scree field more than a mile downhill from the summit. Quietly, another generation of Vail Mountain Rescue Group (VMRG) volunteers resumed the search for Michelle Vanek, returning to the mountain again and again over the next three summers. On September 13, 2024, two VMRG members searching a vertiginous rock terrace below Holy Cross's North Ridge found tattered clothing, a pair of trekking poles, mittens, and a backpack containing car keys and other personal effects that belonged to Michelle Vanek. 

As Vail Mountain Rescue Group's K9 technical lead, on October 10, 2024, I flew, then hiked, to the site with my cadaver dog, a forensic anthropologist, and a team of VMRG volunteers (including a former NASA  Space Shuttle pilot, a veteran Army paratrooper, and a wildland firefighter) to search for and recover the remains of Michelle Vanek. What follows is a visual diary documenting the final, and some of the finest, hours that returned Michelle Vanek home to her family. For the full story, read my narrative account at Outside magazine, which published on September 23, 2025.

 October 10, 9:57 a.m.:  The search and recovery team assembles at a helicopter landing zone near Bolts Lake in Minturn. 

11:25 a.m.: The author and K9 Stryker prepare for takeoff in a Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Bell 205A helicopter flown by a Helitack firefighting crew. 

11:36 a.m.: Helitack pilot Randy Oates searches in vain for a suitable landing zone in a boulder field below the primary search site at an elevation of 12,500 feet on Mount of the Holy Cross; after several passes, Oates waves off and selects a safer landing zone at treeline near Lake Patricia. 

11:54 a.m.: Zachary Smith, a VMRG member who also serves as a Helitack wildland firefighter, hunkers down as Oates flies away to ferry additional supplies and rescuers into the field. 

6:20 p.m.: VMRG mission coordinator and retired NASA astronaut Jeff Ashby sips hot tea at base camp as Smith prepares the team's dinner.

8:23 p.m.: The aurora borealis shimmers on the horizon above base camp; team members interpret this as an omen that the next day's search will be successful. 

October 11, 10:33 a.m.:  Forensic anthropologist Anya Minetz (in blue jacket) pauses in the boulder field to assess a route to the search site. 

10:46 a.m.:  K9 Stryker balances on a rock halfway up the boulder field, with the Mount of the Holy Cross summit in the distance. 

11:27 a.m.–12:13 p.m.: At the bottom of a steep drainage 600 feet below the primary search site, Stryker alerts to the presence of target odor; Zachary Smith ascends the drainage, climbs into a cavelike space between two boulders and finds skeletal remains. Minetz examines the bones and determines that they are human, and likely were dispersed downhill over time.

(following three images) Minetz and Weisman watch as Stryker works odor wafting from the cave; Smith lifts the dog into the cave; after performing a passive alert inside, Stryker emerges with a tug toy reward for his efforts.

 October 11, 1:16–3:02 p.m.:  Arriving at the primary search site, the author, with Stryker on a long line, checks the rock-filled seam where Michelle Vanek's personal effects were found on September 13, 2024.  

Finding no additional clues, with Stryker exhausted and over treshhold due to the exposure of the search site, the team begins to excavate the seam and locates and recovers additional skeletal remains that have been naturally interred by rockfall. Stryker sniffs and verifies each find with a sit, his trained final response to target odor.

Once rockfall has been removed from the seam, Zachary Smith trowels rocks and soil and finds a necklace, which he drops into the gloved hand of Anya Minetz.

The necklace is identical to one Michelle Vanek wore in a 2005 family portrait. 

 3:09 p.m.:  When asked to describe the significance of what the team was able to accomplish on this day, Anya Minetz gazes down at the necklace in her gloved hand, then whispers a single word, a barely audible exhalation of quiet reverence: "Amazing."

Then, as if a cloud has passed, she looks up and flashes a sunny smile. "So many special moments. Like the sky last night? Incredible!" Later, she describes the yin and yang of her feelings this way: "Your heart sinks, but at the same time you're literally whooping with joy. All of the emotions—things you've been processing—come back and hit you in that one solid moment, right? People have been looking for Michelle Vanek for 19 years and we've found her. Finding clothes is one thing, but that was a human we found in that cave! For the family, this is tangible, physical, biological evidence of their loved one. She's here right now. And she's a real person." As VMRG's David Weisman declared as the team began excavating the site: "She showed us the lights last night! This is going to be an amazing story to tell the family." And those who never had the opportunity to know this lost soul, the daughter, the mother, the wife. The person who was Michelle Vanek.

 3:38 p.m.:  As the team carefully packages all finds and prepares for the long hike over the boulder field back to base camp, the author and Stryker savor the shared warmth and bond between human and K9.