Two missing hunters were found dead in the rugged wilderness of southern Colorado a week after vanishing during an elk hunting trip, according to authorities and reports.
Andrew Porter and Ian Stasko, both 25, were located by Colorado search and rescue teams on Thursday, a week after their last known contact on Sept. 11, Porter’s aunt, Lynne Runkle, posted on a GoFundMe page launched to support the search.
“It is with a broken heart and through tears that I give you this update. Andrew and Ian have both been found deceased. Their bodies were discovered earlier today by Colorado Search and Rescue. I will provide another update tomorrow,” Runkle wrote in an update last Thursday.
“Please keep Andrew’s and Ian‘s families in your thoughts and prayers,” she said.
The remains of the two friends were found around 11 a.m., roughly two miles from the Rio de los Pinos trailhead, a remote area in the National Forest marked by steep ridgelines and heavy timber, according to a Conejos County Sheriff’s Office press release obtained by the Colorado Sun.
The two bodies showed no obvious signs of trauma, CBS News reported. An official cause of death has yet to be determined.
Porter, of Asheville, North Carolina, and Stasko, of Salt Lake City, Utah, were hunting in Colorado’s Game Management Unit 81, a rugged swath of wilderness that stretches down to the border of New Mexico, the Colorado Sun reported.
“Severe storms moved through the area Thursday evening, and we suspect the two young men were caught off-guard by the weather,” Runkle wrote in the fundraiser before the men were discovered.
Porter last shared his location through a satellite device with his fiancée, Bridget Murphy, after 3 p.m. on Sept. 11, authorities said.
It had last pinged from his car near the trailhead, according to the outlet.
In a phone interview with the outlet the day before the bodies were found, the bride-to-be said she believed the pair returned briefly to Stasko’s vehicle to change out of wet clothes based on gear discovered by deputies.
Hunting equipment was missing from the car, leading her to believe they had ventured back out, the outlet reported.
She also told the outlet that both men were very resourceful outdoorsmen, as in “people who’ve been building shelters in the woods since they were 12 for fun.”
On Wednesday, Murphy said there was a confirmed sighting of the men with their car at the Spruce Hole trailhead on the previous Friday morning, the outlet said.
Stasko and Porter reportedly told the person that they’d seen a bull moose and were heading out to find it.
The car was then moved back to the Rio de los Pinos trailhead, a detail that gave Murphy hope.
“That gives us one more night and morning, we know they were safe before the storms,” she heartbreakingly wrote on Facebook.
Over the following days, an intensive ground and air search was launched involving multiple rescue teams.
“Thank you all. Say a prayer, God wrap your arms around them and keep them safe, help us find them,” Murphy wrote in a previous update.
