Authorities in Alaska Tuesday said climber Gerald Myers is likely to be dead on Mount McKinley and suspended the active search for the Centennial chiropractor.
Myers, 41, has been missing six days since leaving a note for his two climbing companions on the mountainside to say he was going on to the summit alone.
He had little or no food or water and inadequate survival gear, authorities said. Ground crews and intense aerial searches have turned up no trace of him while battling harsh weather, said Denali National Park spokeswoman Kris Fister.
“We’ve flown over every route he could have taken numerous times, and we feel like we would have seen him if he was out and moving,” she said. “And when we look at the probability of survival, well, it’s been six days.”
Myers did not have overnight sleeping gear, a thermal pad or a stove for melting snow for drinking water, authorities have said.
The Park Service now will analyze “literally thousands” of aerial photos that could yield clues on where to search for Myers, Fister said.
Authorities said the temperature at the time he went missing was slightly above zero, with winds exceeding 25 mph and increasing that afternoon.
An avid mountaineer, Myers is a Pennsylvania native who has lived in Colorado for five years, his girlfriend, Marcia McCarroll, said.
“Technically, he’s still missing,” she said this evening. “But I think everyone has accepted that the window of opportunity for his survival is no longer an option … now we go through the grieving process and we wait.”
“This is just the most difficult thing you can imagine, nothing you can every prepare yourself for.”
He had been planning to climb Mount McKinley for about three years, and he intended to ski down, she said.
Myers was climbing with three friends when he left them a note and moved on early on morning on May 19. McCarroll said the group had been “bogged down” for several days and Myers was probably frustrated.
“We had talked about that and he said, “If they want to quit, then I’m going on.”
He was reported missing when he did not return to camps at 17,200 feet or at 14,200 feet, according to the National Park Service.
He was last heard from at 10:50 a.m. on May 19 when he pressed the “OK, Moving Up” button on his satellite messenger device at 17,200 feet on his ascent to the 20,320-foot summit.
Since 1902, at least 30,049 climbers have attempted to climb North America’s tallest peak, according to the National Park Service.
At least 106 people have died on the mountain, including a 61-year-old Fairport, N.Y., man who succumbed to a heart attack on May 7, Fister said.
Thirty-nine missing climbers, including Myers, have never been found.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
