The Colorado Army National Guard will continue its aerial search Thursday for a Boulder doctor and his 20-year-old daughter near Missouri Mountain in Chaffee County.
Michael von Gortler, 53, and his daughter, Makana von Gortler, a University of Colorado student, were reported missing Tuesday, but family and friends, however, said they haven’t talked to the pair since last Friday.
The pair planned a day hike on the Fourteener in the Sawatch Range on June 22. Makana von Gortler was expected back in Boulder on Sunday night.
When she couldn’t be reached, her mother, Melani Holton, called the Chaffee County authorities, the Boulder Daily Camera reported.
Park rangers found Michael von Gortler’s pickup parked at the mountain trailhead.
Family told the Camera that Michael von Gortler is an experienced backpacker who often takes his daughter along.
A search of the trail, so far, has turned up nothing.
“They’re obviously not on the trail,” Holton told the Camera. “It’s a black-and-white trail. You’re either on it or sliding down the mountain.”
The OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and crew from the High-altitude Aviation Training Site in Gypsum will resume the search in the morning, the Colorado Army National Guard said tonight.
“We’ll do all we can to help bring these hikers home,” Maj. Gen. H. Michael Edwards, the Colorado adjutant general, said in a media release.
Anyone with information about the hikers’ whereabouts can call the Chaffee Sheriff’s Office at 719-539-2596.
