Frank Stanley was gone for two weeks before someone reported he had disappeared after a hike up Bison Peak.
But the delay wasn’t because the math teacher and soccer coach wasn’t missed.
Stanley, 44, set out to summit the 12,431-foot peak July 25. He sent a text message to a friend from the top but has not been heard from since.
Friends and family, worried that they could not contact him, reported Stanley missing Aug. 11. His blue jeep was found at the Lost Park Trailhead in the Pike National Forest.
There has not been a formal call for volunteers, but since the search along the trail began, Stanley’s students — past and present — and their parents have been combing the landscape alongside Park County Search and Rescue teams.
“My family is so overwhelmed by the outpouring of help and calls,” said his sister, Helen Stanley Baker.
As Baker was hiking Bison Peak on Saturday, she passed a family coming down the trail. They began to chat and realized they were on the mountain for the same reason.
They shared hugs, tears and stories on the trail about their friend, mentor and brother.
“Everyone we meet tells us the most heartwarming, fabulous stories about Frank and how he’s been a part of their lives,” Baker said.
She said her brother loves to be in the mountains as much as he loves his students at the Ricks Center for Gifted Children at the University of Denver.
“If you called him, you had to bank in another 20 to 30 minutes so he could tell you all about the teams and the kids,” she said.
When she stopped by Stanley’s house in Englewood, she saw a parent of one of his students hanging a yellow ribbon on his front door.
Stanley coaches soccer and is the first to volunteer to chaperone an extracurricular event, said Jennifer Winkel Thompson, whose child attends Ricks.
“He is one of those teachers who really cares about kids,” she said. “You don’t always find that.”
Longtime friend Ben Brewer was invited along on the Bison Peak trek but had to beg off because of work.
Stanley text messaged him from the summit to proclaim victory.
“All I responded was ‘jealous,’ ” Brewer said.
The short correspondence is typical for the friends who have known each other since the fourth grade.
Brewer said Stanley is a savvy hiker and that he knows he was prepared for the trek. What worries him is the potential that a storm forced Stanley to a side of the mountain he had not intended to be on.
“Above the treeline, there is the most beautiful but frightening landscape in this situation,” Brewer said. “In a search situation, there are so many possibilities with rock overhangs, probably caves and big boulders, and nooks and crannies in the boulders.”
Another challenge the rescue effort is facing is a 3-mile hike into the area where search dogs last seemed to detect a scent, Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said.
Stanley’s family is working to arrange a helicopter to assist in the search, as well as a team of horses to transport human searchers into the area.
“My people aren’t going to give up,” Wegener said.
