CO CO - Mitchell 'Dale' Stehling, 51, Mesa Verde NP, 9 June 2013
http://www.cortezjournal.com/apps/pb...709834/-1/News
Quote:
Mitchell Dale Stehling, 51, disappeared after telling his wife and mother he was going for a hike to the Spruce Tree House ruin, accessible by a steep ¼-mile paved trail.
When he had not returned two hours later, a two-week intensive search began that at its peak included 60 searchers, two dog teams, helicopter surveillance, and rope teams rappeling off cliffs in the Chapin Mesa area.
But not one physical clue has been found related to Stehling, who left with no water on a sweltering day that reached over 100 degrees. The hike was supposed to be short, but he ended up on a longer, more remote trail.
http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news...2287/?counties
Quote:
Over the course of a year, Stehling returned to the national park three times with the hope for answers, a glimmer of insight into what happened to her husband of 32 years, but the short-lived search last June went cold...
Farias said the park extended efforts for months to find Stehling, which included calling in close to 100 people at a time to search, scaling cliffs and searching in areas of the park closed to guests.
There are a lot of cliff areas in the park that extend down to the Ute Mountain reservation that are filled with rocks, and Farias said if Stehling fell down a cliff, it would be almost impossible to see him from above or below it. "If he fell off a cliff, if he fell in between a rock area - unless you are looking straight down, even helicopters would not see him," he said.
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