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The mysterious disappearance of Michelle Vanek on the Mount of the Holy Cross and the Vision
Michelle Rae Vanek disappeared September 24, 2005, Mount of the Holy Cross, Eagle County, Colorado. Items located October 2022 and September 16, 2024.
Revised November 2024
On 24th September 2005, Michelle Rae Vanek, a 35-year-old mother of four, went to climb one of the famous Colorado "fourteeners" for the first time. She chose Mount of the Holy Cross, a relatively difficult hike with an elevation of 14,005 feet. But she was confident about climbing it as she was in very good physical shape, being a triathlete and marathoner. By the end of that day, it was the last time she or her possessions were ever seen again.
Then, in October 2022, 17 years after Michelle's disappearance, a hiker discovered the Sorrel Asystec, with a black rubber sole boot identical to the ones Michelle was wearing, on the mountain.
Vail Mountain Rescue President Scott Beebe had a strange dream in the fall of 2023 that urged him to search the area where the boot was found using an all-female team. He was urged in his dream to make sure it was all-female.
Further evidence linked to Michelle, including poles and clothing, was found in September 2024. As of November 2024, these are being forensically examined. No remains were found at this time. The mystery is close to being solved after Beebe’s strange vision.
The fourteeners and Mt of the Holy Cross
William Henry Jackson of Mount of the Holy Cross’s “cross couloir” 1873
Fifty-four mountains in Colorado are over 14,000 feet tall, known as "fourteeners." Hiking these mountains can be challenging, given the possibility of acute mountain sickness (AMS) and the rapidly changing weather conditions above the treeline.
The mountains claim victims from falls, avalanches, and rapidly changing and unpredictable weather each year. AMS can cause headaches, nausea, shortness of breath, and lethargy. Some fourteeners are relatively easy, but others are more technically challenging, requiring a good fitness level or technical climbing abilities.
Mount of the Holy Cross is a high and prominent mountain summit in the northern Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The 14,011-foot (4270.5 m) fourteener is located in the Holy Cross Wilderness of White River National Forest, 6.6 miles (10.7 km) west-southwest of the Town of Red Cliff in Eagle County in Colorado. The summit of Mount of the Holy Cross is the highest point in Eagle County and the northern Sawatch Range.
Mount of the Holy Cross was named for the distinctive cross-shaped snowfield on its northeast face. On May 11, 1929. President Herbert Hoover designated the area surrounding the mountain as Holy Cross National Monument under the United States Forest Service administration. The monument was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933, but the mountain's remote location made tourism difficult. On August 3, 1950, President Harry Truman signed an act abolishing the national monument and returning the area to White River National Forest. The former national monument is now a part of the Holy Cross Wilderness.
Photographer William Henry Jackson captured a picture of its striking cross couloir on Mount of the Holy Cross in the late 1800s. A couloir (French for corridor) is a narrow gully filled with snow between rocky ridges on a mountain.
For a while after, some Christians promoted the mountain as a pilgrimage destination. Visitors would ascend Notch Mountain so they could admire the cross couloir. iIts popularity among Christian pilgrims waned. Today, the mountain has sunk back into relative obscurity. Not helping matters, recent photographs suggest the cross couloir no longer cleanly resembles the symbol of Christianity.
The Mount of the Holy Cross Hike
Michelle was so excited that she and her husband, Ben, went to Gart Sports and Costco the day before the Mount of the Holy Cross trip to buy more hiking equipment.
Michelle was accompanied by Eric Sawyer, a friend who had hiked 38 fourteeners. Michelle and Ben had known Eric's partner for a decade or so and had socialized as couples a handful of times each year, sometimes going out to dinner as a foursome. Ben and Eric even went to a Rockies game together in September 2005.
Eric and Michelle had planned to hike one of Colorado’s fourteeners for more than a year, and Michelle left all the planning to Sawyer. He suggested they head for the Mount of the Holy Cross from the north on the Half Moon Trail.
Hikers hoping to reach the mountain's summit, where snow-filled cracks form a cross, have two choices. They can take the Half Moon Trail, the standard route known as the Northeast Ridge. Or they can take the Fall Creek Trail heading straight south, then climb up the Notch Mountain Trail, which starts near the treeline and cuts back and forth on the way to a stone shelter at 13,224 feet. From there, climbers follow a looping route around the mountain's south side – climbing over three 13ers in the process – before reaching the summit, known as the Halo Route. It is a circuitous 9-mile route approaching Holy Cross from the southwest and can take up to 2 days to hike due to its length, distance above the treeline, and the last few miles' up-and-down path. The trail is only recommended for very experienced adventurers. Both routes begin at trailheads in the Half Moon Campground.
They arrived at the campground parking lot in Michelle’s silver Toyota Sequoia and set off together on the hike at around 6:30 a.m. According to the incident report, Eric later told investigators that they walked around the parking lot but could find only one trailhead. At the time, the Forest Service was putting in a new set of port-a-potties, so there was a lot of construction going on, with piles of dirt in front of the trailhead that goes up the Northeast Ridge.
Michelle wore a blue lightweight ski jacket with white stripes on the sleeves and pants, a hat, blue and white mittens, hiking poles, and a CamelBak backpack. She had blonde hair with blue eyes, was 5'8”, and weighed 145 pounds.
Surprisingly, the two carried no maps, compass, GPS or personal locator beacon. If anything went wrong, they were asking for trouble. They were subsequently heavily criticized by rescue teams for being unprepared for the mountain and were even light on the amount of water they carried.
Trouble on the trail
Early on, Michelle began complaining of a headache, which is a possible sign of altitude sickness. She took some Excedrin (paracetamol, aspirin, and caffeine) to combat the headache, and they headed out on the only trail they could find, leading to the more difficult Halo Route.
When they reached the cutoff to the Notch Mountain Trail at 13,000-foot plus, they checked their map and realized they were on the wrong route. Sawyer consulted his map and found they were on the wrong trail. The two were on the Halo Ridge route.
They also realized that Eric had left their food and water purifier in the car. Unfortunately, shortening the hike on Halo Ridge Trail would involve serious climbing or taking a steep off-route slope down.
They decided they didn’t have time to turn around and still make the summit. So they pushed on, climbing the switchbacks up the slope until they reached a small stone hut built in the 1930s. They spent about 10 or 15 minutes in the shelter to warm up.
Then they moved again, skirting a high ridge as they approached the summit. The wind died down, and they could look to the north and see climbers coming up the standard route they had planned to take.
At that point, they had been on the trail for more than 4½ hours, and Eric began to worry that they would be home much later than they had planned, especially as Michelle struggled to keep up with him and was 30 to 60 feet behind him.
Soon, they came upon a shelter close to the summit of Notch Mountain. The civilian conservation core built the stone hut in 1933, during the Great Depression. It has a commanding view of the nearby Mount of the Holy Cross. They stopped for 10 to 15 minutes to shelter from the cold and wind. At any given time, Michelle was lagging behind Sawyer by up to 60 feet, and he had to help her keep up with him so they would not fall even further behind schedule.
Notch Mountain shelter at sunrise, en route to the Mount of the Holy Cross via Halo Ridge
Mount of the Holy Cross at sunrise from the Notch Mountain shelter, with the central shaft of its “cross couloir” https://dismalwilderness.com/mount-of-the-holy-cross-via-halo-ridge/.
At around 1.25 pm, on the final stretch to the summit, within half a mile (and 500 feet of altitude gain) of the top of Mount of the Holy Cross, Michelle was exhausted and said she was out of water and could not go any further. Eric offered to take her pack, but she refused the request, and he suggested they turn around. Michelle said no and suggested that he continue up to the summit. Eric pointed across a boulder field and told her to head in that direction toward the trail down, and he would go quickly to the top and catch up with her. She had a couple of energy bars left. He gave her a vanilla bean-flavored tube of energy gel and headed up.
The two of them were behind schedule, but Sawyer chose to push on, later telling police the two would not have time to summit the peak if they turned back to look for Half Moon Trail. A bad mistake in hindsight.
He told Michelle to traverse what he estimated to be about 600 feet to the North Ridge Route for an easier descent. The area was covered in large boulders, and it would have taken another 45 minutes to get off the mountain if Michelle hadn’t started toward the trail.
Eric hurried to the summit, arriving at 1.42 p.m., and then called his wife to say they were running late. According to witnesses Bill and Julia Taylor, he was there for only about five minutes. “He just seemed to be rushed because he had to get back to his hiking partner,” Julia Taylor said.
Sawyer and the Taylors exchanged typical pleasantries and snapped each others’ pictures before he headed down towards the North Ridge Route to meet Michelle. A short time later, they heard Sawyer yelling what they thought were calls for “help” but were his shouts of “Michelle!”
But he became concerned when he couldn’t find Michelle on the trail down the Northeast Ridge, so he dropped his pack and headed back up. Other hikers heard him calling out for Michelle. He asked everyone he encountered on the trail if they had seen her. No one had. He found cellphone service and called 911.
Michelle Vanek’s disappearance and the search
When Sawyer reached the spot on the North Ridge route where Michelle was supposed to be waiting for him, she was gone. He continued down the trail back towards Half Moon camp, looking for Michelle, but to no avail. He then reported her missing.
A small team of rescuers began looking for Michelle that evening. The route to the North Ridge is where rescuers speculated she had headed and might have fallen off the ridgeline into the Cross Creek drainage, where large pine trees could have blocked the view from search helicopters. The area consists of a series of steep, wooded cliffs that rescuers said would be too difficult to explore without some sign of where they should look.
A huge search and rescue effort, led by the Vail Mountain Search and Rescue team, was quickly started the following day, September 25, 2005, and involved around 700 searchers who combed the area the following week.
It was the largest search effort in Colorado's history. Dogs were used, but efforts were hampered by torrential rain. Tim Cochrane, head of the Vail SAR team, said: "It's truly a mystery as to where Michelle is. That's probably the most baffling thing. We've put five search dogs where we know she was, and they haven't found any.”
Investigations
The possibility of foul play was explored, as a shotgun was found in a duffel bag on the mountain on Wednesday, September 26, 100 yards past the Cross Creek trailhead, and there were reports of a suspicious man in the area. Rescuer Brenda Parks and her partner ran into a man who refused to talk to them and hid behind a tree to hide his face. He ran down the hill away from them when they wanted to question him.
Later that day, a dog team spotted what appeared to be blood in the snow. No footprints were found, and teams could not follow up on the blood because of bad weather.
Rescuers confronted a suspicious person in a yellow tent with a light on inside. The individual refused to unzip the tent or respond. Later, rescuers and deputies found a man coming off the trail, who they believed to be the person in the tent. The man reluctantly told deputies after prodding that his name was Peter Martin. He offered vague details about where he lived and told deputies he had no identification. Unfortunately, he was never investigated further. Was he involved in Michell's strange disappearance?
By early evening, the first searchers had headed to the area. Over the following days, nighttime temperatures fell into the low 20s, and a foot or more of snow fell; searchers tried to vain to find any sign of Michelle or her belongings. But there was nothing,
On the final day of the search, 336 volunteers came out to help, and when nothing was found, the Eagle County Sheriff Joe Hoy called off the search. It was, at the time, the largest search in Colorado history, but sadly proved to be inconclusive as no evidence was uncovered,. Vail Mountain Rescue search commander Tim Cochrane said at the time: “It’s truly a mystery as to where Michelle is. That’s probably the most baffling thing — we’ve put five different search dogs where we know she was — and they haven’t found anything.”
The sheriff’s office tried to question Eric, but he said he would not answer questions without an attorney present. They also questioned Ben Vanek. Was there something going on romantically between his wife and Eric? He denied it.
When asked whether Eric could have harmed Michelle, he Said, “Hell no! He doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body”
With no solid evidence that a crime occurred, Eagle County sheriff’s investigators eventually closed the case.
In 2009, a climber found a bone on rocks not far from the Halo Route. It turned out to be a deer’s jawbone and in 2016, an investigator asked Ben Vanek to provide his wife's dental records for inclusion in a national database of missing persons.
In 2019, Ben and Michelle’s four children provided DNA samples so that if her remains were ever found, they could be identified.
Theories - What happened to Michelle Vanek?
Misadventure
Michelle's sudden disappearance from the Mount of the Holy Cross baffled search teams. Minutes before she vanished, she was with her hiking partner.
Michelle was very fit and a star athlete, specifically in track and field, cross-country running, distance, and endurance racing. Before this hike, she had participated in marathons and triathlon competitions. Would someone in incredible shape be lagging behind and out of breath unless altitude sickness had gotten the better of her? Acute altitude sickness can always hit even the fittest individual.
Foul play
Was the stranger in the tent, the man spotted hiding in the woods, gun in the bag and blood on the trail connected? Foul play was possible, but altitude sickness and disorientation, exacerbated by dehydration, was a more plausible explanation.
Was Eric involved in some way? Some red flags relating to Sawyer have been mentioned by others online but again this seems unlikely:
He forgot the food and water. It would be expected to check his gear before a significant mountain hike, especially to make sure that water had been packed.
Eric had been planning the hike for a year and a half, yet apparently took the wrong trail just because the signs were being replaced.
Why did he leave Michelle behind without water and arrange to meet after summiting?
There were some unsubstantiated reports on social media that Eric was apparently infatuated with Michelle and sexually involved with her. Michelle had even told her friends that he was weird and obsessive about her, but she desperately wanted to do the climb anyway. Sawyer was also very envious of her husband, but their relationship was solid. Michelle’s husband, Ben, always denied that Eric had anything to do with it and declared “he wouldn’t hurt a fly”.
At the funeral, when Michelle was finally declared legally dead, Eric was present. However, it was said that he did not speak to anyone and was said to be tense, pale as a ghost, fidgety, and his eyes were very shifty.
The Boot
Michelle Vanek Sorrel Asystec boot with a black rubber sole
In August 2022, a local man and his son were hiking off-trail in an area north of the summit of Mount of the Holy Cross, below a rocky slope known as the Angelica Couloir, when they found a boot. They took photos but left the boot where they’d found it. The boot had been there a long time. It was surrounded by grass, but none was growing beneath it. The leather upper was almost completely gone, but he sole was intact.
Vail Mountain Rescue Group President Scott Beebe said the man contacted a friend, one of the rescue group’s mission coordinators. It was in an area where almost no one ventures north of the summit of Mount of the Holy Cross,
Vail Mountain Rescue President Scott Beebe
In September searchers headed into the Holy Cross Wilderness to try to find the boot, but they had no luck the first time. Then, in October 2022, the man and his son agreed to lead three searchers, including Beebe, back up the mountain and show them the spot. It was right where they had first found it.
After photographing the area,they bagged the Sorel Asystec boot.
The team conducted a “scuff search” in the immediate area, looking for any signs of clothing or other equipment. That search was unsuccessful, but the team planned to send in cadaver dogs in the summer of 2023. They found nothing before heading down the mountain with the boot, which they turned over to the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators undertook forensic work that confirmed that the boot was Michelle Vanek's.
Beebe said after the find, “It changes the narrative”, giving him confidence that he now knows what happened was a tragic accident and not the result of something untoward and confirmed that the assumption made during the original search that Michelle ran out of food and water and possibly suffering from altitude sickness, likely headed west after getting lost, was wrong. It indicated that on that day, the difference between life and death was 10 minutes in time and 100 feet in distance.
Once Beebe got the news that the boot was definaely Michelle’s ,he started planning began for another trip to the area with a more thorough search. On August. 25, 2023. The San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office sent a helicopter. Other counties sent their cadaver dogs and handlers. Ted Katauskas, leader of Vail Mountain Rescue’s canine team said, “Weather wasn’t perfect that day,” He set out with his dog, Stryker, “We had two hours to … do a hasty search around that area. So we ran the dogs all through this campsite and then up Angelica Couloir.”
Beebe said, he hope to find, “Something as small as a tooth.”, but they found nothing. Katsauskas said, “You hope that – especially after 20 years – we're going to find something. But unfortunately, it's just the way it works with recovery operations. Nature's very good at kind of taking us back to the earth. And it is amazing how quickly that happens in the environment. You just disappear.”
Beebe said he was confident he knew what happened to Michelle, .”For 18 years, the narrative been has been, she got lost in the western boulder field”. That’s the area where almost all those who lose their way near the summit end up. And it’s the area where searchers concentrated their efforts in 2005. “And now,” he said, “she did exactly what her hiking partner told her to do.”
Instead of heading west, he was now certain she went north toward the route that she and her hiking partner had intended to take up the mountain, but she mistook “runnels”, trail-like paths down the mountainside carved by rockfall and snowmelt, for the standard route. “What she didn't know, she was on the wrong trail and went down into an area that nobody expected her to go – nobody. Nobody intentionally goes down the Angelica Couloir." Beebe said the established trail was about 100 feet to her left and studying the timeline, he believed her Eric missed connecting with her by about 10 minutes.
Beebe studied the maps marked by searchers in 2005 and noted that the area where the boot was found wasn’t searched until the eighth and final day. “By then,” he said, “there was a foot-and-a-half, 2 feet of snow, and so everything was covered.”
On the map of the area where the boot was found, searchers wrote “impassable” in several places due to the amount of snow there when they tried searching.
Beebe met with Vanek's family. One of her daughters asked him what he thinks happened to her mom. “She wasn't dressed for the weather, I mean, spandex pants, windbreaker jacket. Out of food. Out of water. Having some altitude sickness. No means of being able to start a fire. I said, we know that the temperature that night got down into the low 20s up on the mountain. And I said I think she laid down, and she went to sleep. She didn't wake back up. It was just an accident. Wish they had stuck together”
"I don't believe there's any kind of foul play involved. I think this is a matter of, you know, made a mistake. Never been on the mountain before. Should they have split up? No, of course not. But we've all done it. You know, if you talk to my wife, we've hiked all the 14ers there are. Four different times, I have got the fever, and, you know, my wife was having trouble keeping up.”
Each time, he told her the same thing. “Honey, I'm gonna go and tag the summit and I'll come back and meet you. And, you know, we got away with it. But this is one of those times … when I wish they had stuck together.”
The dream
In the fall of 2023, Scott Beebe had a vision in a dream. The rescue service's chief of staff, Emily Brown, said, "He had a dream that Michelle Vanek's soul, remains, and body didn't want to be found by a man. So he asked me if I would lead with a new perspective in a women-led search."
The group Emily put together considered all available material and the route. They studied maps and considered what may have happened.
A Team member of Vail Mountain Rescue, Jennifer Pirog, said, "We thought were looking at maps sitting here in a building, there were really plausible explanations. Then once you're up there and you're in the zone, you can say, 'Nah this doesn't seem likely,' and you can really narrow down your search area."
The boot made them consider new areas but knew they wanted to start from the last point. Michelle Vanek was seen when her climbing partner went on. Pirog said, "This new information really just kind of like created like a blank canvas almost to start thinking outside the box.”
Brown took charge, contacted the other women in Vail Mountain Rescue Group and organized a female-led search team. They soon discovered what are believed to be Vanek’s ski poles, mittens, backpack, clothing, car keys, water bottle and other personal belongings.
“I’m grateful for the team involved in this most recent rescue, but it wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of all the searches that came before us,” said Brown. “There were a lot of people (around 800 actually) who poured their hearts and souls into those eight days following her disappearance back in 2005.”
Brown described the alternative strategy. “We took a new approach, hiking the last part of her route and standing where she was last known to be seen,” she said. “I got chills multiple times that day, and I don’t get chills. It felt like her spirit was with us and she was finally ready to be found.”
Of her work on Vail Mountain Rescue Group, Brown shared, “In the days following this mission, I kept just coming back to the ideas that answers matter, women rock, and the mountains don’t care, but we do.”
Items located
Mount of the Holy Cross
On Monday, September 16, 2024, it was reported by the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office that personal items likely belonging to Michelle had been located by a female-led search team on Mount of the Holy Cross 19 years after the disappearance.
The group recovered articles of clothing, a small backpack and hiking poles — "all of which are thought to have been with Michelle the day she vanished," the sheriff's office said, adding that “each item serves as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit, the unwavering dedication of these volunteers, and the enduring hope of a family waiting for answers.”
Authorities also noted that the items are being forensically tested to confirm whether they actually belong to the missing hiker. “These personal items are tangible connections to a life that touched so man. This discovery offers a moment of hope for Michelle’s family, friends, and the volunteers who have worked tirelessly, even as they await further confirmation.”
The news release also stated that the exact location of the area where the items were found will not be disclosed and will “will “remain protected, out of respect for future search efforts and Michelle’s memory.”
The discovery doesn't answer what happened. That is still to be answered. The belongings, including a pack containing a blue hat identical to the one she was wearing in the last known photo of Vanek snapped by her climbing partner, all are getting forensic testing to see if they are a match. But the likelihood of it being from someone else is certainly low.
After months of planning, the team went up when the snowmelt was greatest. The team started where she was last seen, then split up and took their own routes down.
Brown said, "We stood, exactly where she was and walked presumably her exact trail as a woman, from the perspective of a man, with the instructions of a man. And it led us right to her. So I think the women's perspective really changed things".
German said, "The last thing she was wearing a red shirt. We saw a little bit of red and then we saw one of the ski poles and that was when it became a moment, We're used to looking at her photograph and then seeing it in real life, it's pretty unbelievable. It's like, both of us started shaking and we were just like, 'OK we've got to sit down for a moment.' Because we're not in like the most stable terrain and so we need to get our wits about us before we do anything else."
The women on the team are glad to have figured out where Michelle Vanek was all this time. Jennifer Pirog said, "Because those searches we go on and you don't find people even the first day. You go home and you can't sleep at night and you're like, what happened to them?" I'm really honored and glad I can bring closure to so many people. Family, friends and rescue workers and the 800 plus people that have been searching for her for 19 years."
“It was important for us to have a women’s perspective at the top of the mountain which had not been done before,” Emily Brown, a member of the search party, told 9news.
Police officials confirmed the area where her items were found will remain protected out of respect for Vanek’s memory and future search efforts.
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Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_of_the_Holy_Cross
http://charleyproject.org/case/michelle-rae-vanek
https://apps.colorado.gov/apps/coldcase/casedetail.html?id=1155
https://dismalwilderness.com/mount-of-the-holy-cross-via-halo-ridge/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMurders/comments/i0e8wp/death_of_michelle_vanek_still_unsolved_i_have_my/
https://www.denverpost.com/2005/12/03/missing-hikers-trail-littered-with-questions/
https://people.com/items-belonging-to-missing-hiker-may-have-been-found-19-years-later-8713915
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/18-years-after-a-hiker-vanished-on-mount-of-the-holy-cross-a-clue-emerges/
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/michelle-vanek-disappearance-mount-holy-cross-team-women-colorado-mountain-clues/
https://www.vailhealth.org/news/vail-health-nurse-helps-find-remains-of-missing-hiker
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/belongings-found-hiker-dissapearance-20-years-colorado-b2614254.html
https://denvergazette.com/news/mysterious-case-of-michelle-vanek-18-years-after-she-vanished-on-a-14er-a-clue/article_4af64dde-5bec-11ee-a170-e7d71bedd067.html