Three months after Damian McManus, 51, and his 18-year-old son, Evan, disappeared on a Colorado mountain, their family is bringing them home to Minnesota.
On Friday, authorities confirmed that the remains of the missing St. Louis Park father and son were found Thursday in the Mount Evans area by a Lakeville friend and other volunteers.
After 105 agonizing days, the news brought bittersweet closure for family and friends who have done dozens of difficult searches through the vast Colorado wilderness. Nevertheless, what exactly happened to the Minnesota father and son on that snowy April day may never be known.
On Thursday at 11:30 a.m., mountaineers, volunteers, relatives and friends of "Team McManus" found Evan on a tree-covered mountainside near Vance Creek, a couple of miles from the lot where the McManus' SUV was parked April 2 near Echo Lake, a popular spot for day hikes.
The skeletal remains were found in "extremely harsh" terrain located about a half-mile from a trail and near a steep drop-off, Clear Creek County Sheriff's Office Capt. Bruce Snelling said Friday.
Alpine Rescue and Rocky Mountain Rescue — a group of highly trained, volunteer-rescue mountaineers — found Damian about 400 yards away. Both groups had spent thousands of hours searching.
"Our best educated guess is they succumbed to the weather," Snelling said, adding that the pair may have gotten off the trail to cut across the area during a snowstorm to get to their car, but got caught in snow. "They were in very harsh conditions."
There were no obvious injuries, he said, and the Clear Creek County Coroner's Office will list the cause of death as "accidental." Some of their gear was found nearby. But there were few other clues to what happened. "We'll absolutely never know," Snelling said.
