Sometimes the mountain doesn’t take lives with noise and violence. It just swallows them whole, leaving behind silence and questions. In 2013, a devoted father and his 19-year-old daughter headed out to tackle one of Wyoming’s most challenging peaks, Mount Hooker. They were experienced, fully geared up, and cautious.

Everything should have gone smoothly, but they never returned. For 11 years, their disappearance was one of the region’s most baffling mysteries until two climbers stumbled upon a frozen setup dangling from a vertical cliff. And inside, something was waiting. Before we unravel the chilling truth of what was found up there, take a moment to like this video and subscribe to the channel.

This story is unlike any you’ve heard. The vanishing on a late August morning in 2013, Colin Redford and his daughter Riley said goodbye to their family, loaded up their dark green Ford F-150, and drove toward the Wind River Range. Their destination was Mount Hooker, a monolithic granite face known for its technical climbs and brutal conditions.

Colin wasn’t your average thrillseker. A 45-year-old structural engineer, he was obsessed with safety and precision. Every climb he took was mapped, documented, and carefully planned. He had climbed Hooker before. This wasn’t new terrain, but this trip was special. It was the first time he was bringing his daughter Riley on a major expedition.

At 19, Riley was a talented and bold climber in her own right, and the trip was to be a bonding experience. One last summer adventure before she returned to college. Before they left, Colin set a very specific check-in time with his wife, Heather 7, warm 0 p.m. sharp, 2 days later. If she didn’t hear from him, something was wrong.

The day came and passed with no call. Heather tried not to panic. Maybe the satellite phone’s battery had died. Maybe they were delayed. Maybe they were just out of range. She waited. Another night passed. Still nothing. On the second day, Heather called the cops like no one ever wants to do. She contacted the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office.

The search begins. Deputy Miles Corbin drove up to the big sandy trail head where Colin and Riley had parked. The truck was there collecting dust and pine needles parked as if its owners would return any minute. Inside, Corbin found something strange and deeply troubling. Two fully charged satellite phones left behind in the glove compartment.

This wasn’t just a small oversight. These phones were the only lifeline out of the Wind River Wilderness. Colin, the man known for his meticulous planning, wouldn’t leave such a tool behind unless he meant to or unless something was already going very wrong. With this chilling discovery, the missing person report was upgraded to a full-scale emergency.

The area around Mount Hooker was quickly transformed into a command post. helicopters, ground teams, volunteers, rescue experts, all of them scouring the terrain for any sign of the Beckwiths. For 10 days, they searched and found nothing. No gear, no trail, no sign. Then the weather turned. A brutal early season storm swept across the range. Sleet turned to snow.

Search teams were forced to retreat. The Beckwiths had went missing. Hope gross cold. Colin’s old climbing partner, Declan Hayes, couldn’t believe it. He flew in to join a group of elite climbers and started their own search, focusing on routes too obscure for official rescue teams. These weren’t listed climbs.

They were hidden lines known only to those who understood Colin’s climbing instincts. Still nothing. Eventually, even Alistair’s crew gave up, and just like that, the story that had rocked the Beck with family and their Wyoming town disappeared into silence. Years passed. Heather left her daughter’s room untouched. The posters and books left untouched for years.

Colin’s tools still hung neatly in his garage workshop, collecting dust. The two satellite phones sat locked away in an evidence box. Their batteries long since dead. In 2016, a backpacker found a climbing nut wedged in a remote creek. It matched the gear Colin liked, but without serial numbers or specific identifiers, the lead went cold.

Then, in 2120, a dark rumor surfaced online. An anonymous poster claimed Colin had financial trouble, and maybe he didn’t just go missing by chance at all. The theory suggested he’d harmed Riley and went missing to escape his debts. The rumor went viral. Heather was crushed. Collins financial records were pulled.

Investigators found no signs of fraud, desperation, or escape planning. The theory was baseless, but it had taken root. Even Collins, what they left behind was now under question. Then in 2024, 11 years after the climb, a breakthrough came not from law enforcement or search teams, but from two young climbers on a bold new route.

The Portal Ledge, Ava Monroe and Liam Bishop weren’t looking for answers. They were looking for new challenges. They were elite sport climbers known for tackling vertical routes that no one else dared to chart. their goal, a fresh ascent on an unexplored face of Mount Hooker. Days into the climb, Ben spotted something odd.

A rusted bolt drilled into the granite. That alone was strange enough. The face they were on had no recorded climbs. Then more bolts. A traverse, a strange shadowed al cove ahead. What they found next would shake them to the core. A hanging setup, a portal ledge weathered and ancient suspended thousands of feet above the ground.

Inside an old sleeping bag, coiled rope, a dry bag, and something else. Something no climber ever wants to find. Inside the bag, a human skull. Ava nearly slipped in shock. The couple froze in silence, unsure whether they’d stumbled onto the remains of a stranger or found the missing Beckwiths. They took photos, coordinates, and climbed down nervously as the sun disappeared.

Ava called 911 with trembling hands. We’re on Mount Hooker, she said. We found something. We found a body. Part two, the ledge of silence. The photos were grainy, but the details were unmistakable climbing gear from the early 2010s. Faded red nylon, a worn carabiner with initials scratched faintly into its metal GB. The authorities moved quickly.

Within 24 hours, a specialized rescue crew was flown into Mount Hooker. A helicopter hovered while ropes and pulleys were lowered onto the same cliff face Ava and Ben had ascended. The team repelled down with surgical precision, navigating a jagged wall that hadn’t been touched in over a decade. What they recovered from that ledge would finally begin to explain what had haunted so many for 11 years.

Identification, the only bones were left, but partially preserved by altitude, cold, and exposure. In the sleeping bag was the skull Ava had found along with fragments of bone and fabric. Nearby in a crushed red dry sack were two waterlog journals and a cracked long deadad GoPro camera. Forensic tests were swift.

Dental records confirmed the remains belonged to Colin Redford. But there was no sign of Riley. The questions only multiplied. Where was she? Had she fallen, escaped? Was she still alive? Heather, still grieving, still hanging on to hope, dared to ask, “What if she made it off that mountain?” The journal, one of the two notebooks recovered from the dry sack, was somehow still readable.

It was Colin’s field journal filled with root sketches, notes on the weather, and personal thoughts right up until the final week of the climb. The last few entries were chilling. August 21st, 2013. 2:17 p.m. Rude due to ice. Took southern bypass. Unexpected exposure. Riley shaken but managing. She’s strong. August 22th, 2013.

6:42 p.m. Storm moved in fast. No signal. Took shelter on ledge. One bolt loose. Secured setup. Rations tight. August 23rd, 2013. 9:12 a.m. Riley says she saw something. A shadow or movement last night. She didn’t sleep. Neither did I. August 24th, 2013, but 1:31 a.m. If this is the last thing I write, tell Heather we tried. Riley left this morning.

Said she’d go for help. I stayed. My knee can’t move. The cliff decision. That single line. Riley left this morning. Shocked everyone. If Riley had left the ledge, she may have survived the descent. She may have reached the trail, but if so, where had she gone? A new search was kicked off this time along the descent route surrounding the cliff.

The path Colin documented dubbed the southern bypass had never been part of the original search in 2013. It was treacherous with narrow ledges, vertical scrambles, and blind crevices. Then a discovery, the bracelet. Just two days into the renewed search, a ranger found a rusted titanium bracelet tangled in a clump of mountain laurel.

It was engraved with two names, Colin and Riley Hooker. 2013. It had clearly been lost during a descent. The vegetation around it suggested it had been there for years, exposed only recently by rock slides and melting snow. The search narrowed to a single ridge line and at the bottom of a narrow chute buried under a slab of fallen granite was the unthinkable.

Another body part three. Riley’s final climb. The remains beneath the granite slab were located in a narrow chute overgrown with alpine brush and barely visible from above. A ranger spotted a fragment of red nylon caught on a jagged rock. the same color as the jacket Riley was last seen wearing.

It took six hours to excavate the area safely. When they finally lifted the slab, they found what they feared. Skeletal remains partially protected beneath the stone. Next to them, a small pack, its fabric frayed, but intact. Inside the pack, a compass, two energy bars, still sealed in faded wrappers, and a zippered pouch containing a notebook.

It was Riley’s journal, Riley’s words. The first entries in her handwriting mirrored Colin’s notes on Root’s weather trail sketches, but the tone changed suddenly after August 24th. August 24th, 2013. Morning. Dad’s not doing well. His knee is worse. I’m scared to leave him. But he says I have to. I hate this mountain. I hate what it’s done to us.

August 25th, 2013. Evening. No trail. Wind is howling. I can’t see anything. My water’s low. I miss mom. I miss home. If anyone finds this, I didn’t give up. Of August 26th, 2013, unclear time. I saw the lake. I was close. I know I was close, but I slipped. I think my ankle is broken. I crawled here.

The writing becomes more jagged. Entries more desperate. August 28th, 2013. Tell them we tried. Tell them I didn’t run. I wanted to live. And then the final page. No date, just one line. Dad, I made it farther than we thought. The last clue. Medical examiners concluded Riley had died from likely froze to death three or four days after she left Colin on the ledge.

She had descended nearly 200 fft, navigating dangerous cliffs and sheer drops with no rope, no food, and eventually a broken ankle. She made it within just two men of the trail. How the public responded. When news broke of the discovery, it blew up online. online. The mountaineering community mourned. But more than that, people across the world were struck by the bravery of a 19-year-old girl who refused to surrender even after watching her father die on the mountain.

Collins journal and Riley’s notebook were eventually published in a memorial exhibit in Lander, Wyoming. Their final words became a symbol not just of loss, but of strength, family, and human endurance. Part four. What the experts missed when the final location of the Beckwith’s cliff setup was plotted on a topographic map. Search coordinators were stunned.

It was less than 900 ft from one of the originally searched zones. So, how had they missed it? The answer came down to three things. Rude assumptions, weather interference, and human error. assumptions that cost time. In 2013, search crews had focused on traditional ascent routes to Mount Hooker, especially the eastern coal, and the tower faced the most common and historically used approaches.

Colin and Riley, however, had taken a lesserk known route to the southern traverse, one Colin had explored only in theory based on old topographic data and hints from vintage climbing guides. It wasn’t documented on modern maps. It wasn’t popular, and it certainly wasn’t in the search team’s primary grid. By the time the weather closed in the ledge, Colin and Riley had set up Dawn was completely fogged over and snow.

From the air, it blended into the cliff. From below, it was completely invisible. Weather and time, nature’s obstruction. The early storm that year, unexpected even by veteran meteorologists, buried much of the higher terrain under snow and ice just as the search reached its most critical window. Thermal imaging failed.

Helicopters were grounded. Clues were buried. And when the snow melted the following spring, erosion had shifted key landmarks. By then, the case had gone cold. Even the minor climbing gear left behind, like the nut found in 2016, had been dismissed without follow-up. But in hindsight, it had marked the edge of Riley’s descent.

How Chloe and Ben succeeded. In 2024, the two climbers who discovered the Beckwiths cliff setup were actively avoiding traditional paths. Their goal had been to document a new line, and in doing so, they naturally passed right by the ledge. More importantly, they were climbing close and slow, not flying overhead or sweeping wide areas.

In a way, it was Colin’s own mindset, the desire to explore lesserk known routes that ultimately led two strangers to him and his daughter 11 years later. A system rewritten. After the Beckwith case was closed, Wyoming’s backcountry search and rescue protocols were quietly rewritten. Search grids were expanded to include speculative and off-m map routes.

A new AI based mapping system was deployed to analyze journal entries, GPS data, and even social media posts to predict exploratory risk paths. Finally, all unarked cliff faces in open cases were flagged for review, even those considered unlikely. The state went public with an apology to the Beckwith family, but Heather Beckwith didn’t want blame. She wanted change and she got it.

Part five, the message they left behind. After the final reports were filed after the search teams packed up and after Heather received her husband and daughter’s remains to give them a proper burial, there was one final visit to the mountain. Not by law enforcement, not by a journalist, by Ava and Ben, the climbers who had found Colin and Riley’s final setup.

They returned in the summer of 2025, climbing the exact same route, retracing every bolt and ledge. This time, not for discovery, but to honor. What they found on that return journey shocked them. A message in stone just to the right of the ledge where Colin had made setup, barely visible in the shadows of the granite wall, was a carved inscription in the rock.

Three words scratched faintly into the stone. We stayed together. Ava photographed it, then radioed it in. The message experts agreed was carved by Riley. She had descended after carving it likely on the morning she left Colin behind a parting note to the world in case they were never found. It wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t poetic. It was plain and simple truth. They had stayed together until the very last moment. Legacy. In the aftermath of the Beckwith case, something remarkable happened. Mount Hooker, long feared and revered in equal measure, became home to a new plaque near the trail head. In memory of Colin and Riley Beckwith, father and daughter, climbers, dreamers, explorers, they stayed together.

Their journals were published not for profit, but as a tribute. Young climbers across the country began using their writings as study material lessons in caution preparation and love for the wilderness. A small nonprofit was founded in Riley’s name, offering gear and mentorship to girls entering outdoor sports.

It’s called the Ledge Project. Heather Beckwith serves on its board. She says she feels peace now. They didn’t die because they were reckless. They died because they were human and the mountain is unforgiving. But they didn’t go out alone and they never gave up. So what would you have done in Riley’s place? Do you think you could have descended that mountain? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

And if stories of perseverance, love, and mystery move, you give us a like, hit subscribe, and turn on notifications.