CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – There is now a $10,000 reward for anyone who can help locate the two Charlottesville-area natives and former JMU students who disappeared in the Colorado wilderness on a hunting trip last week.
Andrew Porter and Ian Stasko have been considered missing since Sept. 11.
But fellow hunters reported encountering the two 25-year-olds on Friday morning, Sept. 12, near the Spruce Hollow Trailhead in the Rio Grande National Forest around 10 a.m. The missing men said they had spotted a large bull and had headed back out to track the animal, the other hunters told authorities.
About an hour later, the men’s car was apparently moved to the Rio de Los Pinos Trailhead, where it was found by search and rescue teams.
“That gives us one more night and morning we know they were safe before the storms,” Porter’s fiancee, Bridget Murphy, posted on Facebook.
Murphy posted that Wednesday’s search efforts included 58 three-person teams of searchers on the ground, two helicopters and multiple searchers on horseback.
Thursday morning, a team of 70 from the Colorado Search and Rescue organization were scheduled to arrive.
Porter, who now lives in North Carolina, and Stasko, who lives in Utah, were expected to conclude their hunting trip Monday and they were expected to return to their homes Wednesday.
“We are praying every moment,” Murphy posted. “We know they’re very strong and capable guys.”
Andrea Jones, the Conejos Peak District Ranger, told Cville Right Now that the area being searched, which is in southern Colorado, near the New Mexico border, “is heavily forested and rugged, with a lot of dead and down trees.”
Jones said “there is plentiful water throughout the area,” which sits around 10,700-feet of elevation.
The men, who had been sleeping in their car at night, are believed to have light hunting gear and clothing, bows and arrows, knives, cell phones and Garmin GPS devices with them.
“If a person carried with them and/or could acquire adequate shelter, water and food, they could survive in that area for days,” Jones said.
On Tuesday night, Murphy announced on Facebook that they were offering a $10,000 reward for the person or persons who found Porter and Stasko.
A Go Fund Me page launched Tuesday by Porter’s aunt had raised over $70,000 to support the search efforts as of Thursday morning.
