The Tenmile Range in Colorado, where a skull belonging to Jack McAtee was found. ( rjones0856 via Flickr) 
 
 It had been weeks since Jack McAtee was last heard of, and his father was feeling desperate. 
 
 He reached out to local police, printed fliers featuring pictures of his son — brown hair, green eyes, toothy grin — delved into hiking books and traveling blogs to figure out where the outdoors-loving 27-year-old might have gone next. 
 
 And over and over again, Steve McAtee read his son’s favorite book: “Into the Wild,” Jon Krakauer’s grim chronicle of another young man who vanished into the wilderness and then died there. Hoping for an answer. Hoping that story wouldn’t soon become Jack’s. 
 
 Jack McAtee, a St. Louis native living in the ski town of Breckenridge, had been driving amid the mountains of Colorado when his car swerved off the road and tumbled more than 100 feet into a river below, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The car was totaled, but, miraculously, McAtee swam to the surface and escaped with only a scratch above his left eye. He had fallen asleep at the wheel, he told a state trooper that Thursday evening last September. 
 
 But the trooper’s suspicions were roused by the young man’s odd behavior — he seemed carefree one moment, erratic the next — so he took McAtee to the hospital, then to protective custody at the local jail, then to a mental health facility at Summit Safe Haven in Frisco, Colo., a mountain town at the northern end of Colorado’s Tenmile Range. 
 
 The next morning, according to Colorado newspaper the Summit Daily News, McAtee walked out of Safe Haven with just $67 and the clothes on his back. And that was the last anyone saw of him. There were no more phone calls, no bank withdrawals, no run-ins with the police. Nothing. 
 
 Until this August, when a pair of French hikers bushwhacking down a mountain near Frisco came across a skull on the rugged, steep slopes. 
 
 The skull, DNA tests revealed, was Jack’s. 
 
 “Our search has come to fruition,” Steve McAtee wrote on a Web site set up to find his son. “Our closure is at hand.” 
 
 His son was gone, he continued, “There’s nobody now who saw just what Jack saw, knows what he knew, remembers what he remembered, loves what he loved.” 
 
 But the McAtees tried. During the year they spent wondering what had become of Jack, the McAtee family tracked him across the country in an attempt to see what he saw, to know what he knew, convinced that being in the mountains he loved would tell them something about why he had vanished. 
 
 Friends,Please go to: www.findjackmcatee.comThis is an update we would like to get out to all the wonderful people… Posted by Steve McAtee on Friday, October 9, 2015 
 
 They began in the spot where he was last seen: the gravel cliff above the Dillon Reservoir. Standing before the mountain-ringed reservoir, Steve McAtee recorded a short video for his son, panning the camera across the pristine landscape. At the end, he turned the lens toward himself. 
 
 “I love you Jack,” McAtee said. “Wherever you are.” 
 
 He left no physical evidence behind, but the family had a few leads. According to the Summit Daily News, McAtee had asked the state trooper who responded to his crash if hitchhiking was allowed in Colorado. 
 
 Within certain guidelines, the trooper explained. 
 
 Then McAtee asked the trooper the best destination to hitchhike to using nearby Interstate 70. 
 
 “Moab,” the man responded. 
 
 Moab, Utah. Lead No. 1. Steve McAtee and one of his four daughters traveled to the desert city and got the local newspaper to run an article on Jack. They flew low over peaks he used to rave about, eyes straining for some kind of sign of where he’d been. 
 
 Then there were the leads from Jack’s own history, which Steve McAtee hashed out endlessly on the FindJackMcAtee Web site. His sense of adventure — he used to fly planes in Alaska. His commitment to service — he once spent a month living and working at a homeless shelter. His admiration for Chris McCandless, the focus of “Into the Wild,” who, like McAtee, grew up in the suburbs but then fled into the wilderness, where he lived for a time on the strength of his survival skills and a Thoreauvian desire to disconnect. Perhaps he was piloting flights for fishermen in Alaska, or volunteering at a shelter in a big city like San Francisco or Houston. Perhaps he’d just gone deep into the wild around Frisco, where 10- and 12- and 14-thousand-foot mountains and endless acres of trees would shield him from the outside world. 
 
 Alaska, shelter, mountains. Leads 2, 3 and 4. Steve McAtee reached out to his contacts in Alaska. He posted Jack’s missing poster on the Facebook pages of homeless shelters in cities across the West and Midwest. All six of the McAtees flew out to Summit County and ensured that signs about their brother and son were posted at every trailhead. Riding a mountain bike up and down the steep slopes, the family stopped every hiker they came across and held up Jack’s photo. Have you seen this man? 
 
 During the winter months, when it was impossible to stay in Colorado and scour the mountains, Steve McAtee devoted himself to reading about lives lived off the grid. “Travelers,” or “Rainbow people,” as he called them, migrated from town to town without cell phones, jobs, permanent housing or bank accounts. He studied these drifters ceaselessly, trying to figure out what might have appealed to Jack — the creative chaos of Burning Man? the California winter campsite “Slab City,” where McCandless had once stayed? 
 
 Then there was the other lead, the one the McAtees didn’t want to think about. Jack had stopped taking medicine for bipolar disorder just before the crash, the family told the Summit Daily News. It had happened before, and on three of those occasions he’d gone missing for a short while. Usually he popped back up again. 
 
 But the state trooper who met Jack McAtee wrote in his report on the incident that he believed the crash might have been intentional, according to the Summit Daily News. Maybe he was trying to die. 
 
 Maybe he was already dead. 
 
 “At times, it’s a bit like being in the wilderness ourselves,” Steve McAtee wrote on Thanksgiving, 2014. “At times the lack of hope and feelings that it may be all over, that Jack may be dead and never found. And yes, we all understand that very well could be the case.” 
 
 His updates from this summer are more optimistic. “It was a long cold winter,” McAtee wrote during a visit to Colorado in July, “… Even in light of the fact that Jack has now been missing for such a long time,we remain vigilant, hopeful and thankful for [friends and family] — even in the face of despair.” 
 
 When the Summit County Sheriff’s Office called Steve McAtee in August to alert him about the skull, he tried not to assume the worst. 
 
 “We don’t have any information yet,” he told the Summit Daily News. “I would call it inconsequential at this stage.” 
 
 Two months later, the information came: Jack had died. 
 
 What’s still not clear is when, or how. Taniel Ilano, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, told the Denver Post the investigation into McAtee’s death is ongoing. 
 
 But in his message on his Web site, Steve McAtee doesn’t ask those questions. The biggest one, the one that’s dogged him for the past year, already has an answer: “A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone.” 
 
 Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly identified Jack McAtee’s father. His name is Steve McAtee. 
 
 More from Morning Mix 
 
 Great white shark devours a seal on camera as Alcatraz tourists watch in awe ||||| Jack McAtee's skull was found on Peak 1 in August by hikers 
 
 Breckenridge resident Jack McAtee, 27, went missing in Frisco on Sept. 19, 2014. A skull found near the summit of Peak 1 matched his identity according to recent DNA test results. (Summit County Daily) 
 
 Summit County authorities said Monday a skull found by hikers in August is that of a 27-year-old Breckenridge man who went missing in September 2014. 
 
 Jack McAtee's skull was the only of his remains located on Peak 1, according to officials. The county sheriff's office said the positive identification was done using DNA. 
 
 McAtee, whose family said he was bipolar, disappeared a day after he drove his car into Dillon Reservoir and swam to safety with only minor injuries. 
 
 A Colorado State Patrol report said his black sedan veered onto the paved bicycle path, cutting through a 10-foot opening between a steel guardrail and a concrete highway barrier, according to a Colorado State Patrol report. The car left the path, rolling for about 135 feet across dirt and gravel along the reservoir. It went airborne for 110 feet, turning end over end, before it crashed into the water. 
 
 The car was almost entirely submerged, the report said. 
 
 McAtee was taken to a hospital by authorities and then evaluated by a psychologist because he was acting erratically. He was then released and never heard from again. 
 
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 "Our search has come to fruition," McAtee's family said in a statement posted on a website aimed at finding the missing man. "Our closure is at hand, albeit we acknowledge it will be a lifelong process." 
 
 There was an expansive search for McAtee after he went missing, which included the Breckenridge Search and Rescue Team who "dedicated thousands of man hours," the statement on findjackmcatee.com said. 
 
 Family members initially believed McAtee possibly had been hitchhiking. Searchers sought the help of truckers and truck stops throughout the state and beyond, widely circulating McAtee's picture. 
 
 Taniel Ilano, spokeswoman for the Summit County Sheriff's Office, said an investigating into McAtee's death remains active and ongoing. 
 
 "There's been no determination on manner or cause of death," she said. 
 
 Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or @JesseAPaul 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| The day before he went missing Breckenridge resident Jack McAtee crashed his car into Dillon Reservoir at around 6:40 p.m. on Sept. 18. 
 
 His black sedan veered onto the paved bicycle path, cutting through a 10-foot opening between a steel guardrail and a concrete highway barrier, according to a Colorado State Patrol report. The car left the path, rolling for about 135 feet across dirt and gravel along the reservoir. It went airborne for 110 feet, turning end over end, before it crashed into the water. 
 
 His car was almost entirely submerged. Miraculously, he swam to the surface, with only a laceration above his left eye. 
 
 McAtee claimed he had fallen asleep at the wheel. A state trooper interviewing McAtee said he did not appear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In fact, McAtee had recently stopped taking his medication for bipolar disorder, according to family members. 
 
 The state trooper did not know that as he took McAtee to St. Anthony Summit Medical Center for medical clearance and then to the Summit County jail for a mental evaluation. The trooper just knew that McAtee was acting erratically, his moods swinging from irritated to chatty. 
 
 At one point, McAtee asked the trooper if hitchhiking was legal in Colorado. Within certain guidelines, it can be, the trooper explained. McAtee then asked him where he would hitchhike if heading west on Interstate 70. Just making conversation, the trooper said, “Moab.” The trooper left McAtee in a holding cell at the jail. At first, McAtee was in high spirits. Then he cried in his cell. Then, before the trooper departed, McAtee seemed to be in a good mood again. 
 
 The next day McAtee met with a psychologist. He was released at around 11 a.m. on Sept. 19. He was wearing a red hoodie and a tan hat. He had $67 in his pocket. 
 
 His friends and family haven’t seen him or heard from him since. 
 
 McAtee, a gregarious and adventuresome 27-year-old who had lived in Breckenridge for about 5 years, had gone missing three times after going off his medication, but never for this long. 
 
 Picking up on the hitchhiking theme in the troopers report, his family quickly assembled a team of volunteers, getting the word out to truck stops stretching from Salt Lake to St. Louis, where the McAtee family is from. 
 
 The Moab Times-Independent published a story on McAtee’s disappearance just in case he followed up on the trooper’s suggestion. The story generated more than 10,000 clicks, but no one there has yet to report a sighting. 
 
 However, a trucker in the Wheat Ridge area near Denver was convinced he saw McAtee. 
 
 Because of that tip, and the fact McAtee has made no bank transactions since his disappearance, the family is now focusing efforts closer to home. They now believe it’s possible he is still in the Summit County area. Posters have been put up all over town and along trailheads. 
 
 McAtee’s father, Steve McAtee, is currently leading search efforts from Breckenridge. 
 
 “In case you are reading this, Jack, your mother and I and your four sisters Megan, Maddy, Katherine, and Ali love you with all our hearts,” he wrote in an email. “And we want to be with you now, more than ever. We love you. Come home.” 
 
 Summit County sheriff’s spokeswoman Taneil Ilano told the Moab Times-Independent that McAtee’s disappearance is being investigated as a missing-person case. 
 
 Anyone who has seen McAtee — who is 5 feet, 10 inches tall, weighs 170 pounds and has green eyes — or who has information concerning his whereabouts is asked to call the Summit County Sheriff’s Office at (970) 668-8600. ||||| Story highlights A man goes missing after he leaves his house on September 2 
 
 Nearly seven weeks later, he is found hundreds of miles away 
 
 He's found injured and trapped in a ravine; he used the time to write love letters to his family 
 
 His death leaves behind many questions 
 
 David Welch hopped into his maroon Pontiac Montana van last month and drove for hours. Without saying where he was going, he kept on driving, police say. 
 
 Nearly seven weeks later, a hitchhiker found him in a deep, isolated desert patch in Utah, hundreds of miles from his Kansas home. 
 
 Injured and trapped in his car, he'd spent his final days penning love letters to his wife of 32 years and four sons. 
 
 Authorities say his car plummeted into the ravine in early September after it veered off the road. 
 
 Welch, 54, sat in his mangled car for days, maybe weeks, police say. Nights became days, then weeks, then over a month. 
 
 And as his family searched for him, he was trapped in his car, scribbling his last words. 
 
 What's in the notes is private, authorities say, and they have been handed over to Welch's family. 
 
 His family's ordeal started September 2 when he left his home in Manhattan, Kansas. 
 
 A day later, relatives contacted the police to report that he had not returned home. 
 
 "At this time officers confirmed that there was no reason to believe Welch was currently in danger of harm or had known medical issues that may cause him to be in danger," the Riley County Police Department said. 
 
 It said it notified law enforcement agencies in areas where Welch may have gone. 
 
 Four days after he left home, a missing persons report was filed. Long stretches of time passed with no news of his whereabouts. 
 
 The retired Pepsi Co. representative was an avid outdoorsman who loved landscaping, scuba diving and snowskiing, according to his obituary posted on a funeral home's website 
 
 Forty-six days after he left home -- on October 18 -- a pedestrian walking along the edge of the desolate road saw an overturned car in a deep ravine. 
 
 It was about 850 miles from his home on a deserted section off Interstate 70. 
 
 Tire marks led straight off the road down to where his vehicle crashed, authorities said. 
 
 It didn't appear that he was braking or attempting a turn, just that he went straight off the road, said Cpl. Todd Johnson, a spokesman for the Utah Highway Patrol. 
 
 Authorities believe Welch fell asleep while driving, sending the car crossing into the ravine and rolling onto its passenger side, CNN affiliate KSNT reported. 
 
 Welch was trapped alive in the ravine for an unknown number of days. 
 
 He was found dead. What police don't know is how long he lived. 
 
 And with his passing, a lot of questions remain, like why was he so far away from home? ||||| WATCH ABOVE: The memory of his son was enough for a Colorado pilot to consider crashing his plane. Jennifer Brice reports. 
 
 TORONTO – A Colorado man, who lost his pilot’s license years ago, walked away without a scratch after intentionally crashing his plane into the side of a mountain. 
 
 Eaton resident Mark Darling took off in a Cessna 172F high-wing airplane on Sunday, January 25, and flew west over Rocky Mountain National Park. He hadn’t submitted a flight plan because he had lost his pilot’s license years ago. 
 
 Nobody knew he was in the air. 
 
 By the time Darling reached the town where he raised his family, he seemingly became overcome with grief at the thought of his son, Travis, who lost his life in a car accident two years ago. Travis was in his early 20’s at the time of his death. 
 
 What happened next, only Darling could explain. 
 
 “Did you intentionally fly the plane into the mountain?” CBS reporter Jennifer Brice asked in a report. 
 
 “Yes, I did,” Darling replied. 
 
 “I make a bad decision at this point. I turn the airplane east toward the mountains,” Darling told Brice. “I say my last goodbyes, I closed my eyes and I wait for the impact.” 
 
 Photographs of the crash site in Rabbit Ears Pass confirm the wreckage barely resembles an aircraft. 
 
 “It’s just a mashed up ball of aluminum,” Darling told CBS affiliate KCNC. 
 
 Darling walked away from the crash without a scratch. 
 
 “I do not have a bruise from the seatbelt, not a scratch on me,” he added. 
 
 But Darling hadn’t escaped death entirely. He was now left alone, on a frigid mountain, with nobody aware of his whereabouts and no way to tell them. Darling couldn’t find his phone in the wreckage and did not come prepared with survival gear. 
 
 That’s when he claims his son’s voice guided and encouraged him not to give up. 
 
 “He’s like, ‘Dad, you are not going out like this. You’re going to get yourself up and you’re going to build a fire and you’re going to get yourself out of here,’” Darling said in the interview with CBS. 
 
 “He says, ‘Dad, just walk to the other side of the plane.’ He says, ‘just reach down in the snow.’ And I grab my phone at this point. I’m like, ‘oh my god.’” 
 
 Darling was rescued seven hours after the crash. 
 
 An NTSB investigation is still ongoing and Darling could face some consequences for his actions. But right now, he just hopes his story can give other grieving people some much-needed hope. 
 
 “I’ve never felt more alive in my life,” Darling ended with. “I don’t know what direction it’s going to lead me in, but, heck yeah I’m along for the ride now!”
– Jack McAtee crashed his car into a reservoir in the mountains of Colorado on Sept. 18, 2014. He survived with only a scratch and told a police officer he'd fallen asleep at the wheel. The officer suspected the crash might've been intentional and the 27-year-old spent a night at a mental health facility in Frisco. A day later, the Breckenridge man was released and disappeared, reports the Washington Post. His family told the Summit Daily News McAtee had 10 days earlier stopped taking his medication for bipolar disorder, just as he had done a few times before when he dropped out of sight, but he always resurfaced. Over the next year, they scoured the country in search of him, thinking perhaps he'd gone off the grid like Chris McCandless, the subject of his favorite book, Into the Wild. They reached out to contacts in Alaska, where McAtee had flown planes, and homeless shelters, where they thought he might volunteer, but found no sign of him. In July, McAtee's father wrote online that "there is a 50% chance that Jack wandered off into the wilderness and attempted to survive." But a month later, two hikers found a skull near the top of the Peak One, immediately south of Frisco; DNA confirmation that the skull was McAtee's came earlier this month. "Our search has come to fruition," McAtee's family wrote. "Our closure is at hand, albeit we acknowledge it will be a lifelong process." It's still not clear how or when McAtee died. His skull was all that was found of his remains, reports the Denver Post. What is certain: "A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone," his family says. But "the story's not over," McAtee's father adds. The family is hoping to raise $50,000 to build wells in Kenya in McAtee's memory. Nearly $15,000 has been raised so far. (The Into the Wild author has revised his McCandless death theory.)