A CLIBER'S LAST JOURNEY

He vanished on Peru's highest mountain. Two decades later, a stranger brought closure to his family.

- Ryan Hockensmith

THE SOUNDS ARE TERRIFYING: CRACKS. CRUNCHES. CRUMBLING. It’s as if the enormous mountain outside has come alive tonight and is angry. Or maybe the entire world is falling apart? Either way, all Ryan Cooper can do is lie in his tent and hope the mountain doesn’t swallow him up.

It's June 2024, and Cooper is high up on one of the world's most daunting mountains, Peru's Huascarán.

He and his group count their blessings when the sun comes up the next morning. So far, the trip has been one obstacle after another. Avalanches, rockslides, snowstorms. Cooper is a 44-year-old fitness coach and endurance event organizer from Las Vegas with a wife and three kids back home. He's not sure how many of these international attempts he will be able to make. This has to work out.

But it's not meant to be. The group decides that this trip is too dangerous and they need to turn back. It's the right decision. But it feels so wrong. To go all this way and push so hard to get to the top, and now they're just going to quit?

As Cooper packs up, the moment keeps stinging worse and worse. He would never risk his own life—or the life of anybody in his group—for the sake of a summit. And yet, he has never made a right decision that pulled his guts out like this one does.

The group begins its descent down the mountain. At about 17,000 feet, Cooper notices something dark up ahead. At first, he thinks it's equipment or trash that people left behind. But as the group gets closer, Cooper questions if he's seeing what he thinks he is seeing.

When they are only a few feet away, the entire group pauses in shock.

It's a body. A frozen body.