Missing elk hunters in Col

I have hunted very near there. Not the world's worst terrain like any drainage, there are some steep hill sides, trails on the edge of ravenous cliffs, fast moving water, rock skrees

If their gear was still inside the vehicle, does that suggest foul play?

Or could this be a case of being excited, go for a quick scout as soon as you arrive and get caught in bad weather without your gear?

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always a bunch of snow, always wayyyyy colder than expected. First time I was unprepared and almost died.

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my brother and his party got caught in a blizzard in SW CO while out for a week. they were about to give up when they got rescued randomly by a rancher out checking on his cows

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If their gear was still inside the vehicle, does that suggest foul play? Or could this be a case of being excited, go for a quick scout as soon as you arrive and get caught in bad weather without your gear?

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Yeah some speculation that maybe they returned to the truck and were ambushed or maybe they went for a quick scout or hunt and didn’t bring gear and fell into a deep ravine with no sat signal or maybe lightning strike?? But just a bunch of speculation.
I hope it don’t make national news so I don’t have to hear my wife telling me how dangerous it is being in the mountains.

Ive hunted a good bit just a few miles NW that area years back coming from US 84. I had a piece of private land I had access to that would allow me much deeper access into the national forest. I got my arse handed to me twice back there. One year I left my truck at daybreak and started hiking up a hill. I had a storm roll up on me as i crested the top of a peak around 2pm, I immediately left the herd I was following and started heading back down. It went to white out conditions and my gps wouldn't catch a signal. I missed my extraction point to my truck. I made it back to the truck at 4am. The next year I went back in October and killed a large bull. 3 of us hauled it out in one trip right in front of a storm. I couldn't move for a couple days after that. While this was 15 years ago, I remember it being very hard to predict weather around there. Im sure now with sat function you can see it better but it seemed to pop up out of no where a couple times on me. Hoping for a miracle but its not looking good for these young men.

Was just up there just a few miles from where these two were. Lot of rain got dumped there. It started raining thursday evening and didn't stop until the weekend.
We actually packed out an elk in the rain on Friday. Rivers that were just barely a trickle when we got there earlier in the week turned into raging rivers knee deep and 20-30' wide. We had to cross 3 of them. And it was pretty fricking cold. We had rain gear on and while we were moving we were ok, but it finally started to get to us later in the day. We were about 15 minutes from the truck and we all started getting cold, and after we changed and dried off a bit and got in the heated truck, it still took me probably an hour or so to stop being cold, and i'm a big guy who is rarely ever cold. It was in the mid 40's all day friday on the mountain and raining. If they got stuck out there and had to sleep at night in the rain and cold, they could have easily froze to death. They wouldn't have been able to make a fire with all the rain they had, and likely had no way to dry off, so a night on the mountain after that rain and cold wouldn't have gone well.

[quote]packed out an elk [/quote

#jealous

Something had to happen to them for them to not be able to use the InReach. I think the satellite function on the new iPhone is actually more reliable than the inreach.

Getting swept away in a river is a realistic scenario here.
As I said, on Wednesday creeks were little babbling brooks. Friday morning they were rivers, ankle deep or a little more. Friday afternoon around 2 those same rivers were knee deep, and it kept on raining all day. They could have had to cross one later on Friday, desperate to get across so they wouldn’t have to sleep in the rain at night, and had an accident in the river.

Well from my experience crossing rivers that were knee deep on Friday, I would have jumped in without a doubt to help my friend. We were hiking back with 90lbs on our back, and were tired as frick when we had to cross the rivers. We literally talked about it before crossing. Our fear wasn’t getting swept away, more so falling over with all that weight and drowning in place. There was 5 of us when we were crossing. Took our time, talked about it for a good 20 minutes before crossing trying to figure out where the best place to cross was. We had trekking poles reaching out trying to determine the best place for the next step.
The rivers were constantly rising from Thursday around noon until probably Saturday.