{"id":33205,"date":"2023-06-28T23:29:06","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T05:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/search-for-missing-hiker-in-la-plata-mountains-carries-on-with-community-help\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:07:08","slug":"search-for-missing-hiker-in-la-plata-mountains-carries-on-with-community-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/search-for-missing-hiker-in-la-plata-mountains-carries-on-with-community-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Search for missing hiker in La Plata Mountains carries on with community help"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"La
La Plata County Search and Rescue has moved the search for 28-year-old Ian O'Brien out of La Plata Canyon, according to his sister, Molly O'Brien. (Courtesy of GoFundMe)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Residents and businesses have been contributing to the search for 28-year-old Ian O\u2019Brien, who went missing Saturday while hiking in the La Plata Mountains.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien was camping with partner Beth Henshaw near the upper end of Echo Basin along Forest Service Road 566. He went hiking about 2 p.m. Saturday to Hesperus Peak and never returned.<\/p>\n

Henshaw said about 75 people were camping at Lucy Halls Park to help find O\u2019Brien. That included 15 mountaineer guides from Prescott College, where O\u2019Brien attended school. She said there has been 30 to 55 volunteers who have been searching on foot since Saturday.<\/p>\n

Businesses such as Farm to Summit and Deer Hill Expeditions have been donating truck loads of food to the campers who have been at the location since O\u2019Brien went missing on Saturday.<\/p>\n

She said members of the ultra running community, who don\u2019t know him, have been searching, while other community members have come to their campsite to help pick up trash and deliver supplies.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien is an experienced hiker who has led multiple backpacking expeditions while working with Open Sky Wilderness Therapy, Henshaw said.<\/p>\n

He had lived in Southwest Colorado for about five years before recently moving to Page, Arizona, and has summited Hesperus Peak on multiple occasions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he graduated Prescott College, he sold everything that he owned and rode his bike to Mancos and lived in La Plata Canyon off of his bike,\u201d Henshaw said.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien is no stranger to the Echo Basin area and frequently navigated the mountainous area on his mountain bike.<\/p>\n

Henshaw\u2019s main concern is that he may have had a seizure and become unaware of his whereabouts. O\u2019Brien has epilepsy and will have seizures on a consistent basis. She said the seizures can be brought on by overexertion, mental stress or lack of food or sleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel pretty confident that he had a seizure on his way down from the mountain because he takes his medication at eight o\u2019clock,\u201d Henshaw said.<\/p>\n

She said he likely missed that time and that he has had seizures within 30 minutes of missing his medicine. He was also summiting a mountain with an elevation of over 13,000 feet after living at around 4,000 feet in Page, which could have caused fatigue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that he\u2019s doing all these strenuous activities close to the medication window time, it\u2019s very likely that he had a seizure and lost contact with his communication devices,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In previous experiences with O\u2019Brien\u2019s seizures, Henshaw said he will enter a postictal state that will last anywhere from 15 to 90 minutes, during which time he may lose memory of what happened.<\/p>\n

As of noon Wednesday, there were 25 of O\u2019Brien\u2019s friends on the mountain searching for him in addition to search and rescue teams from Montezuma and La Plata counties.<\/p>\n

Montezuma County Sheriff Steven Nowlin said search and rescue teams had not found any leads as of 2 p.m. Wednesday. He said teams will continue to search throughout the night.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien was reportedly wearing a gray tank top, black shorts, tennis shoes and possibly had a long-sleeve hiking shirt.<\/p>\n

Henshaw said family, friends, and search and rescue members looked all night Saturday. They found shoe tracks that resembled O\u2019Brien\u2019s sneakers on Owens Basin Trail and West Mancos Trail and lost the prints at a river crossing on the West Mancos Trail at 7 a.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n

Both Henshaw and O\u2019Brien\u2019s sister, Molly O\u2019Brien, were told by La Plata County Search and Rescue that hikers thought they had spotted O\u2019Brien on Sunday based on what the hiker was wearing, but it was later confirmed the hiker did not match O\u2019Brien\u2019s stature and did not have the same tattoos.<\/p>\n

Molly O\u2019Brien said La Plata County Search and Rescue told her that her brother was likely no longer in La Plata Canyon and the search was shifting toward the Hesperus Peak area Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just want to share that as of today, we want to keep searching. And we want to keep this momentum going,\u201d Molly O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n

Molly expressed that her brother had extensive outdoor experience and that if there wasn\u2019t a medical concern he likely would have made his way back to the campsite.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is always outside and has spent more nights outside than in a bed in his life. And that\u2019s how he likes it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Anyone interested in donating to the search effort can do so by searching \u201cFind Ian O\u2019Brien\u201d on GoFundMe<\/a>. For updates about the search, visit bit.ly\/44paiP0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

tbrown@durangherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

search teams believe Ian O\u2019Brien is no longer in La Plata Canyon <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,658,475,1807,1130,60],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-hiking","tag-la-plata-county-colorado","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue","tag-missing-person","tag-montezuma-county"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82101,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33205\/revisions\/82101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33205"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}