America isn’t just a country of skyscrapers and bustling highways; it is another world, a wilderness where ordinary rules no longer apply. It is a land indifferent to your plans, your experience, or your will to survive. It can offer you the most spectacular views on the planet, and a second later, it can take everything, erasing your very existence. This is the story of a couple who came here in search of beauty and only found something primitive and horrifying. A story that ended with one person being found mutilated in the ice and the other vanishing without a trace.

In late August 2023, Ethan Bans and Maya Lin, a young couple from Boston, drove to Colorado. They were the kind of people you look at with a bit of envy. He was 26, she was 25. They were young, in love, and obsessed with the wild. Ethan, a software engineer, was a meticulous planner; for him, every trip was a chess game with nature. Maya, an artist and photographer, was the complete opposite: vibrant and impulsive. She saw nature not as a challenge, but as a source of endless inspiration. Both were experienced hikers, having conquered dozens of trails in the Appalachian and Sierra Nevada mountains. But the Rocky Mountains were their ultimate dream, their pilgrimage.

They had been preparing for this trip for over a year. Their plan was ambitious but they believed it was feasible: a week-long hike along one of the most difficult trails in Rocky Mountain National Park, a vast wilderness. They planned to follow the famous “Longs Peak Trail” but would turn into a lesser-known valley to, as Maya wrote in her last Instagram post, “listen to the authentic silence.” They were fully equipped, with everything from a satellite communicator and bear spray to food for 10 days, even though the trip was only planned to last seven. On September 1, they drove to the trailhead.

The last person to communicate with them was Maya’s sister. She received a short message via satellite communicator on the afternoon of September 2, with just three words: “This is magical.” The message’s location showed they were a few miles off the main trail, exactly where they had planned to turn into the secluded valley. After that, the communicator went silent. At first, no one was worried. Even satellite devices often lose signal in the mountains, but they were supposed to be off the trail by September 9. When they didn’t show up at their rendezvous point on September 9 or 10 and their car was still in the parking lot, the National Park’s rescue service issued an alert. The search began. It was a desperate race against time. September in the Rockies is when the rainy season begins, and the weather changes by the hour. Search teams on the ground and helicopters in the air scoured the area where the couple was last seen. But the valley they entered was a complex maze of steep slopes, dense thickets, and glacial rivers. Days passed, and the search yielded no results. Nothing was found—not an abandoned backpack, not a piece of clothing, no trace of a campsite—nothing to indicate an accident or an animal attack. Ethan and Maya had vanished. Their digital trail ended with Maya’s message, and their physical trail ended at the parking lot. In mid-September, the weather worsened. A heavy, wet snow fell, quickly covering the mountains in a white blanket. The search became impossible and, more importantly, dangerous for the rescuers themselves. The official search was suspended until the following spring. For their families in Boston, a painful winter of uncertainty began.

The official explanation was that Ethan and Maya might have been victims of an accident, possibly a fall, swept away by a flash flood, or trapped in a sudden snowstorm. The Rockies had claimed them, as they had claimed so many others before. Their names were added to the long list of people who entered the wilderness and never returned. But no one could have imagined the terrifying and inexplicable secret hidden beneath the thick layer of snow in that quiet, remote valley. A secret that would make even the most seasoned investigators question the rationality of the world.

A Horrific Discovery in the Ice

Nine months of hell. For Ethan and Maya’s families, the winter of 2023 was a torment. First came a fragile hope, then the painful wait for news from the rescue teams, and then a long, harsh winter that buried not only the mountains under snow but also any faint hope of a miracle. With each passing day, they realized they were no longer hoping for a rescue but only to find a body to at least have some certainty. Winter in the Rockies is a time when nature demands its sacrifices, and all human tragedies are postponed until spring. And then, in mid-June 2024, spring finally came to the mountains. The snow began to melt, revealing the ground that had held a secret since last September.

Mateo Valdés, a National Park ranger, was one of the first to venture into the remote areas after winter. He was in his late 50s and had spent most of his life in these mountains. He was a man of few words, accustomed to solitude and an expert at deciphering the signs nature leaves behind. He was not a member of the search team. His job was to perform a routine check of the trails after winter, assess the risk of avalanches, and generally survey the area. His path took him through the same valley where the Boston couple’s trail had ended last year. He had been walking for three days. There was a deathly silence, broken only by the sound of melting water and the cry of an eagle high above. Mateo remembered the search from the previous year and habitually looked around, but he did not expect to find anything. Nine months here is an eternity. Here, nature quickly and efficiently gets rid of anything unnecessary.

As he was walking through the dense forest on the slope of a deep ravine, where a thick, dirty, and compacted layer of snow still lay in the shade, he saw a bright spot below, something blue, unnatural in this landscape. The first thing he thought was garbage, a piece of tarp or a tent left behind by a careless hiker. Cursing under his breath, he carefully went down the slope, clinging to branches. When he got closer, he realized it was not just a piece of fabric—it was a high-tech hiking jacket, and it was not empty. A part of a human body was visible under the snow and ice. The old ranger’s heart pounded. He had found dead bodies before in his long career. He knew what to do. Not getting too close to avoid disturbing tracks, he took out his radio and called headquarters. “Headquarters. This is Mateo. I have a 799 code. I think I found one of the people who disappeared last fall. Send a helicopter and an investigation team.”

While waiting for help, he took all the necessary precautions. He walked around the area to assess the situation. What he saw made him, a man who seemed to have seen everything, go cold. The body frozen in the ice was that of a young woman. It was Maya Lin, but her face was disfigured. This was not the work of scavengers. The wounds were too clean, too precise. The eye sockets were empty, and where her mouth should have been, there was an open wound. Her tongue had been cut out at the root, an act performed by human hands with a sharp blade. But the most terrifying surprise awaited him when he began to examine the snow around the body. In the undisturbed snow that the sun had not yet melted, he saw footprints—clear footprints from the same boot. They radiated out from the body in multiple directions, like rays of light, but there was something horribly strange about them. The footprints only led away from the body. There was not a single chain of footprints leading to it. Mateo followed one of the tracks. It stretched in a straight line for about 20 meters and then ended right in the middle of a snowfield. There was no sign that the person had turned around and walked backward. There were no signs of jumping or struggling—just an end. It seemed as if the person who left these footprints had walked 20 meters and vanished into thin air. He checked the other tracks—the same picture. Mateo Valdés felt a primal fear run down his spine. The place was strange—it defied all logic. He went back to his radio. “Headquarters. This is Mateo,” he said in a tense, calm voice. “Keep my call open. The situation is unusual, I repeat, very unusual. Tell the boys to be prepared for anything.” When a Colorado State Police helicopter flew over the ravine an hour later, he didn’t move, continuing to stare at the inexplicable footprints that led nowhere. The mystery of the missing couple had just become much darker and more incomprehensible.