BACK AT THE TALKEETNA ranger station, the atmosphere was strained. As search efforts continued, there was a palpable but unspoken sense of doom. John Varco, along with a dozen of Nott's closest friends, had arrived in Talkeetna a week earlier to help with the rescue effort. Sue's mother, Eve, and her two sisters, Karen and Sarah, had flown in as well. Karen's mother and father, Elaine and Neil, and her sister Wendy were en route to Alaska from New Zealand.

From the start of the operation, Daryl Miller had been in daily contact—either in person or by phone—with their families and close friends. He kept them apprised of every flight, every new discovery, every evolution in the thinking and execution of the operation—often speaking with the parents two or three times a day.

"Constant communication is imperative," Miller told me. "They need to know exactly what's happening. My mission was to keep all those who loved these two women in the loop at all times." Which meant that as each day passed and Nott and McNeill didn't turn up, everyone was coming closer to accepting the heartbreaking reality.

On June 4, the Lama flew four separate sorties up and down the route. Pilot Jim Hood spotted tracks at 15,600 and 15,800 feet. Flyovers on day five revealed tracks at 16,400 and 16,600, and the focus of the search shifted to the summit.

Our flight on June 8 with Reichert and Chenoweth yielded no further clues—and then another storm moved in, blasting Foraker for five consecutive days and grounding all aerial search efforts.

Three days later, in consultation with the search-and-rescue team, Miller conducted a survivability analysis—a detailed investigation into the likelihood of the two women still being alive. They began with the essential facts: Nott and McNeill started the route on May 14 with almost two weeks' worth of food and fuel. They'd have now been without food and water (you need fuel to melt snow for water) for two weeks. There had been a solid week of mortally high winds. Their route had been aerially scoured—more than 27 hours of flying—with no luck.

That evening, after informing the families of the decision, Denali National Park and Preserve officially announced that the search-and-rescue operation for Sue Nott and Karen McNeill was transitioning into a "limited search"—a body-recovery effort, not a live rescue.

It was over.