From the air, however, Anderson could see that the snow on Cleveland was deeper than anyone had suspected after such a mild autumn. Given the way the weather had played out in the late fall and early winter—warm temperatures, then light snow, followed by cold temperatures—the snowpack had become a textbook example of the formation of depth hoar.

Since the boys had told their families not to worry until January 2, Bud Anderson spent New Year's Day at home in Bozeman. Early the next morning, he and Canadian warden (the equivalent of a ranger in the United States) Jack Christiansen took a boat to Goat Haunt for what they expected to be the triumphant return of the group. There was no one waiting at the dock. Hiking around the ranger station, the pair came across some ski tracks climbing up through the timber toward the north face. Following the tracks, they found abandoned skis and snowshoes about a mile and a half from the lake, near timberline. It appeared that the boys had decided to attempt the north face after all, and that they were still on the mountain. Meanwhile, Frauson and the other Glacier rangers had grown worried too, and when Anderson called shortly after 9 a.m., a search swung into full gear, complete with planes and helicopters.

On January 3, two teams of rescuers, including Bud Anderson, gathered at Waterton Townsite, packing climbing skis, ice axes, probe poles, and ropes. Over the next few days they would be joined by several dozen of the best mountaineers in North America, some of them friends and mentors of the missing climbers. Volunteers (including well-known cousins George and Mike Lowe) began arriving from the Tetons to the south, Canadian alpine specialists from Jasper and Banff to the north. The search had suddenly become one of the most complex and dangerous in the region's history. And the weather up high was deteriorating, as winds kicked up to 25 knots and the windchill dropped to minus 44. The cloud cover hung so thick that it entirely occluded the upper half of the mountain.

But following the ski tracks toward the mountain, at about 10:30 that morning, the searchers discovered something haunting: the remains of a fire, coals still smoldering near the base of the north face, about a half-mile above the abandoned gear. The boys' base camp. Around the fire the searchers found two backpacks, four aluminum-framed cargo packs, two tents, a cache of food, and an array of gear: helmets, stove, carabiners, pitons, webbing, socks, foam pads, sleeping bags, 200 feet of avalanche cord, and a can of exposed color film.

Leading away from the camp were not one but two sets of footprints, the first heading to the north face, the other to the west face. Had the boys split up? Divided as they were in the level of their mountaineering skills, the searchers figured, perhaps they had separated to attack the mountain from two angles. But wherever they'd gone, the weather would be making it difficult to survive for long. If the boys had somehow managed to hunker down in snow caves to ride out the cold, their food supplies would almost certainly be gone by now.

When he heard about his younger brother's disappearance, Jim Kanzler bolted for Mount Cleveland from Bozeman, bringing with him Peter Lev, the climbing instructor, and Pat Callis, a chemistry professor from Montana State who was also one of the decade's most celebrated climbers. In 1963 Callis and his partner Dan Davis had made the first ascent of the north face of Mount Robson, one of the great challenges in the Canadian Rockies; along with Lev, he had become a mentor of the missing boys.

The afternoon of January 4, as even more winter rescue personnel streamed into Waterton, Jim Kanzler produced two photographs of the north face of Mount Cleveland, taken by his brother two years before. He marked the photos with the routes that the boys had discussed, and the search team began formulating its plan. Supplies were already stretched thin—only three tents, for example, remained for the new arrivals, which could severely limit a rescue effort that required a full day's walk simply to get back and forth from Goat Haunt to the mountain. But with a Pacific front on the way, the field leader, American ranger Willie Colony, decided to move everyone by boat from Waterton to Goat Haunt, along with gasoline lanterns, stoves, tents, shovels, and cooking gear. Ice was already forming on the lake, and soon all supplies would have to be moved by helicopter or snowmobile, or on people's backs. Bob Frauson remained behind to direct the search.

Early on January 5, the search party organized into five groups. A team of Canadian wardens attempted a climbing reconnaissance of the north face. Three other Canadians set off onto the northwest ridge. Three American rangers looked again at the lower portion of the west side, while the last group took binoculars to the southwest ridge of Goat Haunt Mountain to scout for avalanche activity on Cleveland's north face. The last group—Lev, Callis, and Kanzler—was told to climb the bowl on the west face. With the main search party concentrated on the north face, this was the safest place for them, Colony and Frauson thought, out of the way of the professional search team—and out of the way, had the boys fallen or frozen or been buried by an avalanche, of the most likely disposition of their bodies.

The plan, the rangers said, was for the three friends to go fast and light, with no sleeping bags, stoves, or any other overnight gear. They were to work their way around to the upper end of the west face and then descend to its base by nightfall, where they would be met with tents, sleeping bags, and dinner. But Callis rejected this plan. They weren't familiar with the terrain, he argued, and no one could predict what sort of hardships or bad weather might be encountered. Climbing with no overnight gear meant that if they did get stuck on the mountain, they would be in for serious trouble.

Still, Callis, Lev, and Jim Kanzler represented the finest technical climbing skill that northwestern Montana had to offer, and they were intensely motivated. They had taught their friends most of what they knew about mountaineering, and while the other searchers were looking for five lost boys, these three were searching for their closest companions. After some hard debate, they decided to take full backpacks, with sleeping bags, a stove, a shovel, and two days' worth of food. They did not take a tent. If they were to spend the night on the mountain, they would dig a snow cave. On the way up the west face, looking for the little brother with whom he'd climbed so many peaks, Jim Kanzler cried.