jeff putnam

In December 2017, a 20 year old from Beaumont, Alberta named Ryan Shtuka moved to Sun Peaks, British Columbia with his best friend. The plan was simple. Work the ski season. Snowboard every chance he got. Ryan got a job running a chairlift at the resort. He lived in a house with a group of roommates. Sun Peaks is a tiny mountain town. About 600 people. On the night of February 16, 2018, Ryan got off his shift and went out with his roommates to a silent disco at a local bar. One of the pictures from that night is the last known photo of Ryan. Afterward, the group went to a house party on Burfield Drive. Around 2:10 a.m., his friends started the walk home. They saw Ryan standing up, putting on his coat and his shoes. They figured he was right behind them. It was only a short walk. A snowstorm was rolling in. That night, the temperature dropped to around minus 26 Celsius. About 15 below Fahrenheit. More than half a foot of snow was coming down. Ryan never made it home. He didn't show up for work that day. His phone went silent. His social media went silent. They've stayed that way ever since. His roommate texted his parents, and they reported him missing. The whole town came out. Volunteers. Search and rescue. Search dogs. Workers brought in excavators to dig through the giant snowbanks along the roads, in case he'd fallen into one. Nothing. Here's what made it so strange. The search and rescue manager said that even with all that fresh snow, if Ryan had wandered off the road into deep snow, his tracks would have still been obvious. There were no tracks. Police said there was no evidence he ever left Sun Peaks. They've never ruled out foul play, but they've never found anything suspicious either. His family believes Ryan most likely got lost in the storm and that he's still somewhere on that mountain. His mother has said Ryan wasn't the type to get into fights or start anything with anyone. But in eight years, despite all the searching, no one has found a single trace of him. Not his body. Not his coat. Not his shoes. Last fall, volunteers brought search dogs back to Sun Peaks again. They found nothing. His mom has said that what they know today is exactly what they knew on February 17, 2018. He was a few minutes from home, in a town of 600 people, and he left no footprints. Where did Ryan go?