Two Americans were reported missing early last year after setting out to climb 17,750-foot Sangay Volcano, most active and dangerous volcano in the Andes, which had only once been successfully scaled.

At the U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Consul Harry M. Lofton (center, in photo above) received an order from the Ambassador: “Go find 'em.”

Air search of the Sangay area proved fruitless. Organizing a ground search party including two Ecuadorean mountain climbers, Lofton headed into the Sangay wilderness, where army search patrols were already at work. From the last remote hacienda, the base of the volcano was 2 days away—one hard day on horseback, 18 grueling hours on foot the next.

At the end of the first day the party came on one of the missing Americans, barely conscious, suffering from frostbite and exposure. He had been found wandering lost and aimless just hours earlier by one of the army patrols. He and his colleague had reached the top of the volcano and spent a night there, increasingly dazed and weakened by sulfur gas, lack of oxygen, and exposure. Then they had started mistakenly down the “impossible” wrong side of the volcano, in mist and falling snow, amid avalanches of falling rock and lava, and sheer cliffs and drop-offs of as much as 500 feet.

One of the two, realizing the mistake, had turned back in time, and eventually made his way over the top and back down the other side, where he had been wandering without food for 6 days when discovered. The other man had refused to turn back.

The only chance of finding the second man appeared to lie in trying to track him from the top. Lofton and the two Ecuadorean climbers, with Indian packers, started grimly upward. Still two-thirds of the way from the top, the Indians stopped and would go no farther. Ice walls, constantly falling boulders and lava, and swirling gas and hot ash made progress increasingly difficult and dangerous, but the three men finally reached the top. There they found traces of the two Americans, and followed the missing man's tracks down the wrong side until the tracks disappeared. Mist and snow and gas limited visibility to three feet; continuing the search was impossible.

Retracing its own steps, Lofton's party was lost for a time itself but ultimately made its way back to safety. Army patrols, Indian guides, and Lofton's group concurred: after 10 days in these conditions, it was virtually inconceivable that the missing American still lived. Further search on Sangay would be likely to lead to further loss of life without useful result.

Bringing the survivor out with them, Lofton and his search party made their arduous way back to civilization.