Five years after the disappearance of Julián Herrera and his nine-year-old daughter Clara, the mountains seemed to have claimed them forever. The case dominated headlines for weeks in 2020, when the two vanished into thin air during a brief, seemingly innocuous hike in the French Pyrenees. As time passed, with no leads or traces remaining, the official search was called off. The family, heartbroken and exhausted, clung to the idea that perhaps they had decided to start a new life far away. Others, more realistic, considered the possibility of a tragic fall in some inaccessible place.
For years, nothing happened. Until, at the end of August, a Catalan couple decided to explore a rarely visited area near the Rolando Pass. Among the deep crevices in the rock, they thought they glimpsed something that broke the gray uniformity of the place. They crouched down, pointed their cell phone flashlight, and saw a rectangular shape covered in dust and damp.
“It’s… a backpack,” he murmured, not daring to touch it.
The woman approached. As she wiped away what appeared to be a label with her fingers, they both looked at each other in surprise.