Search for tramper Darren Myers reveals days of love, hope and loss

OPINION: Stuff reporter Piers Fuller tells of the love, encouragement and then loss as searchers scoured the hostile Tararua Range for Darren Myers.

I was talking to missing tramper Darren Myers' brother-in-law the moment police came over to tell him his body had been found.

Duncan Styles had been telling me how he and other family members, who had been along for the ordeal every step of the way, were just about spent emotionally.

They were worn down by days of waiting as hope ebbed away.

Over the course of the 11-day search Myers' family had been a constant encouragement at search HQ on the grassy edge of Hood Aerodrome in Masterton looking out towards the Tararua Range.

READ MORE:
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The teams of planners, police, rescuers and air crews were unwavering in their motivation to exhaust every opportunity to bring Myers back alive.

The searches were now a well-oiled machine of experience and resources coming to  bear on a specific task.

But really it was about love. 

Not once did people count the cost of time, money or effort because they knew if it was their loved one out was there they would want them to have every opportunity of coming home.

As almost two weeks of scouring a very hostile landscape was drawing to a close, the inescapable truth that it was going to take a miracle to find Myers alive was hovering over everyone.

The prospect of not finding him at all was even worse.

And it had ground his family members down. People who had been so strong and so gracious were starting to falter under the weight.

But then there was the result. Not the result that anyone wanted, but an outcome that would at least bring closure

Today a wife knows she has a lost a husband, a father has lost a son and a community has lost a friend.

Hopefully, they also know that there were a lot of people out there thinking of them and whom in some small way also share their loss.

Stuff