Micah True: Ultrarunner’s Body Found in New Mexico’s Wilderness
Published at
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Searchers have found the body of ultrarunner Micah True, who went missing last week after going on a 12-mile run in southwest New Mexico’s Gila National Forest.
His cause of death was still unknown but incident commander Tom Bemis told the Boulder Daily Camera that there were “no obvious signs of trauma.”
A representative at the office of the state police said the cause of death would not likely be determined until Monday.
True, 58, was a legend in the distance running community. He was depicted in Christopher McDougall’s best-selling book, “Born to Run,” in which he took up residence in the remote Copper Canyons of Mexico among the Tarahumara, a desert-dwelling tribe of the best ultrarunners in the world who gave him the moniker.
When True disappeared March 27, search efforts were launched on Wednesday and ramped up across the region.
True had spent the night at the Wilderness Lodge in Gila Hot Springs, N.M., and went running Tuesday morning wearing shorts, a T-shirt and hat and carrying one water bottle, according to Jane Bruemmer, the lodge’s co-owner.
“He goes for a run every day, so it’s not unusual,” she told ABCNews.com Saturday. “We just don’t think he had much with him, since he was planning on coming home. We’re perplexed.”
True spent part of the year in Urique, Mexico, where he was the race director of the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon, a 50-mile race across the desert.
Bruemmer said he often stayed at her lodge while en route to and from Mexico. He ran frequently among the cliff dwellings of the Gila National Forest.
Before True went missing, Bruemmer and her husband were heading to Silver City, N.M., a town about 40 miles away from the lodge, but True had planned to stay until Wednesday, when he was to depart for Phoenix to visit his girlfriend. So the couple bid him goodbye, leaving a friend to watch the lodge while they were away, Bruemmer said.
But the friend told the Bruemmers that True never returned from his run on Tuesday, and that “the guests were worried,” she said. So she and her husband, Dean, called the state police Wednesday morning, and they launched a search in the area, where the temperature can drop below freezing at night.
True had left his dog at the lodge, since he would be running north along Highway 15, which dead-ends at the cliff dwellings, Bruemmer said.
People have been known to get lost in the Gila National Forest, because it’s a wilderness area, “so you can get turned around,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have thought it would happen to Micah.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio