, updated
The mother of missing hiker Austin King has spoken about the final call from her ‘ecstatic’ son as he sat at the freezing summit of a Yellowstone mountain.
No-one has seen the 22-year-old since the he phoned mom Pandora King back home in Minnesota on September 17 after a solo climb of the 11,400-foot Eagle Peak in one of America’s remotest spots.
He was due to return home to Winona within days after spending the summer working in the park, but friends said he had been talking about the mountain for ‘weeks’.
His mother has joined his father Brian Henke in a hotel at the foot of the mountain as an army of rescuers, scour the slopes for signs of life amid six-foot snowdrifts.
‘Every day they come back with you know, ‘We’re still looking. We’re not giving up. We’re still searching’,’ the 52-year-old said.