Six-year-old Darius MacDougall should be home in Lethbridge right now, tearing open early Christmas presents, singing off-key to his favorite Paw Patrol songs, and begging his mom for one more cookie. Instead, on this cold December 2, 2025, his small blue-grey hoodie and sweatpants are still somewhere out there – lost in the endless forests, jagged ridges, and ice-cold creeks of the Crowsnest Pass, more than two months after he simply walked away from a family camping trip and never came back.

It was Saturday, September 21, 2025 – the kind of crisp, golden autumn morning that makes Albertans flock to the mountains. Island Lake Campground, tucked high in the Livingstone Range just minutes from the British Columbia border, was alive with the smell of campfires and the sound of kids laughing. Darius, a bright-eyed boy with a bowl-cut of brown hair and a smile that could melt anyone, had arrived the night before with his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a gaggle of cousins. For Darius, who is autistic and mostly non-verbal in stressful situations, the trip was pure magic: rocks to stack, sticks to wave like swords, and the gentle splash of the lake.

At approximately 11:15 a.m., seven children – ages 4 to 12 – asked permission to “go on an adventure.” The adults, busy setting up lawn chairs and unpacking coolers, agreed it was safe. The lake was shallow, the trail well-trodden, and the oldest cousin promised to keep everyone in sight. The group crossed a narrow, knee-deep channel of water to a small rocky island no more than 150 feet from the main campsite. They played for maybe ten minutes – stacking pebbles, pretending sticks were fishing rods, splashing each other.

Then the cousins started back. Six children stepped onto the grassy bank where the grown-ups waited. Darius did not.

At first no one panicked. “He’s probably hiding behind a tree – he loves hide-and-seek,” his mother told the others. They called his name. They clapped. They rang the little bell he loved. Nothing. Within minutes every adult in the campground was fanning out, shouting “Darius!” into the pines. By 11:30 a.m. someone dialed 911.

What followed was one of the largest and most emotionally charged search operations in modern Alberta history – and, 71 days later, it still has no ending.

The First 48 Hours: Hope on Overdrive

Crowsnest Pass RCMP were on scene within 35 minutes. They sealed the only road in and out of Island Lake, turning the serene campground into a command post. By nightfall, more than 80 searchers were on the ground: RCMP officers in camouflage, Search and Rescue volunteers from Calgary, Lethbridge, and Fernie, conservation officers, and the first of many K9 teams.

Darius is 4 feet tall, 55 pounds, and was wearing no jacket – just that thin hoodie and soft sweatpants. Temperatures were dropping into the low 40s Fahrenheit after sunset, with frost already forming on tent flys. Survival experts gave him 24–48 hours at best without shelter.

Helicopters with FLIR (forward-looking infrared) cameras buzzed overhead until well after midnight. Drones stitched together thermal maps of the entire valley. Searchers formed human chains, walking shoulder-to-shoulder through waist-high blueberry bushes and devil’s club that tore at their skin. They played Darius’s favorite song – the Paw Patrol theme – over loudspeakers mounted on ATVs. They laid out articles of his mother’s clothing in grid patterns, hoping the familiar scent would draw him out.

Nothing. Not a footprint. Not a broken twig. Not a single candy wrapper from the Skittles he’d been eating that morning.

Day 3–7: The Search Becomes a Small Army

By Monday, September 23, the operation had swollen to more than 200 people. The Canadian Armed Forces sent a CH-146 Griffon helicopter from CFB Cold Lake. British Columbia’s Central Okanagan Search and Rescue crossed the provincial border to help. The Civil Air Search and Rescue Association flew fixed-wing aircraft in endless grids.

Searchers discovered that Darius had a habit common to many autistic children: he was drawn to water and loved the sound of it rushing over rocks. Teams focused on every creek, seep, and beaver pond within a five-kilometer radius. They dragged grappling hooks through chest-deep pools. Divers from Calgary Police went into the frigid lake itself.

On Day 5, a tracking dog from Golden, B.C. hit strongly on a scent trail that led 800 meters up a steep ridge – then abruptly stopped at a cliff edge. Searchers rappelled down, hearts pounding, only to find nothing but loose scree.

The family set up a tent at the command post and refused to leave. Darius’s mother, still wearing the same purple hoodie she had on the day he vanished, walked grids herself until her feet blistered. His grandmother baked banana bread for the searchers because “Darius loves the smell.” Every night the family lit a lantern at Site 14 and left it burning, believing he would see the light and come home.

Day 8: The Statistic No Parent Wants to Hear

On September 28 – one week after he disappeared – the incident commander sat the family down in a trailer that smelled of coffee and wet nylon. A survival-probability expert from Colorado, flown in specifically for the case, laid out the cold data: based on Darius’s size, clothing, the nighttime temperatures (which had dipped to 28°F), lack of food or shelter, and the extreme terrain, the boy’s chance of being alive was now calculated at less than 5 percent.

The mother’s scream echoed across the entire campground.

Yet the search did not stop. It changed. Instead of wide hasty searches, teams began meticulous, inch-by-inch rechecks of the highest-probability areas. They cut new trails through areas so thick that searchers had to crawl on hands and knees.

Day 11: The Heartbreaking Suspension

On October 1, after 11 straight days and more than 20,000 combined searcher-hours, the official ground search was suspended. RCMP stressed this was not closure – only a tactical shift. Investigators have never found any evidence of abduction, stranger involvement, or animal activity. The working theory remains that Darius, disoriented and seeking a quiet place, walked farther than anyone thought possible for a six-year-old and succumbed to exposure.

The family was handed a single plastic bag containing the few items found that might belong to Darius: a child-sized sock, a blue hair elastic, a single Skittle wrapper. None have been conclusively linked to him.

71 Days Later: The Search That Refuses to Die

Today, December 2, 2025, Island Lake is buried under two feet of snow. Grizzly bears are in their dens, the creeks are frozen solid, and the temperature at night plunges to minus 22°F. Yet the case file remains open and active.

Private searchers still return on weekends, snowshoeing the same grids with probing poles. A GoFundMe titled “Bring Darius Home” has raised more than $187,000, funding private drones, side-scan sonar for the lake (once it thaws), and a reward for information. Billboards with Darius’s smiling face line Highway 3 from Lethbridge to the B.C. border. Truckers, hunters, and snowmobilers carry laminated posters in their cabs.

RCMP Cpl. Gina Slaney holds weekly press briefings, each one shorter than the last, but she still ends every statement the same way: “We are asking the public to keep sharing Darius’s photo. Someone, somewhere, saw something that day.”

The family has transformed their Lethbridge living room into a shrine. Darius’s Paw Patrol blanket is draped over the couch. His favorite stuffed dinosaur, “Rexy,” sits in his empty car seat. His Christmas stocking already hangs by the fireplace – his mother stuffs it with notes and small toys “so he’ll have presents when he comes home.”

The Science of a Child Lost

Experts who have studied hundreds of missing-child cases in wilderness settings say autistic children often travel farther and in straighter lines than neurotypical kids, seeking “sensory relief” from overwhelming stimuli. Some have been found miles away, curled up in tiny spaces – drainage culverts, hollow logs, even under porches of abandoned cabins – alive after days or weeks.

There are miracles on record: a three-year-old in Arkansas survived 72 hours in bear country by eating berries; a non-verbal autistic boy in Florida was found six miles from his home after four days, dehydrated but waving at rescuers. Darius’s family clings to those stories like lifelines.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you were anywhere near Island Lake, Chinook Lake, or the Livingstone area between September 19–23, 2025 – even if you just stopped for a photo, filled up gas in Coleman, or hiked the Window Mountain Lake trail – look at your phone. Check your dash-cam footage. Scroll back through your camera roll. One blurry image, one half-remembered glimpse of a small child in a blue-grey hoodie, could be the clue that ends this family’s torment.

Tips can be called in to Crowsnest Pass RCMP at 403-562-2867 or anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. You do not need to give your name.

Darius MacDougall is still out there – either waiting to be found, or waiting for the world to finally bring him home.

Until that day comes, a little boy’s lantern still burns every night at Site 14, Island Lake Campground. His family refuses to blow it out.