Boyfriend Finds Body of Hiker Missing Since November

The body of a blogger who wrote about her extensive travels through Europe and vanished on one of her adventures has been found. Esther Dingley, 37—who ran the Esther & Dan blog with her partner of 18 years, Dan Colegate, 38—had set out from Benasque, Spain, for a solo hike in the Pyrenees mountains on the weekend of Nov. 21. Colegate, who'd stayed at a farm in France, heard from Dingley when she reached the peak of Pic de Sauvegarde along the France-Spain border the afternoon of Nov. 22. But she failed to return on Nov. 25 as planned. A fragment of her bone was found in July, but the whereabouts of her body and belongings remained unknown until Monday afternoon, when Colegate discovered them.

They were said to be near the hard-to-access location of the bone fragment, and the BBC quotes overseas crisis support company LBT Global as saying "the most likely hypothesis" is that her death was the result of an accident. The French prosecutor at the head of the investigation echoes that to the Guardian, saying police believe "strongly, even almost exclusively" it was an accident. The location where her body was found—said to be around the Pic de la Gléré, per the Telegraph—is "not the kind of place you just come across," he continued. "It is high in the mountains and difficult to access." The BBC adds that Colegate has walked hundreds of miles along the mountains that straddle the French and Spanish border in search of Dingley. (The BBC profiled Dingley and Colegate the day she went missing.)