When Randy Bilyeu disappeared, he was hunting for the Fenn Treasure, a chest allegedly filled with gold, precious stones, and jewelry, supposedly hidden in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2010, millionaire art dealer (and Former Vietnam fighter pilot) 79-year-old Forrest Fenn filled a bronze chest with rare metals, jewels, and artifacts, and then hid it in the mountains. Later that year, he published his autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase, which included a 24-line poem that he says contains the clues necessary to track down the treasure chest. Since then, he's become something of a global celebrity; in 2013, he appeared on NBC's Today Show to issue some new clues about the place where the chest had been hidden. Bilyeu happened to catch the episode on TV and became obsessed with finding the Fenn treasure--against all odds and his friends and family's better judgement.

Fixated on computer screens and video monitors, an army of volunteers scattered across the country has been painstakingly reviewing hundreds of images and hours of footage recorded over the last four months, desperately hoping to find a single clue to the whereabouts of missing treasure hunter Randy Bilyeu. The Colorado man disappeared in early January in a remote part of northern New Mexico while searching for a 2 million cache of riches supposedly hidden several years ago by an eccentric antiquities dealer. From the shadow of a blue heron flying low over the Rio Grande to a scrap of cardboard, nothing has gotten passed the volunteers who are looking for Bilyeu. The group, linked through email and social media, is analyzing every stretch of the rugged canyons and plateaus along the river via drones and telephoto lenses. Some are searching by foot and boat.