20-year-old Ryan Shtuka clocked out of his lift-operator shift at the Sun Peaks Resort at 7 pm on February 16, 2018, and walked back to the cabin he shared with five roommates. He had arrived in Sun Peaks ten weeks earlier to work the ski season.
That night, Ryan headed out with co-workers and friends to a ‘silent disco’ event where everyone wears headphones and switches between channels playing different DJs. The event was hosted at Morrissey’s Bar and Grill, and Ryan was reportedly in high spirits, drinking socially and enjoying the whole experience.
As the bar event started to wind down past midnight, Ryan and a group of friends walked over to an after-hours house party at a residence on Burfield Drive, parallel to the major ski resorts. It was a few minutes from their cabin.
Sometime around 1.30 am, people started leaving. One of his roommates, Maxwell, was tired and decided to leave for home. At that time, a fierce mountain storm was rolling into the valley, and the temperature rapidly dropped to minus 15 degrees.
By 2 am Ryan’s other roommates, Chris and Kristin, were getting ready to leave. As they went for the door, they saw Ryan standing up and pulling on his shoes and navy blue coat.
It was the motions of someone preparing to leave, so they assumed he was right behind them. That was the last time anyone saw Ryan Shtuka.
The walk back to the cabin was one that Ryan had made dozens of times that season. It was roughly 300 meters and would take them ten or fifteen minutes on foot.
However, temperatures had fallen drastically due to the storm, and snow was falling heavily, with more in the forecast through the morning. Ryan was also dressed for a house party rather than a snowstorm.
He had on the navy coat, dark jeans, grey Vans sneakers, a grey-and-white T-shirt, and a burgundy ball cap.
The Moment They Realized Ryan Was Missing
When his roommates woke up the next morning, Ryan’s bed was empty. At first, no one panicked because he had an 11 am shift, so they just assumed he had already left for work.
That afternoon, though, his supervisor texted one of the roommates asking where Ryan was. The roommate covered for him, saying Ryan would arrive at work shortly.
Because he had a flawless track record and never missed a shift, his friends genuinely believed that Ryan was just running late or sleeping off the party. When the shift ended later that afternoon and he still hadn’t shown up, the supervisor texted a second time to let his roommate know Ryan hadn’t shown up yet.
The roommates also called Ryan’s phone and sent texts but got no response. When they looked around the cabin, they noticed his work boots were still by the door, and the resort ski pass was still there.
These items were essentials for a typical Saturday shift. He clearly hadn’t gone to work, and it was becoming evident Ryan did not make it back from the party.
His roommates began tracking down people who had been at the party. They checked all available security footage in the village, hoping to find Ryan on camera, but there was nothing.
No footage, sightings, or a response from anyone who had seen him after he stood up to leave. That evening, they called the local hospital and were told to contact the police as well. Ryan was reported missing, and Kamloops RCMP officers arrived at the Burfield Drive area to open an investigation.
One of the roommates also called Ryan’s mother, Heather Shtuka, who was with Ryan’s father, Scott. Both parents said they knew instantly that something was wrong.
Heather and Scott also called the police to confirm that their son had been reported missing. As soon as they hung up, they got in the car and began driving to the Sun Peaks resort.
According to Ice Cold Case, Heather checked her phone during the drive and realized the text message she had sent to Ryan that morning had not been delivered. It read, “Good morning, Lovebug.”
She added that the drive to Sun Peaks was “the longest and the shortest drive I think I’ve ever had. I think we just couldn’t believe that in a blink of an eye, everything that we had, everything that we loved, everything that we cared about, was all changed.”
Who Was Ryan Shtuka
Ryan was born on March 17, 1997, in Edmonton, Alberta, as the firstborn and only son of Scott and Heather Shtuka. He loved dinosaurs as a kid, before gravitating to superheroes.
Ryan was introverted, but fiercely loyal to a consistent group of local childhood friends. He was also a quintessential protective big brother to his two younger sisters, Jordyn and Julianna. Ryan was known for his playful sense of humor, often teasing his loved ones, but never cruelly.
As he grew older, he channeled his energy into athletics, developing a talent for rugby and snowboarding. Ryan graduated from high school in 2015 and spent a year at university.
In 2017, he wanted to take a brief hiatus from formal studies to pursue his passion for life in the mountains. Ryan and his best friend, James, drove to British Columbia to spend a winter season snowboarding with their parents’ full support.
Ryan soon landed the lift department job, moved into a cabin with five roommates, and, by January, was texting his father to say he had snowboarded 36 days in a row and landed his first backflip.
According to Ice Cold Case, a worker described him as “a really good guy, really genuine and confident.” She said everyone liked him and emphasized that Ryan didn’t have enemies.
The Search Ensues
By the time Heather and Scott reached the resort, a response was already underway. The Kamloops RCMP brought in the local canine unit, and search coordinators set up three separate command centers.
She told Sun Peaks News, “We expected to find him within the first couple of hours. It was about 60 minutes outside of Kamloops; that’s when our stomachs were turning, and our hearts were racing. I think because we expected that as soon as we arrived they’d tell us that they’d found Ryan.”
Temperatures at the time remained very low, and the search manager on scene believed the odds of finding Ryan alive under those conditions were slim. Initial searches were set on the area between the party he left the night he vanished and his cabin.
Police utilized the RCMP helicopter, dog teams, and a dive team to aid the search effort over the next few months. They found nothing.
Snowmobiles also combed the village and surrounding trails. Drones fitted with infrared cameras scanned from above, occasionally picking up trails on the ground that searchers were unable to efficiently follow.
Volunteers probed the snowbanks with poles, and Scott dug through the snow by hand near the cabin, before eventually bringing in an excavator to move larger drifts. The RCMP also asked Sun Peaks residents to check their sheds, vehicles and garages.
Global News reported they considered Ryan may have “made his way into a shed, garage or unlocked vehicle.” Within days, the Kamloops Search and Rescue teams had exhausted the tasks available to a search of this kind, standing down their active ground search.
According to CBC News, Cpl. Jodi Shelkie said, “We have had the RCMP helicopter out today searching the area, and we’ll still be making patrols with the police dog service, so our investigation is still very much ongoing.”
From then on, the search primarily became a family operation. Heather and Scott relocated to Sun Peaks and ran their own daily search efforts with any available volunteers while their daughters went back and forth between Beaumont and Sun Peaks.
Heather was adamant, as she told CBC Edmonton, “We aren’t going to go home to wait until the snow melts.” She added that while the search-and-rescue workers’ work was admirable, more support was needed for families of missing persons.
She added, “If you’re asking me if I’ve searched an area, sure, I’ve searched it. I think I’ve searched it, but what am I hitting? What am I using as my equipment? Am I hitting ice? Do I know it’s ice? Am I putting my probes in far enough? We have so many people that are coming up that are so determined to find Ryan, but we just don’t know how to tell them to search, and we didn’t know for the first couple weeks.”
By late February 2018, the RCMP stated there was no evidence Ryan had left Sun Peaks. No bank activity, and a single cell tower ping at around 3 am that night, placing his phone somewhere in the village.
Shouts in the Dark
In May 2018, a man named Jim Reid, who was staying with friends near the house Shtuka lived in, came forward saying he heard an unusual altercation outside that night. CBC Canada reported, “I heard a guy’s voice, and it was mad,” Reid said. He added the person was yelling, “get in the car, get in the f–king car.”
He gave a statement to police and spoke with investigators on more than one occasion.
Heather later said the family came to understand that Jim had been some distance from the party, and she wasn’t convinced that what he had heard had anything to do with Ryan. However, this new information led to the re-prioritization of search teams in the vicinity surrounding Ryan’s boarding house.
They looked for any dropped items, including jewelry or signs of a struggle, which may have been uncovered as the snow melted. Investigators also hoped to find validation of this new angle, such as tire tracks or scuff marks, but the spring thaw yielded nothing.
There were no digital or audio recordings as well in the remote resort community that corroborated Jim’s claims. Some did believe Ryan’s life ended violently, though, like retired RCMP investigator Bryan Smith.
As a 25-year Mountie veteran who had investigated several missing-person cases, he initially concluded that Ryan had wandered into the deep snow and got lost in the rugged terrain. However, an interview with one of Ryan’s friends who remains unnamed changed his mind.
Strangeoutdoors.com reported, “The friend seemed to be very nervous and very afraid for himself, which was unusual to me. My gut told me that this was most likely a homicide, not just a missing person.”
After extensive interviews with everyone connected to Ryan, RCMP maintained there were no indications of criminal activity.
Theories That Didn’t Hold
As the tips kept coming in, the sketch of Ryan’s movements kept shifting. One individual who had been at the party came forward with a text message suggesting that Ryan may have left close to 1.40 am rather than half past 2 am.
Another began seeing a person matching Ryan’s description walking on Fairways Drive toward Eagle Court at 1.55 am that same night. This route led to the village center rather than the cabin.
This tip was initially dismissed because it did not fit the accepted timeline, but investigators gradually warmed to it.
Heather speculated that Ryan might have been walking to Mountain High Pizza, which remained open until 2 am. The shift expanded the original search zone to cover the area between Burfield Drive and Fairways Drive.
It also meant the months of searching had basically focused on the wrong stretch of forest. Once the snow melted in 2018, the teams went back through the new area, but they still found nothing. No belongings or scent for the dogs to follow.
With no physical evidence to go on, wild theories began to propagate over the years about how Ryan went missing. Heather aggressively pushed back on the one that Ryan was dealing drugs or owed a debt that got him killed.
She pointed out that his bank records showed normal activity and no signs of debt.
The other theory was Ryan overdosed at the party and the partygoers panicked, hiding his body. However, the ski lodge had a policy that anyone could call for help in the event someone overdosed without fear of losing their job.
The Shtukasaurus and Where the Case is Today
In early 2022, after four years of dead-end leads, volunteers and advocates launched a creative awareness campaign by mass-producing small, 3D-printed plastic green dinosaurs. Each of them carried a laminated card with Ryan’s picture and a message about spreading kindness.
The back of the tag had a poem written from Ryan’s perspective. Ice Cold Case depicted it saying, “You found a Shtukasaurus. My name is Ryan Shtuka – I am a Shtukasaurus. I’m a curious type and so love adventures, of course.”
Thousands of the figurines were distributed worldwide, and interested parties can buy them from the Missing: Ryan Shtuka Facebook group.
Heather also founded the Free Bird Project, a nonprofit that helps other families of missing people navigate their searches. She also published a memoir in 2022 titled Missing from Me about Ryan’s life and the years after he went missing.
She told Sun Peaks News on the sixth anniversary of his disappearance, “We were spending the day doing things that Ryan loved.” Volunteer searchers have kept going back to Sun Peaks long after the official effort dissipated.
Kamloops Search and Rescue team member Mike Ritcey who spent years combing the terrain with his search dog, Ranger. He told CBS News, “I don’t know what my chances are of finding anything when I come out, but my chances of finding something when I’m not out here is zero.”
Ryan’s parents also return to the area several times a year and keep in contact with the Kamloops RCMP, who continue to search as time allows.
Heather noted that nothing looks as it did when Ryan first vanished, telling CJFC, “We say every day is Groundhog Day. We’ll always remember our life as before and after. Before, when our lives seemed whole and imperfectly perfect, and then everything after, and it’s torment.”
In October 2025, the non-profit organization Please Bring Me Home partnered with the family to organize a renewed ground search at Sun Peaks. They also utilized search-and-rescue cadaver dogs to scour the main zones.
While it did not yield any additional clues, Ryan’s mother said it gave the family peace of mind by crossing off ambiguous search areas. The Shtuka family currently maintains a $25,000 cash reward for any verified information mapping out where Ryan’s remains are located.
Ryan’s case shows how quickly a person can disappear in remote areas, especially in poor weather. His case resembles the story of Amy Wroe Bechtel, who also went missing while doing errands in a heavily wooded area on a Thursday.
Anyone with information about Ryan Shtuka’s disappearance is asked to contact Kamloops RCMP at 250-314-1800 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
For more stories on unsolved disappearances, explore our articles on Jodi Huisentruit and Craig Frear.
