A blue and green shirt.

An eagle-eyed search-and-rescue volunteer glimpsed something that jarred in Burnaby Mountain's landscape far below the RCMP helicopter Saturday afternoon, and an exhaustive search for two young men came to a grim end.

But how Brendan Kyle Midgley and Joseph Stryjak ended up at the bottom of a 60-metre ravine remains a puzzle.

"It's very odd to have anyone get lost on Burnaby Mountain," said Dwight Yochim, search manager for Coquitlam Search and Rescue, the team that led what turned into a recovery operation.

"You head in any direction except north and you find your way out. What could have possessed them to head away from their destination and jump a fence, we'll never know."

Midgley, a 20-year-old Burnaby resident, left the Simon Fraser University pub early Friday, shortly after midnight, with Stryjak, 23, of Surrey.

Planning a night of drinking, they had earlier taken the bus to the pub but afterwards decided to walk down instead, perhaps wanting some fresh air.

"One of them knew the mountain quite well and jogged down quite often," Yochim explained.

Friends who were taking the bus were supposed to meet them at a convenience store at the bottom of the hill, and they were staying overnight at a friend's house.

The pair were last seen walking along the road near the Shell station.

"They were seen by their friends to be heading due west towards the 7-Eleven, which was their destination," Yochim noted.

"For reasons no one will ever know, they turned and headed in a different direction.

"Somewhere they doubled back, up towards SFU, and jumped the fence and fell down the cliff."

Yochim noted that the men had otherwise done everything right - they didn't drive when they were planning to drink, they made arrangements to meet friends, they had a place to stay the night.

"They had actually planned ahead. They were very responsible," he said.

"(Then) one momentary lapse of judgment, and the results were tragic."

When the pair didn't show up, friends tried all morning to call them on cellphones.

Then they contacted the families and, finally, the police, who in turn called Coquitlam Search and Rescue at about 9 p.m. Friday after an initial look.

"We went out right away," Yochim said, explaining 32 searchers with the Coquitlam volunteer group took part.

"Our main goal was to hit the mountain hard and fast and hope they were incapacitated but responsive."

Without results, they went back the second day with 40 to 45 volunteers from search-and-rescue groups from throughout the region.

Ultimately, search-and-rescue teams from Kent-Harrison, the Central Fraser Valley, Surrey, Maple Ridge and the North Shore were helping.

Others, including Burnaby Fire and Rescue, RCMP, SFU security and the campus student patrol took part at various times.

"It was a lot of effort put into trying to find these people," Yochim said.

Most of the search focus was on where the men were last seen, based on their expected destination and direction.

An RCMP helicopter went up with a couple search-and-rescue volunteers and, at about 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, one of them spotted the bodies in the ravine.

"It was a difficult find," Yochim said of spotting the men below.

He noted they were found almost straight north from where the buses on the SFU campus pass under a building, "about right above the gun club."

Looking up from the Barnet Highway, Yochim said it's apparent how treacherous the terrain is.

"There's nothing but vertical slopes for hundreds of feet. You're not going to survive that fall."

The area couldn't be reached on foot, so search-and-rescue volunteers went in on another helicopter.

Both volunteers and pilot are specially trained to make rescues from above, dropping a line down.

"It was extremely difficult to get (Midgley and Stryjak) out," Yochim said.

"There was a lot of discussion how to get them out safely without putting further people in jeopardy.

"Wind made things a little treacherous," he explained. "They were completely exposed on that slope."

However, half an hour after they were spotted, the rescue team was on the ground - and realized it would be a recovery operation.

"That fall - they never had a chance," said Yochim. "There was a lot of trauma."

A coroner is conducting an investigation into the causes of their deaths.

Yochim said it's difficult to give advice for people on Burnaby Mountain.

"If you find yourself off a trail and it's dark and you hit a fence line, stop. _ Someone will report you missing and we'll come out and get you safely."