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By now, someone should have spotted some speck of color somewhere on a vast backdrop of snow and summit some 223 miles from here. A glove, maybe. A hat. A snowboard.

Something.

Today marks the 12th day without that speck, a clue, a trace of two Albuquerque snowboarders lost, presumably, somewhere among the deep white folds of Wolf Creek Ski Area, a resort that boasts the most snowfall in Colorado.

The official search for Michael George and Kyle Kerschen, both 27, ended this weekend, whatever tracks they left long buried under 80 inches of new powder.

Colorado authorities say they've found no indication that the men, last heard from Jan. 4, are still out there on the mountain.

Which is to say, out there alive.

That was apparently enough for the sheriff of that county to turn down New Mexico's offer to send 40 volunteers to continue the search.

Gov. Bill Richardson, back from his search for the presidency, had agreed late last week to send a state helicopter to the ski area. But after four hours of futile circling Saturday the helicopter landed and won't return until Colorado requests it.

Earlier this week, the families had still been able to convince Wolf Creek personnel to keep searching. They hired a professional tracker. They've hired a psychic. They're seeking donations to hire a private helicopter.

It is not over, they said.

"We cannot give up hope our boys are out there," they said in a statement to the media. "We need the search to continue."

Last Saturday, they called in the highest power, convening a tearful, prayerful, hopeful standing-room-only vigil at the Shrine Parish of St. Bernadette in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights.

Still, nothing.

Whatever happened on that mountain that Friday afternoon remains as unclear as the whiteout conditions that hampered the search in those early days.

George's father has speculated that perhaps their sons, strong and healthy and experienced snowboarders, might have met with foul play.

That, too, is unclear.

On this 12th night as temperatures once again descend to nearly zero on the mountain, it's hard to imagine how the men, how hope can survive, how a miracle now can occur even with God on their side.

But stranger things have happened, and let us hope that's the case this time. Let us hope for one more search, one more helicopter, one more chance. Hope must be kept alive, but it must be tempered with the reasonable risks of sending out continued search parties.

Yes, at some point, maybe not this week, maybe not next month, maybe not for much longer than that, the brutality of reality will begin to seep in to the families' resolve.

The media attention will continue to dwindle. The private searches will end. The phone will not ring, the door will not open. The logical explanation for the illogicality of this nightmare will not come.

Well-wishers will start to say, "They died doing what they loved," a clumsy and mostly ineffective notion uttered out of comfort.

We who are luckier will wonder what it must be like to raise a son to manhood and then one bright winter morning he disappears through no casualty of war, of disease, of obvious danger save for those inherent in a snowboarding excursion.

Do not begrudge the parents for not being ready yet to call off the search, for not being ready to accept that cold moment of letting go, if letting go must be the conclusion of this sad story.

Hope also allows for the body, mind and heart to prepare for such trauma, and that preparation is made all the harder when there are no answers.

Hope will pass in its own time. And when it does, the darkness of despair will set in colder than any night lost on a snowy mountain, until faith, golden and warming and healing, steps in once more to carry them onward.