Hunter Lewis, a student at the University of Long Beach in California, disappeared on December 30 when he went out paddling his canoe on a Humboldt County beach.
The 21-year-old was preparing an elaborate scavenger hunt for his family and friends.
He had been making preparations for two years, and the canoe trip to a nearby island was the last step.
His family believes from the clues he left behind that he was heading to Flatiron Rock, a small island a few hundred yards from Trinidad Beach, where he was going to place the final treasure.
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Hunter Lewis, a student at the University of Long Beach, California, who disappeared while paddling a canoe on a Humboldt County beach.Michi Anne, via Facebook
Hunter enjoyed the outdoors, was an experienced diver and a licensed pilot aviator, the
Los Angeles Times reports.
However, he did not know that there was a dangerous reef between the beach and the small island to which they believe he was headed.
He has not been seen since that day and
his family believes there is little hope of finding him alive.
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"Right now, this is a recovery operation [on the body], not a rescue operation," Corey Lewis said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.
"I just hope I can find my son to return to his mother and bury him."
The authorities and a group of people who have offered to help look for him have found remains of the canoe in which he was traveling and some belongings that the tide threw on the beach.
Among these objects is a wooden box to store cigars that his father gave him during a treasure hunt that he and his brother organized several years ago.
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"I gave it to Hunter and he kept his little treasures and belongings in it and he had it with him and he was hiding a treasure inside it. We found it on the beach," Corey Lewis told the Los Angeles Times.
His father described Hunter Lewis as a boy full of love and life who "always had the biggest smile in the world on his face," according to the quoted outlet.
He always had the biggest smile in the world on his face. "
Corey Lewis father of Hunter Lewis
The young man was studying aerospace engineering at the state university and dreamed of becoming an astronaut.
The last clue he left was a key he made with a 3D printer and the phrase: "They will find the treasure where his heart is."
When holding the key in front of the beach, the teeth of this had the same shapes of the rocks that protruded from the sea, the last shape was a heart that encircled the island of Flatiron Rock.
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"We know that he was going there. We also know that he was unaware of the existence of the reef
," the young man's father told the aforementioned media.
"The really ironic, tragic and epic part of this is that it all started with an Instagram page and a letter saying there was a lost treasure from the Lewis family that we didn't know about on the North Shore," said his father.
"He is that lost treasure," he sentenced.
Hunter Lewis' family and friends have shared stories, photos and videos on a Facebook group to remember him.
"I saw Hunter being born and since then he has been left with a piece of my heart, a piece that hurts now and that may remain empty forever," wrote user Julie Vetrie.