Officials in Wyoming have located the body of missing hiker Grant Gardner nearly a month after he went missing in the Bighorn Mountains.

Search and rescue officials found the Minnesota man dead in the Cloud Peak Wilderness after a professional climbing team from North Carolina noticed a backpack underneath a ledge late Aug. 26, according to the Big Horn County Wyoming Sheriff's Office.

The group notified the sheriff's office about the backpack, located a few hundred feet above them, and waited for search and rescue teams to arrive at daylight. Personnel later found Gardner's body near the backpack and completed a dangerous recovery operation ahead of an incoming storm, the sheriff's office confirmed on Aug. 28.

"The following update is bittersweet," the sheriff's office wrote. "While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, we are hopeful this will provide much needed peace and closure to the family."

Sheriff Ken Blackburn said that Gardner's body was brought to his family.

What happened to Grant Gardner?

The office said Gardner went missing during a three-day hike through the Misty Moon Lake area with the goal of reaching the Cloud Peak summit, the highest peak in the Bighorn National Forest.

He was last heard from on July 29 and phone records revealed that he reached the 13,000 feet summit at around 7 p.m., the sheriff's office said. Search officials were concerned by the late hour as he had to grapple with a "lack of visible trails through cliffs, timber line, boulder fields and other hazards that had to be navigated after dark before reaching clear trails and safe terrain."

The Big Horn County Coroner’s Office is working to determine the time, cause and manner of Gardner's death, according to the sheriff.

Blackburn said the sherrif's office believes that Gardner "succumbed to a tragic accident as we all have surmised."

His body was located in one of two primary search areas but search efforts were complicated by "air and other means," Blackburn said. He also applauded search and rescue teams for "not giving up" as well as the North Carolina team that located Gardner.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Missing Minnesota hiker's body found in Wyoming's Cloud Peak Wilderness

Reporting by Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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