Treasure hunt trophy worth $26,000 found in Massachusetts, but who is the winner?

BOSTON - A treasure hunt that spanned much of the northeast before being narrowed to the woods of Massachusetts has turned up gold. The creators of Project Skydrop said that somebody picked up the trophy worth $26,000 on Tuesday evening.

Where exactly was the trophy found and who was the lucky winner? That information hasn't been revealed yet. A map on the Project Skydrop website indicates it was somewhere in a 21-mile radius just north of Amherst along the Route 91 corridor. 

Project Skydrop trophy came with big prize

The golden trophy contains a code to access a much bigger prize: A bounty of more than $87,000 made up of entry fees from people who paid $20 for access to special clues for the hunt.

The Project Skydrop website says that in order to claim the prize, the winner must record a first-person video of themselves retrieving the trophy from the woods and then upload it publicly to YouTube. So far, that doesn't appear to have happened.

New Hampshire video game developers Jason Rohrer and Tom Bailey, who created Project Skydrop, haven't heard directly from the trophy finder yet. But they did talk to a couple who encountered the winner on his way out of the woods, and understand he is a scientist who studied tree habitats as well as sky and weather patterns in images on the treasure hunt website to track down the trophy.

What's next for Project Skydrop?

The hunt came to an end earlier than the creators expected, and they've stopped people from signing up for now. But there is talk of possibly keeping the adventure going with second and third place prizes.

More details are coming soon, according to the Project Skydrop website.