Walter Scheib, who brought American cuisine prepared in a lighter style to the White House as its executive chef during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, was found dead on Sunday near a hiking trail outside Taos, N.M. He was 61.

The New Mexico Department of Public Safety, in a news release on its website Monday, said the State Police discovered Mr. Scheib’s body after a search that began last Tuesday when a family member reported him missing. No details on the cause of death were given.

Mr. Scheib, who had recently moved to the area, started hiking alone on June 13 in the mountains above Taos Ski Valley. The police organized a search and found his car in a parking area at the Yerba Canyon Trailhead, north of Taos, three days later, according to the news release. The search area narrowed after cellphone records put Mr. Scheib’s most recent location at a nearby mountain. On Sunday evening, searchers found his body in a river near the trail, about 1.7 miles from the trailhead.

Mr. Scheib was a relative unknown — the executive chef at the Greenbrier resort and spa in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. — when Hillary Clinton picked him from a pool of applicants to replace Pierre Chambrin as White House chef in April 1994. Mr. Chambrin, a Frenchman, told the press that he had left his post under pressure from the Clintons, who denied the accusation.