The body of a mountain biker has been found two days after he went missing near Kinglake, north-east of Melbourne.

Paul Pagliaro, 47, failed to return home after setting out for a five-hour ride from Smiths Gully on Saturday.

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Police said his body was found after they were able to narrow the search by tracking his mobile phone signal in the Glenburn area.

Family and friends helped look for Mr Pagliaro on Sunday and about 20 people, including staff from a nearby government office, joined the search party earlier at Glenburn CFA.

Senior Sergeant Wayne Spence, from Victoria Police, said Mr Pagliaro’s body was found about 7:45am (AEST).

He said Mr Pagliaro may have had a health issue which caused him to crash.

“The area where he was found, it’s an emergency access track only and it’s an uphill steep grade,” he said.

“From what has been described over the phone is that the circumstances don’t appear to be trauma related.

“So it appears he’s possibly had a health issue but that will be investigated through the coroner’s court.”

A witness saw Mr Pagliaro before his mobile phone signal stopped moving, enabling police to narrow their search area, Senior Sergeant Spence said.

“We had an eyewitness overnight indicate to us they saw him on the mountain about half an hour before his phone stopped moving put us into this area that we started the search this morning,” he said.

He said the witness’s account, coupled with GPS data from Mr Pagliaro’s phone, led to the body being discovered.

“The efforts from the Optus company in providing us with their technical research into the activities of the phone narrowed the search field considerably from what we started with Sunday morning where we had a radius of seven kilometres,” he said.

“Unfortunately light failed us last night and we had to resume this morning and we found him in the next section that we were planning to search.”