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Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 8 days ago)
35,630 posts, read 17,968,125 times
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The family continues to search for the missing hikers. I still think there's some small percent chance they aren't in the park - that they voluntarily disappeared themselves, or were somehow kidnapped.
It could be anything; as someone posted earlier, they could have fallen into a mine shaft, or tried to explore one, and gotten stuck. They could have fallen off a trail. They could have sought shelter from the heat in a cave, and happened upon a large animal that was hungry. Or the possibilities you mentioned. Going hiking in heat over 100 degrees seems like a very strange thing to do for fun, IMO.
Orbeso, who has kept up the search effort since the pair disappeared, told the station he and the search team were scaling boulders about two miles from Maze Loop when they spotted the couple's clothing, some water bottles and food wrappers. The crew followed the trail and saw the remains of two people -- the bodies embracing each other.
Those descriptions make no sense. There are no 'remote regions of the park' near the Maze area. The Maze is hemmed in by Highway 62 and development less than two miles to the north, and a campground and developed area less than two miles to the east. Furthermore, even before you get to the highway or the campground, you're on descending slopes above them where you can see for miles - including roads, houses, the campground facilities, and so forth. Just west and south of the Maze is a paved road (running diagonally, northwest to southeast) through the park following and open area where it can easily be seen. Two miles in any direction from the Maze leads to development, clear views of civilization, or clear and easily-followed trails which lead to a trailhead at a parking lot.
Thank you for this update! If they were embracing each other, it sounds like it was night, and they were trying to stay warm. But if it's over 100 during the day, it wouldn't get very cold at night, would it? And they found their clothes? So....they were found nude? So...they didn't need their clothes to stay warm?That's very weird, if true. Extremely weird. Sounds like there's more to the story. And why would they be so far off the trail? None of it makes any sense.
I was descending into the Grand Canyon years ago when I came across a ranger making a family go back up, it appears the family did not take anything with them, not even water, I was over hearing as I approached them.
The ranger stopped my wife and I as we passed and asked us about our water and how far we are going, and let us go on.
There are probably people walking around now because of the actions of that ranger that day.
Those descriptions make no sense. There are no 'remote regions of the park' near the Maze area. The Maze is hemmed in by Highway 62 and development less than two miles to the north, and a campground and developed area less than two miles to the east. Furthermore, even before you get to the highway or the campground, you're on descending slopes above them where you can see for miles - including roads, houses, the campground facilities, and so forth. Just west and south of the Maze is a paved road (running diagonally, northwest to southeast) through the park following and open area where it can easily be seen. Two miles in any direction from the Maze leads to development, clear views of civilization, or clear and easily-followed trails which lead to a trailhead at a parking lot.
This is not a remote area of the park.
What your post means, is that if they were found roughly 2 miles from the Maze trail at any point, searchers should have seen them during the initial searches. Someone should have seen them from one of the vantage points you mention, whichever one they were closest to.
What your post means, is that if they were found roughly 2 miles from the Maze trail at any point, searchers should have seen them during the initial searches. Someone should have seen them from one of the vantage points you mention, whichever one they were closest to.
I took the post to mean that the hikers should have been able to see something from where they were found.
What your post means, is that if they were found roughly 2 miles from the Maze trail at any point, searchers should have seen them during the initial searches. Someone should have seen them from one of the vantage points you mention, whichever one they were closest to.
No, what I'm saying is that if they were two miles from the Maze, it's hard to understand how they were lost.
Look, immediately south and west of the Maze is a paved road. It's a major park thoroughfare - vehicles buzz by regularly. That area is open flats from where one can see that road, and is also crossed by dirt roads and trails that get regular usage. The canyons in the area all drain down to those flats, and the ridges overlook the roads and trails.
Immediately to the north of the Maze are open slopes overlooking Highway 62 and scattered homes. it would have been lit up at night, and getting there would simply have required cross-country downhill walking. Two miles north of the Maze, you're in a subdivision.
It makes zero sense that they were lost two miles away in those directions.
The only thing that makes any sense at all is if they managed to go east and slightly south to the Wonderlands of Rocks, which is about two miles away. But to get there requires a walk across open flats with easy, wide washes which are obvious routes out, and even across a trail that is so obvious I can see it on Google Map's satellite view.
And even if they somehow wandered to the Wonderland, temperatures in the low 100s killed two healthy 20-somethings? Even if they couldn't handle the heat (again, dry desert heat for a couple of young in-shape people might suck, but they shouldn't drop dead from it) they can rest in the shade (these aren't plains - there are canyons and rocks which provide enough shade to hunker down until sunset) and then walk out at night, following drainages downhill. Or rest until sunrise and scramble up the nearest highpoint to see where to go.
We're not talking about the trackless wastes of the Sahara. This is open country in a developed part of a national park, surrounded by facilities and private residences and roads and filled with trails. If they were found two miles from the Maze, it must have taken some remarkable combination of very bad luck and considerable ineptitude.
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