Missing 411

[NCBFr]

Sorry, but i don't get it.  There is plenty of shade and they are on the Merced river for goodness sakes.  Staying cool should not be a problem.  Total elevation gain on the hike, 100 freaking feet. They are not wandering around a desert.

 

https://www.yosemitehikes.com/not-yosemite/hite-cove/trail-map.htm

 

https://www.yosemitehikes.com/not-yosemite/hite-cove/hite-cove.htm

 

 

[Catmandoo]

https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_c0bf900e-35c2-11ec-999a-c7276b97ebd6.html

 

The victims were on the Savage Lundy Trail.  About 2,000' altitude change. No shade. The 2018 Ferguson Fire roared through this area. Pretty vegetation images are from an unknown date.

A sad tragedy.

 

[VAfooter]

Small update on the family:

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/couple-found-dead-on-california-hiking-trail-likely-tried-to-save-baby-report-says

 

If it were just the family, I could sort of accept the explanation. However, it is the dog that throws me for a loop. I just cannot see how it did not go off looking for water on its own. Still smells fishy to me. 

 

Sadly, one of those mysteries where we will never know what actually happened, just educated guesses.

[BlackRockBigfoot]

3 hours ago, VAfooter said:

Small update on the family:

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/couple-found-dead-on-california-hiking-trail-likely-tried-to-save-baby-report-says

 

If it were just the family, I could sort of accept the explanation. However, it is the dog that throws me for a loop. I just cannot see how it did not go off looking for water on its own. Still smells fishy to me. 

 

Sadly, one of those mysteries where we will never know what actually happened, just educated guesses.

That’s a poor explanation… heat and exertion as the cause of death.  
 

Thanks for posting this.  I was think about this tragedy last night.

[NCBFr]

4 hours ago, VAfooter said:

Small update on the family:

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/couple-found-dead-on-california-hiking-trail-likely-tried-to-save-baby-report-says

 

If it were just the family, I could sort of accept the explanation. However, it is the dog that throws me for a loop. I just cannot see how it did not go off looking for water on its own. Still smells fishy to me. 

 

Sadly, one of those mysteries where we will never know what actually happened, just educated guesses.

 

Here is a much better article on the tragedy.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/mariposa-hiking-family-investigation-report-16671200.php?utm_campaign=premiumsfgate_breakingnews_20211203&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

 

As you can see they passed over water perhaps 1 mile before their death.  I can understand the parents thinking they were close enough to make it and chose poorly but my dogs jump in to the water every chance they get.  The only explanation I can think of is that the parents kept the dog on a leash and did not allow it to go for a swim when they passed over Snyder Creek tributary. 

 

Sad but I do believe Darwin struck again.

 

 

[Sam]

1 hour ago, BlackRockBigfoot said:

That’s a poor explanation… heat and exertion as the cause of death.  
 

Thanks for posting this.  I was think about this tragedy last night.

There’s a lot more to the story than they’re letting us to believe, The story on its face does not make sense at all, something else kill these people and their dog that they don’t want the public knowing

 

[OldMort]

A few more details from the "official report."

 

Couple found dead on California trail likely died trying to save baby from heat (yahoo.com)

 

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by OldMort

[wiiawiwb]

Somewhere along the timeline, if suffering from heat exhaustion and water was nearby (1 mile away?), I'd die try heading back to it rather than perish sitting in the heat.  Weren't they found with some water left in their backpack? Wouldn't you utilize all of your water before allowing yourself to succumb to heat exhausion?

 

There is almost nothing about this story that makes sense to me. 

[Hoekler73]

On 11/6/2019 at 2:36 PM, norseman said:

I think the Dennis Martin case is super compelling. You had witnesses completely unrelated to the search claim they saw a Bear packing something over its shoulder with lots of screaming...

 

Bears do not have shoulders.

The Dennis Martin case is compelling, but it is hard to say what happened to this poor child.

 

We have the reports of a family seeing a strange bear with something on its shoulder, special forces on site searching but not apparently interacting with other rescue operators,and rumors of feral people living in the smoke mountains.

 

We may never know what happened in this case, but it definitely is one of the more intriguing cases within the missing 411 genre.

 

 

 

[WSA]

As far as I know, the witness in the Martin case did not say they saw a "bear" carrying something, but rather described and impression of a "hairy person" or a "hobo" with something on its shoulders.  As is often the case, when you see something new to you, you try to categorize it with something familiar. The idea of feral "Hillbillies" living in the secluded reaches of GSMNP at that time is a romantic one, but completely unrealistic and fanciful.   

[Twist]

^^ Agreed. Their have been discussions on here regarding some of the misconceptions regarding the Martin case.   Missing 411 is a fun series to watch but often times I think it embellishes the facts behind certain stories.   It is after all meant for profit. Unfortunately as in most cases, embellishments get mistaken for fact.  Right or wrong it just happens.  That is  how many fairytales and folklores get started.  

[norseman]

6 hours ago, WSA said:

As far as I know, the witness in the Martin case did not say they saw a "bear" carrying something, but rather described and impression of a "hairy person" or a "hobo" with something on its shoulders.  As is often the case, when you see something new to you, you try to categorize it with something familiar. The idea of feral "Hillbillies" living in the secluded reaches of GSMNP at that time is a romantic one, but completely unrealistic and fanciful.   

Keys family:

 

I thought the family described something that looked like a bear. And later a park ranger had talked about feral people being in the park. 
 

I did not know they described a feral human from the get go.

 

 

[Hoekler73]

The missing 411 book east coast addition says the witnesses first thought it was a bear, but that it didn't seem quite right in appearance. I can't say what the original report says, but that's what's in the book.

14 hours ago, norseman said:

Keys family:

 

I thought the family described something that looked like a bear. And later a park ranger had talked about feral people being in the park. 
 

I did not know they described a feral human from the get go.

 

 

The missing 411 east coast book says the same thing as I recall.

[WSA]

The afternoon that Dennis disappeared, Harold Key, 45, of Carthage, Tenn., was near Rowans Creek in the Sea Branch area with his family when he heard an "enormous, sickening scream." A few minutes later, he noticed a rough-looking man moving stealthily in the woods near where he had heard the scream.

"I thought he might have been a moonshiner," Key later told News Sentinel writer Carson Brewer.

Unaware of the search for a lost boy, Key did not report the incident until several days later, after he had returned home and learned of Dennis Martin.

 

This is a quote from the Knox News report, Oct. 2, 2018.  Bob Gymlan did one of his animated YouTube pieces on the disappearance and he dissected Key's observations pretty well.

 

Of course, I think the "feral people" observations, if they are observations, come from those trying to make sense of a furtive, unkempt bipedal creature. The idea that H.Sapiens are living undetected in the Park somewhere is pretty implausible to me.

 

If this was nothing more than a child who lost his way and succumbed to hypothermia and/or a fall, I would be able to accept that, and it very well might be the case. Much has been made of how quickly he disappeared, but if any have spent time traipsing the Eastern Mountains (as I have for 50 years), you will recognize a distinct possibility in these circumstances. It is, when you are atop one of these wooded peaks, the slopes are extremely steep and the flanks of the mountains are massive. If you stand near a summit....like where this happened at Spence Field..., and you want to intersect with a destination down the flank, any small degree of error on your line of travel will put you way wide of your target, very quickly. Laurel and rhododendron keep you from assessing your position very well. The further you go, the wider that error becomes. The human tendency is to believe you just haven't gone far enough, and before you know it, you are 100s of yds. wide and 100s of feet below your target. (Happened to me one morning off-trail in N. GA off the AT...drew a line on where I thought a spring was down the mountain and missed it completely. I was foundering around, going down further and further until I had no choice but to hike back to the summit and start over)  The errors compound themselves and a small child would have no way of correcting that. One likely scenario is that Dennis Martin missed his target and just kept going and had no hope of finding his way back before the dark and rain overtook him.     

[WSA]

Naturally...the description of  an “enormous and sickening scream” is the thing I would want the witness to describe in more detail. Play any number of recordings and ask him, “Something that sounded like this, maybe”?