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Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 6:35 am
by Bmyers
Shame that people can't follow simple warnings.
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 11:18 am
by tom mac
You can't fix stupid....
unfortunately he paid the highest price.
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:55 pm
by aerynsun
David wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:29 pm
Exactly right. Wasn't but a few years ago a husband went hiking around some Mexican resort with just a water bottle. Sent a pic to his wife but then nothing. Found a day or so later dead of dehydration not that far from the resort.
That's a sad story.
Ignorance kills.
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 10:58 am
by Mac66
Sometimes you do stupid and it turns out okay.
When I was in Alaska hiking in Denali NP we started up the Savage River/Alpine trail and were met by a ranger. It was the end of August and it was snowing. He advised against going since a bigger snow front was moving in. We assured him we were good, had, water, food, shelter. He followed us half way up just to keep and eye on us (we were 60 year old flat landers after all). When we got to the top there was nothing on the leeward side, it was a blizzard on the windward side. We sheltered on the leeward side of some rocks. Shortly after a ranger showed up leading a group of hikers up the windward side. They were on a guided hike and had to turn around. We immediately turned around with them and went back with the snow following us. By the time we got back to the bottom the trails were covered.
Later we met some hikers in the campground who had gotten about half way down the other side who got caught in the storm. They said it took them 6 hours to go the last 2 miles, and that was all down hill. The trail was blown over with drifts and they couldn't even see it at times.
The peak on the upper right is where we were going...
And at the top...
Coming back down. The trail was clear coming up. Hazardous going back down. That's parking area we are heading to on the left.
A couple days later we decided to hike that trail from the other direction. That's the same peak from the back side.
It was steep...
And hazardous. Sometimes you couldn't even find the trail on the side of the mountain.
We stuck it out. It was about 4 miles to the peak from the backside.
The peak is just over my hat to the right of the two figures on the skyline.
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 10:04 am
by David
Man that is simply beautiful country!
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:15 am
by Mac66
Another stupid is as stupid does story from Alaska....
We did a hike out of Valdez called the Ridge Trail. It was one of the trails over the mountain that the gold minors used to get to Valdez.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
We hiked it the opposite way out of Valdez. It started as a beautiful hike in a tropical like forest.
After about 8 hours on the trail we started to descend. It got really steep.
That's about a 2,000 foot drop on the right, straight to bottom of the canyon. I really thought "man, I just killed myself and my wife and they are going eventually find our bodies". We were pretty tired and really didn't want to/couldn't turn back. It was getting late in the day.
Fortunately someone had tied a rope for the first 100 yards or so. There we times where it was a shear wall on the left and a shear drop off on the right with the path only a shoe wide. We had to hug the wall or fall to our deaths. It was also wet and slippery
Looking back at the pictures it doesn't look so bad but I was literally shaking with fear and dread. It was about the only time I was really afraid that I got us into a situation we couldn't get out of. We sat down, talked it over, settled our wits and went on.
We did make it down to the bottom of the canyon and had a 4 mile walk back to the trail head but on flat ground.
The rest of the story....We had parked the motorhome we rented at the trailhead. When we got to it we poured ourselves a stiff drink, cooked dinner and eventually drove back to the campground we were staying at.
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:25 am
by tom mac
wow...some pics.
trusting some one else's rope ?
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2021 4:58 pm
by Mac66
tom mac wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:25 am
wow...some pics.
trusting some one else's rope ?
Good point. We took a good long look at it to make sure it was tied correctly. Then I went first to "test" it. The alternative was to slide/crabwalk down on our butts.
Re: General Motors production supervisor, 52, who died on Death Valley trail where another hiker was found dead three da
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:03 pm
by bdcochran
Wow!
Despite having walked the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan to Pakistan,(an easy decision as I had no choice) I would never have attempted your hike. The photographs are beautiful.