The Missing Irish Hiker--Family asks for help ...

[Perry]

I posted a link from that page to here. People on the Facebook page are discussing some of the same things. There's a search this Saturday. The exact place will be announced tomorrow night because the page admin is following up leads to get more information.

If anybody can photograph the north face of Fuller Ridge in full daylight with a good camera and zoomed in, an image-editing program might find pixels that have more blue in them. David's blue backpack might be enough to alter the numbers in a pixel, even though we might not see it by looking at the photos.

[cynthia23]

Wow, that sounds like a great idea, Perry.

[Perry]

This afternoon I went a little ways up the PCT and took some photos of Fuller Ridge from a couple places. Couldn't get an early start because I barely recovered from being sick, so the lighting is not the best, but the photos still show some things. Also couldn't find my small tripod, so I had to stabilize the camera by resting it on boulders.

Fuller_Ridge/P1100870.JPG
to
Fuller_Ridge/P1100889.JPG

and

Fuller_Ridge/P1100892.JPG
to
Fuller_Ridge/P1100895.JPG

The numbers in between can be typed. To download as TIFF's (big files), change extensions to .TIF

I tried the method that I mentioned, but there's too much digital noise, and the white balance is off on some. It might work with full daylight and a better camera shooting in raw mode.

A telescope in full daylight could be used to search bare areas. Going higher up the PCT would likely give a better view of the treeless area on the left that is partially obscured by the large rock face (images 870, 871, 884, 885, 886). The areas with a lot of trees can really only be searched by being there. And with so many trees near the top, it seems unlikely that a person could slide a long ways, although it looks like there may have been a couple of narrow snow chutes to the right of that treeless area.

[Myth]

Hey, intriguing! Can you post the locations you took pictures from? What were the specs on your camera? I have a beefy DSLR ( 36.3 MP full-frame ) and a 500mm telephoto lens. If I can find time ( a 5 hr drive for me ) I can have a go at this too. I'll definitely shoot in raw.

What would be really interesting is to do too is a control test with a piece of colored fabric and see how it shows up in pictures.

I always have more ideas than time ...

[Perry]

This thread reminded me of reading about somebody falling in the Fuller Ridge area around beginning of April. A quick google search came up with several reports about it. Turns out it was about 2 weeks before the last sighting of the missing hiker, close enough in time for conditions to still be similar in the area:
The hikers blog: http://theramblingnews.blogspot.com/2017/04/rattlesnakes-to-blizzards.html
The hiker warning others on a PCT forum: https://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php/124075-Fuller-Ridge-Mile-178-190

It sounds like Dick fell near Strawberry Cienega:

Where exactly did you fall? Was it to the east or west? before or after the san jacinto river?

3+ miles northbound of saddle jct. Approx. Not sure i was even on trail. Just steep terrain, hard packed snow. Every step had to be kicked in. Craziest, stupid thing i have ever done. Just want to give a heads up to those coming behind.

He estimated that he slid 1,000 feet and that he could have slid further if he hadn't ended up in some rocks.
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=33.78100,-11 ... %20jacinto

I think another hiker slipped after leaving Tahquitz Peak. At the moment I don't have the link.

[Perry]

Hey, intriguing! Can you post the locations you took pictures from? What were the specs on your camera? I have a beefy DSLR ( 36.3 MP full-frame ) and a 500mm telephoto lens. If I can find time ( a 5 hr drive for me ) I can have a go at this too. I'll definitely shoot in raw.

What would be really interesting is to do too is a control test with a piece of colored fabric and see how it shows up in pictures.

I always have more ideas than time ...

Just saw your reply. That's a good idea to test the theory. Here are the 2 locations I took photos from:
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=33.87212,-11 ... 0Peak%20CA
The first set of photos were from the higher location, 2nd set lower down. The camera I was using is an old camera with I think 2 Megapixels but a very deep optical zoom. Most likely 8 bits/channel and more noise than newer sensors.

[Perry]

Somebody on the Facebook search page is asking if anybody has climbed the other branch of Snow Creek since David O'Sullivan went missing. I know it's rarely climbed, but a few people on here have climbed it in the past. I believe it's mislabelled on Google maps as "East Branch" even though it's west of the main branch, but there is also another branch farther west. And has anybody climbed the drainage between the PCT and one-horse ridge?

There's a lot of people using Google Earth to look at satellite images from April 30, looking for something blue. Since they're not finding anything, it may be more likely that he could be under trees.

A friend said that a sheriff's helicopter removed a pot farm from the general Snow Creek/PCT area about a month ago. Does anybody know any details about that?

[zippetydude]

What is preventing a procedure of methodically photographing all possible areas, including chutes and their run outs, at very high resolution using programmed drones at a legal but fairly low elevation? I'm not a techie, but to me it seems that this is the way of the future and that it will be the most exhaustive means of safely investigating almost every square inch of ground at no risk to searchers. Perry, all your thoughts of using photographic images make so much sense. What if those methods had been used the first day he went missing, but had been implemented using tireless drones covering impossibly steep elevation along every possible path from the PCT ? I'm thinking it would be all but certain that the search would have been successful in a very short period of time. That same sort of search has been implemented as a means of finding new supernovae in astronomy (without drones, but with programmed wide field photographic images of distant galaxies), and the results have been astounding. In a very short period of time, more supernovae have been discovered than had previously been found in the entire history of astronomy.

In SAR this will come about soon, almost without a doubt. Why not now? It's relatively cheap, it's incredibly effective, and the results would be tremendously valuable. Seems like a solution waiting to happen to me. Could even start right here, bringing this family closure. A community of like minded people taking days together searching for a lost person is moving but often yields no result. A superhuman search effort performed using the best of current technology could outperform even the best human efforts. So, again, why not now? Where is the Tesla of SAR?

z

[guest]

Hi Perry & friends,
The helo that appeared to be taking pot off the mt. seems to go a few miles due west of where your 2nd photo stop was. It disappeared behind a ridge out of my sight, so I'm only estimating. The time it took to return to launch spot, (DWA) was probably less than ten min. so it didn't seem to go far.
Still seems that a fall on the ice & snow higher up may be the most likely scenario.
ss

[Perry]

Is it reasonably safe to search the drainages near the PCT, in terms of pot farms? This includes the various forks of Snow Creek and the drainage between the PCT and One Horse Ridge. I believe any pot farm in the Snow Creek watershed would be detected by DWA water testing. Not sure if water is taken from the creek on the east side of One Horse. It's not clear whether the helicopter was traveling to the east or west side.