Bill arrives Thursday and parks at the Juniper Flats Trailhead. He follows the old road to Juniper Flats. At the end of the road, he sees a
track, a track clear enough that I can see it on satellite photos. The location of the bandana that was found appears to be consistent with someone following this track.
He follows the track to
Point "A" which is more or less on the summit ridge.
From "A," he proceeds toward his objective, Quail Mtn. He contours around to the right of Pt. 5787, perhaps in the vicinity of point "B." He gets injured somewhere in here. He attempts a cell phone call, but can't get out. His battery is low. He shuts the phone off.
After his injury, he hunkers down. While hunkering down, he's thinking. He's in trouble; he needs to get out; and he needs water. He waits out the remainder of Thursday and all day Friday. Saturday comes. No help has arrived. Recall that the CHP chopper doesn't find his vehicle until Saturday night. Bill decides he's on his own.
Bill has only got the map sheets for Quail Mountain and the trailhead. He doesn't have the map sheets for points west, but he does have the
NPS park map. Because of his injury, he figures he can't go down that rugged drainage that he came up, but from what he's seen of the country to the west, it's not too bad, and on the NPS map, he can see there's a road head there in Lower Covington Flat. Injured, he starts dragging himself toward his objective, the aforementioned road head. Maybe not a great idea, but remember that Bill is injured, possibly in shock, and probably dehydrated.
Bill heads down
and winds up on the ridge we've discussed previously, the ridge marked by points "E" through "H." By early Sunday morning, he hits a high point and activates his cell phone. He can't get a call out for whatever reason, but a ping does get out.
Unable to make a call, he is forced to move on. He's looking for a way off that ridge, no small thing for an injured man. It's quite steep to the west. If he's got a lower extremity injury,
he may not be able to stand. I wonder what surveying that ridge looks like to a man who can do no more than sit up. Are there any obvious terrain features that to a man who cannot stand might be appear to be a way off that ridge?
Anyway, not an air tight scenario by any means, but I am trying to come up with two things: a) intention/objective and b) route.
HJ