Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation

Well I look a bit silly now, don't I? I think we were in a hurry to get back to the car because Stephen had to be somewhere in LA that evening.

Hikin_Jim wrote:Interesting that they cleaned up the site -- including the skid marks. The bone fragment I understand, but the skid marks? Perhaps they just wish to avoid souvenir hunters.

HJ

Wanting to avoid souvenir hunters could very well be true, though I couldn't imagine there would be too many weirdos out there. It could also be someone who believes strongly in "leave no trace" principles. Those skid marks could have lasted quite a while from such a heavy machine.

As for the initial team leaving a flagged bone fragment behind, that's unconscionable. I'm glad they came back and did a good job.

Perry wrote:Well I look a bit silly now, don't I? I think we were in a hurry to get back to the car because Stephen had to be somewhere in LA that evening.

Not at all man. Any one of us are capable of missing something in an environment and terrain such as that. As the person who found him stated, it was virtually unnoticeable unless you walked right up to the given circle of rocks and looked down.

I uploaded the GPX file to Strava to analyze pace, and it said about 25 min/mile there, so we were walking. I would think we would have seen the discarded personal items that Tom mentioned, but maybe we had thought they were just the usual trash you see when approaching civilization. I remember the prior boulder traverse being a bit mentally exhausting, so it could have taken a lot out of us.
https://www.strava.com/activities/6744006544

Tom,

I'm not sure of Bill's true position on the saddle, but it's a small area. I'm certain he climbed to the saddle out of the wash to the west and south of the spot, due to the presence of some personal stuff down that slope which has now been removed. But it provided his direction of travel.

Your comment implies (I think) that Bill had dropped/lost this personnel stuff on the way up to the saddle, as opposed to it being scattered by the wind. Is it your view that this implies he was really struggling as he climbed and not acting logically in retrieving the personal stuff he dropped?

Alchad

I cannot tell you what this personal stuff was, nor can I answer for Tom. I do know it's common for people who run into trouble to drop nonessentials to save weight, but I'm guessing this wasn't the case with Bill as it was so close to where he ended up. People experiencing hyperthermia have also been known to remove clothes, as is the case with hypothermia as well.

I once ran into water trouble when backpacking off-trail and 10 or 11 miles from civilization I dropped all of my gear except for the essentials. This was the same day I ended up drinking stagnant water with horsefly larvae swimming around the see-through filter as I was filtering it...yuck! Went back for the gear two weeks later.

Alchad wrote:Your comment implies (I think) that Bill had dropped/lost this personnel stuff on the way up to the saddle, as opposed to it being scattered by the wind. Is it your view that this implies he was really struggling as he climbed and not acting logically in retrieving the personal stuff he dropped?

It certainly seems that way, doesn't it?

HJ

Link to an article from the hometown paper of the party that discovered Bill, including a picture of the some remains.

Not so sure how I feel about the picture of the remains being published, but maybe it's just me.

jdclifford - You are right. There is no purpose to such a picture. It should not have been published.