Story of missing hiker in Joshua Tree NP

[Ric Capucho]

Hi Myth, Tom, Adam, All,

The area I have in mind is either side of the north western end of Park Road, as you turn the corner and start the descent down towards the western entrance, around where the X shows on the map. The gold line leading to the X starts at Serin Tower, by the way.

The screen shot is from heywhatsthat.com which has come in useful over the last few years. The red areas are the splashes that shows the line of sight to Serin Tower, and I'm pretty sure that as you turn that very corner (just at the parking for the Loop) your cellphone suddenly lights up at that point with messages and whatever else. I think someone confirmed that to me a couple months ago. Zip reception along Park until that very corner. And of course the area is just about spot on 10 miles from Serin.

As Adam and Tom have pointed out, this is a very unlikely spot. Of course it is. The ping occurred at 6:50am, and the searchers resumed at 7:25am presumably from Juniper Flats. So assuming they entered through the western entrance then they would have passed that point at around 7am anyway.

So I suppose this scenario depends on Bill somehow evading the searchers having suffered from what Richard has described as an ambulatory mental event. Ah, the scenario is very weak, but perhaps someone will one day have a quick look around as a bit of due diligence.

Ric

[adamghost]

Hi Myth! Bunch of interesting stuff I wanted to chime in on.

I've also descended by Quail Spring and as I've mentioned before, that was the only time in my life I really could have kissed the ground when I made finally it down! Never was flat earth, previously taken for granted, so precious to me! The pucker factor on that descent is huge.

Cripes, it's awful, isn't it? I'm glad it wasn't just me. It seems so nice at first, and then it just keeps getting steeper, and steeper, and then you pray you're not at the edge of a cliff.

On that note - OtherHand or others, what is the best route to get back to that area above Quail Springs / Smith water, in your opinion? I traveled in from Quail Mountain, which wasn't too bad. Those slopes look like they'll make for a grim ascent, though.

The only easy way in I've ever found is from the south, entering on the north side of the big canyon that leads south from that area and there's a couple of places where you can climb up to the north side and it's not too bad. Not the canyon that Quail Springs is by, but the next one over to the east. It's basically the same as if you were coming from Quail Mountain -- a long way around, but even though there's still some steep canyon walls there aren't as high and with a few easier gaps it's much easier to get up in there from that way.

So that's a long way of saying you've probably already discovered the best way in. Though the ascent up Smith Water isn't that bad if you pick your route carefully - there's some more gradual slopes on the extreme northeast edge of that whole area. I came up one time that way and it wasn't particularly dangerous. Just tedious and tiring.

Final thought: http://whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread. ... our/page94 is about a hiker lost from the Appalachian Trail, whose remains was recently found. A lot of speculation on that thread and people who won't believe it was a normal lost hiker scenario. The most interesting thing is where she was found. In retrospect it seems a logical place, but that was not where they looked first and some of the line search / grid search type patterns went practically right by her, yet she wasn't found because of terrain. Still, there is just enough confusion about the leads in the initial search that some people firmly suspect foul play there.

They didn't say her name but I'm betting that's Geri Largay, right? I've been following that case for a while (Ewasko isn't my only curiosity!). There were a couple of details in that case that were buried deep in the weeds - namely that she had a tendency to get confused and walk the wrong way down the trail (she'd had a partner the rest of her journey, and the stretch where she got lost was her only solo walk), and also a four wheel drive road led bisected the trail and led to a top secret military base in the area, which is where she was found. Some newspapers were speculating about this prior to her body being found, particularly raising the issue that the military probably wasn't too keen on having their facility searched and also if she had wandered into some of the exercises in the area she might have been in trouble, because this is kind of a black ops facility and some of the training gets a bit extreme apparently. So there were some indications in her case of what might have happened, though they don't know exactly why she was where she was. The Jesse Capen story, which AZeagle mentioned, is a better fit for what might have happened to Bill.

Me, I believe it much more likely Bill was injured and is in JTNP. I've done enough cross-country in JTNP to think the terrain is often tough enough that a single stumble or moment of distraction can bring you to grief.

No argument here. As I've often said, my thinking isn't solely based on us not finding him, but just a bunch of stuff not adding up all 'round. But if he's there, my best guess is not that far off from yours.

I'm heading to Asia next week, but maybe when I get back, we can all swarm the place and maybe we'll get some answers!

[adamghost]

Ric - finally had a chance to look at your X.

At the spot the X is, which I know is not the exact place you were talking about, there's a turnout with a trail up to the rock formation. There's always cars there, in fact there's cars and people on the Google earth photo. So Bill's not there for sure.

Closer to the bend you're talking about, the road is hemmed in on either side by low hills. So it's kind of difficult for Bill to get there without actually being on the road itself (by the way, I believe you are right about the reception coming in around this spot, though I think it's a little further in).

The only way I could fathom Bill making his way to this area and not being seen is through the little canyon that winds towards the road and hits it west of the bend you're talking about, where it curves north. It's geographically doable and you could plot a route for Bill where he goes up through Quail Wash and hangs a right towards Park Road. Makes no sense, because he's almost out and in Yucca Valley at that point (and should be aware of that), but I get you're talking about some sort of fugue state for poor Bill.

Taking all that into account, the main problem I encounter then is that puts Bill somewhere around 9.5 miles from Serin, which given what we know at the moment seems like it's just too close. He could conceivably be there - unlikely, but at least topographically it lines up - but he'd have had to have pinged the tower somewhere else (most likely Quail Wash).

[RichardK]

By now, everyone has read the story of the Mt. San Gorgonio hikers and their dog who nearly froze to death. This sentence in the Desert Independent account of the story posted here http://www.thedesertinde.com/Articles-2015/SandR-Two-Hikers-Dog-Rescued-After-Spending-Night--1217.html caught my eye.

On Monday, December 14, at approximately 8:06 a.m., Kenny Pasten called 911 on his cell phone requesting help, but the call was dropped and the latitude/longitude captured by 911 was incorrect.

I couldn't help but think of Bill's brief ping. What if the ping distance was captured incorrectly due to the shortness of it? I know field tests of distance accuracy were done, but those involved sending text messages meaning a long time period of connection. A brief ping was not tested. More speculation.

[Ric Capucho]

Hi Richard,

Very interesting...

The ping in the case of Mnt San Gorgonio was presumably triangulating somehow (otherwise how could it capture a latitude/longitude) whilst the Ewasko ping was to an omnidirectional tower - so only a circular range can ever be inferred, in that case the famous 10.6 miles arc. Only a telecoms engineer could tell us if the duration of the ping might be a factor for ranging in the case of Ewasko.

Ric

[RichardK]

Ric - I assume that the San Gorgonio hikers had a smartphone with GPS capability that sent latitude/longitude to the 911 operator. Bill's old flip phone lacked that feature and, so, only distance to tower was available. Did the brevity of Bill's ping affect his distance measurement just as the brevity of the hikers contact affected their location measurement? I don't know, but the possibility jumped out at me.

[OtherHand]

There are a number of methods used by cell companies for handset location, and some are more prone to errors than others. The method supposedly used by Verizon at the Serin tower is about as dirt-simple as you can get. As part of its handshake with the phone (the ping), the tower sends out a timing pulse. When the phone gets it, it sends an answering pulse back to the tower. Based upon the time delay of the return pulse the tower figures out the distance. If there's any delay or stumbling on the part of the phone in returning the timing pulse the tower will think the phone is further away than it actually is. This is why I tend to think of the 10.6 mile figure as a pretty firm outer boundary. Any errors should result in the actual distance being less than 10.6 miles. Short of a complete failure of Verizon's distance measuring system, I can't see any way for the true distance to be greater than 10.6 miles (allowing for 10% measurement error, of course).

Initially we did not know the specifics of Verizon's system and felt the reported distance was obviously wrong, as it made no sense. So all of the initial followup searching was done in locations that had some sort of line of sight to the Serin tower, regardless of distance. These further out locations have been pretty well covered to date.

[adamghost]

Again assuming nothing hinky was going on, the ping coming from within 10.6 miles of Serin - as opposed to slightly further out - is an absolute head scratcher, given that SWC is pretty much bang on the 10.6 radius. Within 10.6 miles, you have very few places a call could actually get out, and it puts Bill either within very close range of roads and trailheads, or on the north side of SWC.

[adamghost]

Here's a thought experiment.

Assume that this is a straight lost hiker scenario and not something more oddball. Then from there further assume the following two facts, that I think are likely given what we currently know:
1. Bill was less than 10.6 miles from the tower during the ping
2. Bill was not at Upper Covington Flat.

Operating on those assumptions alone, far and away the most likely place for Bill to be is the north side of Smith Water.

Can anyone come up with a reasonable scenario that puts Bill there? The topography is pretty daunting, and the only semi-reasonable way to get up there that I know of would be from a point well to the north of the Lower Covington trailhead from the road - in other words, Bill would leave the road to go up there, and he'd miss a ranger by a very narrow margin in so doing. Thoughts?

[Myth]

One reasonable scenario that I can come up with is baked into your assumption of a straight lost hiker scenario: Bill somehow reached Smith Water and vicinity, became disoriented, and traveled in the wrong direction.

I know people always shake their heads at these hypothesis, but ... even though I have a very decent sense of direction, I have gotten myself turned around completely before. And who knows ... even though the Smith Water area isn't known for mining there is a small audit at the western entrance - maybe Bill traveled by an ore deposit, placed his compass on a rock, or had some metal on him, and it reversed polarity?

I've seen a few of these lost person cases described in print and they tend to have common factors:

- The persons involved traveled in a direction the rescuers didn't anticipate
- The persons involved traveled much further than the rescuers anticipated
- The terrain is such that a non-communicative search subject is easily overlooked

I think none of those three scenarios can be ruled out in this case.

Hey, funny story about a compass reversing polarity: my vehicle has a built-in compass. It was brand-new ( literally brand new, bought it in Yucca Valley the day before and went into JTNP with it ) when we were traveling northbound on the Pinto Basin road at night. This was that night the Navy launched their test missile, back in November or so? The one lots of people saw.

Well, let me tell you this - we had the roof panels off and were having fun identifying constellations when that rocket showed up. Traveling in the dark night through the desert and seeing that rocket go off and having no idea what heck the dang thing was ... that was ... trippy. Out in the desert it wasn't just a little comet-looking thing, it grew from a star with a tail into something that had a couple of huge blue "discs" in front of it - filling up all the sky as seen out the side window of the vehicle. Afterwards, a huge blue glow hung in the night sky for quite a while, too. We weren't quite sure if we should keep heading into 29 Palms or just turn around and drive the other way because it looked like Korea's missiles could reach us after all!

The really weird thing was: as this blue glow grew and grew in the sky we saw the vehicle compass flip from pointing NW to pointing SE. That was almost too much for me. I'm a reasonable human, but seeing huge blue discs in the sky and watching a compass lose its mind at the end of a long day in the desert was a wee bit much. I had to have a couple beers that night for sure.