Young Hikers Missing in Joshua Tree Since Thursday [7/27/17]

[Wildhorse]

I think the main significance of the ping at 4 pm is that it casts doubt on the origional theory that Joseph and Rachel parked at Maze shortly after they arrived at the park gate at 645, hiked maze and died there. But it does not rule out that story because the ping info we have from nps is unclear and nps statements appear to have been inconsistent.

The possibility that the phone was even outside of the park at 4 pm raises many questions that we cannot answer.

At this point all theories amount to conjecture, including the theory that a freak accident killed both. That is why the combined search and reward approach of the parents makes sense.

[Sean]

Do you have a source for Nguyen's phone call? I missed that.

Sorry, I can't find a source. Maybe I got this bit from comments on the JOSAR Facebook page, in which case it should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Sean]

Do you have a source for Nguyen's phone call? I missed that.

Sorry, I can't find a source. Maybe I got this bit from comments on the JOSAR Facebook page, in which case it should be taken with a grain of salt.

For what it's worth, I tracked down the JOSAR FB post containing this buried comment from Kherrolyne Bernal.

My son last heard from Rachel @ 6 a.m. Thursday. Who knows what could've happened or where they ended up?

[zippetydude]

Thanks Sean for your post. Their concerns are very evident and show that even the most realistic point of view can be swayed into alternatives if there is contrary evidence. As I find (figuatively) myself in the camp with the relatives, I am still hoping that this was some bizarre abduction that will yet yield an ending that includes their survival. Even that wildly unpredictable scenario would be a best case scenario now. But, I do feel that a resolution, good or bad, is not far from the finding at this point. In any of the proposed scenarios (I won't name them, I find them all disheartening) the evidence seem like it will soon yield a result. Hoping for the wildly improbable.

z

[cynthia23]

Thanks for posting that, Sean. As I recall, this lady posted one or two other times in the JOSAR FB page, always about the six a.m. phone call, which really seemed to trouble her in some inchoate way she could not (would not?) describe. I agree Zip, the best that can be hoped now is some bizarre abduction theory. Initially that was the idea that worried me the most--the notion that all the search efforts were focused on a lost hiker in the park scenario when perhaps the couple were actually hundreds of miles away, captives of some madman. As I mentioned, these things do occasionally happen. But more and more--I'm not sure why, but somehow with the passage of time, I've a growing sense of dreary conviction that it was 'only' a terrible freakish accident. I was reading yesterday about the search for the lost German tourists in Death Valley, and how it took many, many years to find their bodies. For the families' sakes, I really really hope it does not take that long to find the truth in this case. Meanwhile, I agree with Wildhorse that the 'mixed' approach of both a physical search and a reward is probably best.

[Myth]

Perry - If it was known for sure, that would be a really odd fact. But it really has to be known for sure - one or more GPS location pings, where the location is for sure from GPS, not from some sort of triangulation. That sort of for sure. And even then we still don’t know the timing from the facts we have. I initially read a report of a ping at 4pm, Maze Loop Trailhead. That’s awfully specific, useful, and fits in with the case. And now, new to us, we read that ping at 4pm registered from Smith Water Canyon, not the Maze Loop. Right? Or do we have pings from both places? At the same time? So … what now? An early morning hike in the Maze Loop area? And then, for some reason … a late afternoon hike around SWC? But why was the car in the Maze Loop area, then?

I recall reading somewhere that the entrance video was examined to see when their vehicle entered the Park, but I can’t find any links to that. Was it around 6am that their car was seen entering the Park? I think so, since some reports say they were lost “sometime after 6am”.

Two young lives seem lost, and their families are distraught and do not know what has happened. The sparse facts do not fit together for outside observers, and so we have the family grasping at straws. Or maybe there are more facts we don’t know. We just don’t know.

It appears that Nguyen was a Girl Scout for 10 years. ( http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local ... 32343.html ) Orbeso was apparently an experienced hiker too. So it is possible that they tackled something ambitious and unexpected. I can certainly think of several times where I parked nowhere close to where I walked that day. For example, my car’s been in the Boy Scout Trailhead parking lot overnight. Let’s say I never returned. You’d be looking for me north, right? Along the trail. In the Wonderland of Rocks. Everywhere there. Where was I actually hiking for two days? Smith Water Canyon. Quail Mountain. Etc. It was the most convenient overnight trailhead for what I wanted to do.

[Ed]

Is it possible the cell phone was on long enough to ping a cell tower, but not long enough for the GPS chip to lock onto three or four satellites for a good location fix?

[Perry]

Interesting. Maybe they were hiking the whole day in various places. It seems odd that they would do Smith Water after going in circles and being lost on the Maze Loop. It kind of makes sense that they could start the Maze Loop at 4pm, but it is hard to cover much distance when it's over 100 degrees F even with heat acclimatization. But if the ping is just a radius and nothing else, it could be a ping when they were lost and reached a high point briefly.

If I had a lot of free time and it wasn't so warm I would look for footprints near the road but far away from the parking lot, assuming they would still exist after a month. I would also explore the general area where the footprints were found.

There's another narrative that makes more sense with regard to motive, and a person doesn't need to disappear if nobody's looking for them, but I don't want to go accusing anybody. At this point I think it's still possible that the hikers got lost or trapped and died from heat exposure.

How capable are the dogs in these conditions? Would a cadaver dog find any body within 100 yards without wind? Accounting for vultures, coyotes, etc.

[Wildhorse]

Hi Ed, it is an interesting question. My guess is that it is possible.

Hi Perry, I would also like to know more about the abilities of the dogs. Maybe Otherhand knows.

On another subject, I noticed that the nps press release announcing the reward says that the parents hope that Joseph and Rachel left the park on their own accord and makes no mention of possible abduction, although news stories mentioned that the parents also made an appeal to possible abductors too.

Most of the press release is defensively devoted to stressing how hard nps worked before giving up.

https://www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/news/fam ... l-park.htm

The nps is so sanitary. Are they human?

[cynthia23]

Thanks for posting that, Wildhorse. You're right, it does have a faintly defensive underlying tone. One interesting bit is that they state the NPS overhead team was called in to 'review the ongoing search'. Use of the word 'ongoing' seems added to avoid the implication that the previous search had any problems. Myth, you asked about the couple's start time--this press release mentioned again that the JTNP cameras had recorded the couple's car entering the park at 6.45 a.m. Oh, and Wildhorse, I saw somewhere in the coverage that a hiker reported seeing the car parked at the Maze TH at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, which suggests but of course doesn't prove that it had been there overnight.

Seems like the obvious thing the press should be querying the NPS is clarity about the mysterious shifting ping.