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

[Sean]

If you ever do find yourself in a similar situation, where your friend is begging to be killed, try to remember the case of David and Raffi. These two best friends went on an overnight camping trip in New Mexico. They got lost, dehydrated, and ate unripened cactus fruit to survive. David was in agony and begged Raffi to kill him. Raffi stabbed his friend twice with a knife. Then he exhausted himself covering David with heavy rocks so the buzzards wouldn't get at him. Luckily a ranger found Raffi still alive on day four.

Prosecutors charged Raffi with murder. There were some odd things about Raffi's story. For example, why did he exhaust himself moving rocks instead of trying to find his way out? He was found only a couple hundred feet from the trail. I guess jurors partially bought Raffi's account of a mercy killing. He was found guilty of second-degree murder and given a light sentence.

The problem is that once you get severely dehydrated, you stop thinking straight and do odd things, like forget where the trail was in relation to your campsite, or worry about the buzzards getting to your dead friend and start piling rocks on top of him. You lose focus and don't make good use of your remaining energy. Everything you thought you would do in such a situation goes out the window, because you aren't in your right mind. You don't think you could ever kill your best friend? Well, you've probably never been severely dehydrated with him screaming for mercy under the scorching sun in the middle of the desert.

[Ed]

Being a dope when it comes to all matters of physiology, despite my high school course, I did a little research on the web on pain associated with death by dehydration. There is a ton of stuff emphasizing the relative lack of pain. They are of course talking about a hospice-type situation, where the person is lying in a bed in a room-temperature environment, receiving some pain medication. And it seemed a little exaggerated, I certainly think my mother-in-law was suffering more than we are being encouraged to believe on the web. But would death by dehydration in the desert be so different that the person would be screaming for a mercy killing? I rather doubt it.

Wildhorse, you've never heard of Rashomon? Or the The Virgin Spring? I am amazed, you are so widely informed. You never went through a phase were you were dragged to arty movies?

Interesting post by Graboid.

[Wildhorse]

Gee, Ed. I missed The Virgin Spring too. I confess that I have not seen a lot of films. I may create an illusion of being well-informed by limiting what I say to things familiar to me.

Recently a friend introduced me to Stories in Echo Park. This independent small book store and cafe has an amazing selection of books that reflects the owner's aesthetics and fits LA. I am finding many gaps in my mind in that shop, and the food and coffee are good too. They have many interesting books about film, music and other arts there, as well as ecology.

They also have an assortment of spooky books for Halloween, but none more spooky than what happened in Joshua Tree.

Maybe we need metal detectors at the gate.

[cynthia23]

I don't think I have seen Virgin Spring--I know I should have, so I'll have to look at it.

Although this story seems more like something out of 'Breaking Bad'.

I haven't seen anything to indicate that dehydration is exceptionally painful or agonizing, although certainly horrible. I think the pressing issue is mental confusion. That, combined with drug use, would have been more than enough to precipitate violent, irrational behavior. The fact that there was a gun present would have accelerated irrational ideas (i.e. 'we've been out here days', 'no one is coming for us', 'there's no hope' 'life isn't worth living anyway') into active thoughts of murder/suicide. And to be fair to Orbeso, it is at least possible that Nguyen was the more irrational, despairing one and pressed him to do this. He seemed to be the more passive personality of the two.

And as Graboid has interestingly suggested, it really was irrational. Their situation was dire, but not hopeless. While I don't know if they could have survived more than a day, if they had, there was a chance of them signalling the planes. I think the thing that sticks in my craw about the media tossing about these phrases like 'mercy killing' or 'sympathetic' murder-suicide, is that they seem to be suggesting that Orbeso did the only thing he could do, or that it was the correct action. It wasn't.

Repeating myself, but I think it was drug use that caused this event. Episode from my stoner youth: I only took mushrooms twice, because though the first time was pleasant, the second time was absolutely horrific--aside from losing all sense of time or continuity, I also became paranoid, delusional, and despairing--the universe seemed to be a place of utter horror. Had there been a button to push to end all of existence, I would have pushed it. I shudder to think what I might have done with a gun. Or if I had been in a wilderness area! The next day I woke up with a terrible flu which lasted a full month--I'm convinced it was because my body had been under such tremendous stress. Drug trips can easily go very wrong. Combine that with guns, a hazardous summer hike that demands careful sober attentiveness, and, maybe, some underlying 'ambivalence' toward your fellow hiker-- you have a recipe for calamity.

[Sean]

But would death by dehydration in the desert be so different that the person would be screaming for a mercy killing?

Yes, because being in the hot desert your body cannot focus on slow burning of fat stores to cool you down and regulate critical systems. It has to use all the water and electrolytes in your body immediately. That means taking what it needs from the blood in your muscles and organs. Within hours you suffer spasms, cramps, and incapacitating fatigue. You lose brain function and start hallucinating. When your body can't cool itself anymore, you overheat and develop heatstroke. Then the throbbing headache begins and the nausea and vomiting. Basically your body begins shutting down in a very painful, rapid manner. Your only hope is to find some way to artificially cool yourself down, so that your body can work on burning fat stores.

[Graboid]

Looking at my topo map, it appears that it could well be more difficult while hiking in the area to avoid views of civilization than the reverse, especially with the trails that go North from the parking spot. (Referencing Garmin Mapsource National Parks Topo 24k)

I haven't hiked in that particular area so maybe someone who has can comment but, regardless of trail, it looks like a high point, NW view is nearly constantly available with minimal elevation effort. That seems relevant because it's the obvious move to make if one is lost but knows civilization is near.

I'm warming to the drug idea, especially after the mushroom account given above, but maybe it's just because it provides an explanation for seemingly inexplicably poor decisions.

Consulting my own experience with hikers, last year I was up near Charleston Peak in Nevada reconning an alternate route so I was off trail about 100ft above it. A returning hiker on the trail below caught my eye. Very shortly thereafter I heard loud scuffling sounds and observed a young, very fit looking woman starting to butt scoot down a very steep chute. I started to assess the range of possibilities in my head. That particular chute was nothing I would ever consider a possible route but I'm just a hiker bordering on somewhat of a mountaineer. Were her abilities and experience such that my intervention would just be embarrassing, or was she a noobie about to make a life-threatening mistake? I called out and initiated a conversation. Turns out she was inexperienced and had inexplicably lost the very, VERY visible trail. I told her to wait a minute and I would come down and show her the trail. Our conversation put her on the right path but she was gone when I got there a couple of minutes later. I encountered her much later on the descent and found out that she had been using her smartphone for Navigation and apparently just going in any direction she thought the phone was pointing her (extra ironic because the chute pointed in the opposite direction of her car down the other side of the ridgeline). This trail is utterly impossible to lose. I doubt drugs were involved but I find it very difficult to imagine the hypnotic mindset she was apparently caught up in. It would make it easier for me to understand if I found out she had been stoned.

[cynthia23]

Wow, you raise an interesting possibility I never thought about before, Graboid.

[Ed]

Although this story seems more like something out of 'Breaking Bad'.

Now that raises various possibilities! Were the Salamanca brothers in the area?

Reminds me of a night when we were driving up and down the highway between Tucson and the border, looking for a meetup location, where we would join a number of others from the LA area for a week of peakbagging in Arizona and across the border. Up and down because we could not identify the meetup location, so after concluding we had gone too far, we would turn around and drive the other way. After yo-yoing several times, there were flashing lights in the rear view mirror. A gruff law enforcement officer asked what we were doing, so we explained we were meeting some people in the desert. After looking us over, he gave us an amused look, and explained that their task that night was following a tip that a vehicle full of drugs had crossed the border, and was planning to meet their counter-parties somewhere in the desert near the highway.

It was a great trip. No drugs for this clean-cut group, but the liquor flowed freely. One night two people, Earl and Barbara, fell into a roaring campfire. Independently of each other, both holding their bottles. No need for a mercy killing, the rest of us had enough sobriety to pull them out of the fire quickly.

Graboid's story is shocking, though not so surprising these days. I can vaguely remember the trail from many years ago, and yes I remember it as absolutely clear. However, we are talking about two people, not one, and they do not seem to have been complete novices. So I agree that we need something else, such as Cynthia's drugs theory.

[Wildhorse]

Graboid, I believe your assessment of the terrain is right. I have wandered off trail north of maze after misreading a trail sign. I think that the view of civilization was one of the clues that I was going the wrong way. But it will be interesting to read reports on this later after others have expired the area. To me, maze is boring and so is the area to the north. I have been unsure of where I was many times in Joshua Tree. It has many areas that are worth exploring and getting lost in. Maze is not one, except for the great nolinas. Being lost there is like being lost on a miniature golf course. Of course, after taking hallucinogens, put put could turn into a terrifying place and be very confusing.

[Ed]

Following Graboid, I plotted the Final Location as a waypoint on my old NG Topo! California. It is remarkably close to Joshua Tree, and while the view may be blocked by a low rise in some directions, it looks like JT can be clearly seen in most directions, looking North to NorthWest. I checked that both by using the 3D Viewer, and by drawing routes down to JT and generating an elevation profile. Higher ground to the east and south, roughly level to the west, definitely downhill to the NW.