Dead Body Found in Santa Rosa Mountains

[Cy Kaicener]

His name was Rudolfo Lizarraga. I googled his name and found out that he was a runner who placed 11 th in the Perot Systems High Country Challenge Trail Run on Sept. 16 th 2007 with a time of 50.31 minutes for the 10K
http://highcountrytrailrun.com

[cynthia23]

Wait a minute, am I just imagining it, or is Phydeux secretly hinting I'm a conspiracy theorist?

But come on Dude, the guy WAS found dead and half-eaten. That's a little disconcerting. And people do die on Skyline on a pretty much yearly basis, with much more frequent injuries and rescues (I think there was at least ten or fifteen last year.) Not being a statistician I can't calculate the odds of death on Skyline or the Santa Rosas, but the one thing is that clear is that, unlike a trip on Aeroflot to Kazahkstan, you can take steps to improve your odds of a safe landing.

It's true, though, that we don't want to blow this thing outta proportion. I personally would prefer being eaten alive to, say, a weekend at the Morongo Casino.

And it's also true that we don't want to be such Nervous Nellies that we ruin our own enjoyment of the wilderness. But then again--even in my limited experience, I have seen so many people doing so much egregiously unsafe and flat-out crazy stuff, that I have become convinced of two things 1. You can't emphasize basic safety rules (cell phones, safety plans, etc.) enough, and they bear nearly endless repeating, even to the point where it sounds boring and paranoid, and even repeating this basic stuff to the people on this board, because we all constantly forget them otherwise (myself included.) 2. There must be guardian angels, cuz nothing else can explain how the vast majority of stupidos (myself definitely included) somehow manage to stumble through the wilderness and return alive ....

And now, I must go listen to the transmissions from my tooth fillings ....

[cynthia23]

P.S. Cy--thanks for your google info on the dead man. That's troubling news--I had assumed the man was homeless, druggie, etc--someone who didn't know what he was doing. It sounds like the man was an experienced athlete and hiker, so whatever happened to him is something we should know about ...

[AlanK]

It's true, though, that we don't want to blow this thing outta proportion. I personally would prefer being eaten alive to, say, a weekend at the Morongo Casino.

Great line!

[phydeux]

Wait a minute, am I just imagining it, or is Phydeux secretly hinting I'm a conspiracy theorist?

You DO come off as somewhat paranoid of the outdoors. Maybe you'd feel hiking on city streets, maybe something like walking though South Central Los Angeles at night? Don't worry, the 'open' nature of the internet allows for rampant speculation and the spread of wildly innaccurate rumors, rather than good data.

As for the body in the Santa Rosa's, the info available on the internet seems vague, and internet BBs like this can generate some wildly speculative senarios about what happened. There's just not a lot of info availabe to determine if the guy was unprepared or, even if prepared and experienced, the odds were not in his favor that day. To put it in perspective, you've got to rememeber that every time you go out in your car, no matter how well prepared you are, there is some risk you'll die in a bad traffic accident.

Lots of the incidents can be explained through simple lack of preparation (Skyline resuces are good examples), cutting the margin of error too close (the guy who died just NW of the Tram while throughhiking a few years ago) OR simple lack of experience (that convention couple who got lost on a day trip up the tram). The way I look at it, the a lot of the Skyline rescues were caused by a lack of planning, knowledge, and conditioning; a cellphone didn't help those folks, they were already in trouble when they used their phone to call 911.


It's true, though, that we don't want to blow this thing outta proportion. I personally would prefer being eaten alive to, say, a weekend at the Morongo Casino.

So true!

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[Cy Kaicener]

I found this link for a half marathon by Rudolfo Lizarraga in Arizona on Dec 9th
His age was given as 30 from Chandler Arizona. Is there another guy with the same name? He came in 29th with a time of 1.29:10 There is something strange here. He was identified from his wallet as being from La Quinta - aged 45.
http://www.raceplaceevents.com/fbm07res.htm