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Thread: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

  1. #31

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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    I don't want to sound like I'm blaming the victims, but in most cases like this it seems like it stems from specific unwise actions that people take, usually because people who have grown up in the relative safety of suburban or urban world, don't know how much they don't know about nature (or to quote Donald Rumsfeld--"unknown unknowns".) Some well known examples are the German family that got lost near Death Valley trying to drive a rental car over very difficult terrain and died of dehydration, the young man (told in the book and movie "Into the Wild") that wanted to live on his own in the wilderness near Fairbanks but died of starvation or maybe poisoning from eating local berrys, the guy (documented in "Grizzly Man") that wanted to live peacefully with the grizzly bears in Alaska and along with a girlfriend ended getting mauled and eaten by a grizzly, or more recently the young man that fell into a boiling highly acidic pool in Yellowstone taking a picture and was fully dissolved before he could be pulled out. All those are particularly egregious examples, but there are less obvious ones, and ones that could have gone bad, but the people got very lucky. At some level I blame the "idyllic nature" mindset that seems to see the natural world a peaceful harmonious place, rather than a harsh world full of things that want to eat you and things afraid of being eaten by you.

    Its pretty much impossible to protect people from themselves, and at some level I hope this instance wasn't the result of bad choices, but people that want to venture into the wilderness should really ensure that they are prepared.

  2. #32
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    Yep, there are all kind of dramatic stories that people make movies about, but there were also the ones I remember locally every single summer, winter, fall, and spring - dying in avalanches or falling through ice snowmobiling or skiing, drowning in late Spring or early summer runoff, rattlesnake bites, Boy Scouts being hit by lightning seemingly every summer, people wandering off under clear Autumn skies in shorts and T-shirts and getting caught in a sudden unanticipated blizzard. I was out looking for a couple of those kind of people just a few years ago along with some backcountry rangers. Too late, they had already died from hypothermia just a few hours after they set out under a warm blue sky. I even used to carry an extra jacket and raincoat in my pack on Fall color high country walks, cause certain unprepared hikers wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't.

    But statistically, the wilderness is a safer place than a lot of urban neighborhoods. With a few exceptions, you mainly need to be aware of just what's ahead of you, and not constantly looking over your shoulder. The extreme fire risk conditions of the present impose a whole other level of risk to both scenarios. And it's proving to be a hard task convincing younger friends that they can't just go camp or hike anywhere they wish and think they can outrun something like that. You'd think that people choosing sites and building homes would at least give it some serious forethought; but they seldom do. Nobody likes property rules; but either it's going to come to that or they'll keep dying. That very canyon which is the subject of this thread has seen catastrophic burns over and over again, even in my own lifetime. That doesn't bother the poppy or lupine bloom, but it sure as heck can make total BBQ of human-related things periodically inevitable.

  3. #33

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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    given how many cattle ponds I've swam in
    Here in New England I once visited a side of the road gorge in Chester, Mass. many times over a period of probably three years. As far as I knew upstream was the side of a small mountain and nothing else. Always drank the water straight out of the stream. One time I decided to hike upstream and see if there was another small gorge up there. Came up to a clearing with a fence around it. It was a cow pasture and the stream ran right through it. Visited the gorge many more times but from then on always carried a full water bottle.

  4. #34
    Land-Scapegrace Heroique's Avatar
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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    Below are brief excerpts from recent reporting, casting doubt on homicide, algae blooms, and CO from abandoned gold mines as possible causes of death:

    "Mariposa County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said: ‘… we’re no longer considering homicide as a cause of death.’ "

    "The California Department of Public Health said it did not know of any human deaths from ‘recreational or drinking water exposure to cyanobacterial toxin’ although some animals have been killed by algae."

    "Dr. Mike Nelson, professor of mining engineering at University of Utah, has cast doubt on the theory that CO emissions from an old gold mine were possibly to blame for the deaths. […] Nelson explained that gold mines are not known to produce CO, and even if the gas were present, it would have gone up into the air. He also noted that the family were found outdoors and not in an enclosed space where exposure to carbon monoxide could be lethal."


    Since toxicology reports take weeks to finish, I’m sure additional possible causes of death will surface, including bad ones like aliens. I'm thinking the dog necropsy would finish much sooner than human toxicology tests, and provide significant clues.

  5. #35

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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    Quote Originally Posted by abruzzi View Post

    Its pretty much impossible to protect people from themselves, and at some level I hope this instance wasn't the result of bad choices, but people that want to venture into the wilderness should really ensure that they are prepared.
    Agreed, however Hite's Cove ain't exactly wilderness.
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  6. #36
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    There are popular trails all around there, the one in question probably being the easiest right off Hwy 140. It's just downriver from El Portal, where many visitors to Yosemite Valley stay. Of course, until tests come back and any hypothetical toxicology is resolved, it's impossible to rule out foul play in the sense of deliberate poisoning. Stranger things have occurred right around there in the past, as anyone familiar with the relatively recent history of El Portal recognizes, or with Mariposa itself. Unlikely, but again, who knows? Gotta wait for results.

  7. #37

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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    Quote Originally Posted by John Kasaian View Post
    Agreed, however Hite's Cove ain't exactly wilderness.
    Yeah, well, I actually have no idea where it is. I’m assuming California?

  8. #38
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    It's in California just outside and slightly downriver of Yosemite National Park, specifically Yosemite Valley itself, which is a scenic location known world-wide. There are many very rugged and relatively inaccessible deep canyons elsewhere in the range, even within the overall boundaries of greater Yosemite Park itself. But in this case, the location in question is quite close to where thousands and thousands of visitors enter the developed section of the Park by highway each year. Take a little hike in the morning, get back in your car, and five minutes later you're having lunch at a nearby resort restaurant. But it just didn't work out that way this time.

  9. #39

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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    If this happened in Arizona, I would suspect #1 heat exhaustion and a distant #2 aggressive bees. But I don't think there are similar bee issues in Merced CA.

    I believe it was hot on the day, but not off-scale hot for the area, so hopefully they were aware enough of the heat to not stay out in the sun all day. Bee swarm attacks are rare even in AZ, but angry bees did kill a rock climber and his dog in an off-trail area in Southern Arizona several years ago.

    The death of the dog is quite peculiar and might suggest some kind of toxicity, who knows whether that means bad water or bad lunch meat. Dogs aren't wild animals, but they are animals and don't have the same overestimation of abilities that humans may. Unless some event (heat, bad food or water) incapacitated the people, and the dog refused to leave them and was then itself overcome by heat exhaustion or some such cause itself.

    Edit: I really don't think it would be bees in Merced, but also to clarify, if it were bees or similar, the medical examiners would likely have figured that out quickly.

  10. #40
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Deadly hike----Haz-Mat the cause?

    Wild bees do sometimes hive in hollows of old oaks in the region; but those blue oaks are further down, and the vegetation in that particular area is quite different. I've had my own unforgettable encounters with wild bees up in coastal Oregon rain forest. Sometimes they try to take over my huge exterior squirrel-cage darkroom fan here, and I have to run it on high for up to three days just to discourage them. Determined. Little bits of chopped up bees land on my darkroom sink, and once and awhile a stunned one is still stumbling around in it.

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