What happened to this California family?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read a lot about this case and it seems to me that a bunch of circumstances have come together with tragic results.

Inexperienced hikers who overestimated their abilities and perhaps did not plan properly, brutal temperatures, perhaps something unforeseen like taking the wrong trail or the dog not being able to walk and needing to carried. And from then on things went south rapidly as often happens in similar cases.

The trail being closed certainly complicates things but it may really just be to keep people from snooping around and possibly getting into trouble themselves.

The sheriff said that the family was well prepared for the hike. You just can't accept that something happened to this family, that they weren't bad parents making bad decisions that you disapprove of.

They were not well prepared evidenced by the fact that they attempted a very strenuous trail with no shade, during extreme weather, with a baby and a dog.

Their bodies lay on the trail for two days. Nobody who has any sort of experience of hiking in this area, or has prepared by researching the conditions, was going anywhere near that trail.

You are making a lot of assumptions here.

You have totally lost the plot over this thread and have now taken to insulting other posters. Let’s wait and see what the investigations conclude. But for now I am out.

And I would suggest you think carefully about how you speak to others.

I chose my words carefully. And I only call out the people making baseless assumptions and criticizing the family over those assumptions.

Agree that you should wait and hear the results of the investigation - thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read a lot about this case and it seems to me that a bunch of circumstances have come together with tragic results.

Inexperienced hikers who overestimated their abilities and perhaps did not plan properly, brutal temperatures, perhaps something unforeseen like taking the wrong trail or the dog not being able to walk and needing to carried. And from then on things went south rapidly as often happens in similar cases.

The trail being closed certainly complicates things but it may really just be to keep people from snooping around and possibly getting into trouble themselves.

So many assumptions. Some very wrong.

In my post above? Very few assumptions really except for the unforeseen event. And there may not even have been an unforeseen event if they just overestimated there abilities by too much.

Please cite data for:
inexperienced hikers
overestimated abilities
poor planning
temperatures for their planned hike

This evidence is all readily available. Go read the Websleuths thread.

No "evidence" - just baseless assumptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are people fixated on the water? Nobody is saying they died of dehydration. Heat stroke is about core body temperature - independent of how much water they did or did not drink.

Dehydration would exacerbate heat stroke. You need to sweat to keep cool (except for women, I don't know what they do.)

[Anonymous]

Oh stop policing other people’s comments about the parents. Their family isn’t combing through a 100+ page thread for clues. If you’re that disturbed by people who take the parents to task, go read one of the hundreds of other threads here.

[Anonymous]

If she was still breastfeeding still that could have been a factor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are people fixated on the water? Nobody is saying they died of dehydration. Heat stroke is about core body temperature - independent of how much water they did or did not drink.

Dehydration would exacerbate heat stroke. You need to sweat to keep cool (except for women, I don't know what they do.)

Dehydration and heat stroke are linked. Also, one of the symptoms of heat stroke is extreme thirst, so heat stroke combined with water readily available is not a combo you see very often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read a lot about this case and it seems to me that a bunch of circumstances have come together with tragic results.

Inexperienced hikers who overestimated their abilities and perhaps did not plan properly, brutal temperatures, perhaps something unforeseen like taking the wrong trail or the dog not being able to walk and needing to carried. And from then on things went south rapidly as often happens in similar cases.

The trail being closed certainly complicates things but it may really just be to keep people from snooping around and possibly getting into trouble themselves.

The sheriff said that the family was well prepared for the hike. You just can't accept that something happened to this family, that they weren't bad parents making bad decisions that you disapprove of.

Making a bad decision doesn't make a person bad. ALL people make bad decisions at various points in their lives, it's just that circumstances sometimes exacerbate bad decisions into tragic outcomes. If you truly believe that only bad people make bad decisions or bad decisions imply a person is bad, I encourage you to work on shifting your mindset as that can really negatively affect your life and relationships.

The big question is...is it a bad decision to make baseless assumptions about a family only to criticize them? Or maybe that makes you a bad person?

Critical analysis of the decisions and circumstances surrounding a tragedy also contribute to understanding and learning from the tragedy, hopefully to help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read a lot about this case and it seems to me that a bunch of circumstances have come together with tragic results.

Inexperienced hikers who overestimated their abilities and perhaps did not plan properly, brutal temperatures, perhaps something unforeseen like taking the wrong trail or the dog not being able to walk and needing to carried. And from then on things went south rapidly as often happens in similar cases.

The trail being closed certainly complicates things but it may really just be to keep people from snooping around and possibly getting into trouble themselves.

The sheriff said that the family was well prepared for the hike. You just can't accept that something happened to this family, that they weren't bad parents making bad decisions that you disapprove of.

Making a bad decision doesn't make a person bad. ALL people make bad decisions at various points in their lives, it's just that circumstances sometimes exacerbate bad decisions into tragic outcomes. If you truly believe that only bad people make bad decisions or bad decisions imply a person is bad, I encourage you to work on shifting your mindset as that can really negatively affect your life and relationships.

The big question is...is it a bad decision to make baseless assumptions about a family only to criticize them? Or maybe that makes you a bad person?

Critical analysis of the decisions and circumstances surrounding a tragedy also contribute to understanding and learning from the tragedy, hopefully to help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Oh? Critical analysis means "reinterpreting" statements from officials (family was well prepared for the hike; the forest is closed due to unknown hazards that killed the family) to mean the opposite of what they said?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are people fixated on the water? Nobody is saying they died of dehydration. Heat stroke is about core body temperature - independent of how much water they did or did not drink.

Dehydration would exacerbate heat stroke. You need to sweat to keep cool (except for women, I don't know what they do.)

Dehydration and heat stroke are linked. Also, one of the symptoms of heat stroke is extreme thirst, so heat stroke combined with water readily available is not a combo you see very often.

You're right however there are also multiple examples of people who've died of heat stroke after rationing their own water to give it to other people in the party. With this party having two more vulnerable members who couldn't drink it from the water bladder themselves, it's plausible that the 2 adults were consciously rationing their own water intake and also reached a point where they weren't able to give the last of the water to the most vulnerable members of their party. It's unclear without knowing how much water they brought and how much was left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read a lot about this case and it seems to me that a bunch of circumstances have come together with tragic results.

Inexperienced hikers who overestimated their abilities and perhaps did not plan properly, brutal temperatures, perhaps something unforeseen like taking the wrong trail or the dog not being able to walk and needing to carried. And from then on things went south rapidly as often happens in similar cases.

The trail being closed certainly complicates things but it may really just be to keep people from snooping around and possibly getting into trouble themselves.

The sheriff said that the family was well prepared for the hike. You just can't accept that something happened to this family, that they weren't bad parents making bad decisions that you disapprove of.

Making a bad decision doesn't make a person bad. ALL people make bad decisions at various points in their lives, it's just that circumstances sometimes exacerbate bad decisions into tragic outcomes. If you truly believe that only bad people make bad decisions or bad decisions imply a person is bad, I encourage you to work on shifting your mindset as that can really negatively affect your life and relationships.

The big question is...is it a bad decision to make baseless assumptions about a family only to criticize them? Or maybe that makes you a bad person?

Critical analysis of the decisions and circumstances surrounding a tragedy also contribute to understanding and learning from the tragedy, hopefully to help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Oh? Critical analysis means "reinterpreting" statements from officials (family was well prepared for the hike; the forest is closed due to unknown hazards that killed the family) to mean the opposite of what they said?

There are multiple people posting on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The theories on this thread are now running in circles because posters are not reading prior posts. And how the heck did gluten free donuts enter the mix? I don’t have the will or fortitude to sift through for the answer.

because absolute stupidity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are people fixated on the water? Nobody is saying they died of dehydration. Heat stroke is about core body temperature - independent of how much water they did or did not drink.

Dehydration would exacerbate heat stroke. You need to sweat to keep cool (except for women, I don't know what they do.)

Dehydration and heat stroke are linked. Also, one of the symptoms of heat stroke is extreme thirst, so heat stroke combined with water readily available is not a combo you see very often.

So curious what your expertise is because that is not true. They probably didn't assume they were dying and were conserving some water. In these situations, water is hope. To use it all means you are in dire straits. People will deny the danger they are in right up to dying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have read a lot about this case and it seems to me that a bunch of circumstances have come together with tragic results.

Inexperienced hikers who overestimated their abilities and perhaps did not plan properly, brutal temperatures, perhaps something unforeseen like taking the wrong trail or the dog not being able to walk and needing to carried. And from then on things went south rapidly as often happens in similar cases.

The trail being closed certainly complicates things but it may really just be to keep people from snooping around and possibly getting into trouble themselves.

The sheriff said that the family was well prepared for the hike. You just can't accept that something happened to this family, that they weren't bad parents making bad decisions that you disapprove of.

3L (that's roughly 3 quarts for the metric impaired) of water. That's not enough for the two adults and a dog. Dogs are terribly inefficient at drinking.

The sheriff knows what the family had with them. That hasn't been disclosed. There's a lot of information that the public doesn't have. It's something to keep in mind while speculating.

Right! I keep hearing that they only had 3L of water. Does anyone have an actual cite for that? All I've heard - from the early articles - were that the family was 'well prepared' for the hike, and that they had some water left in the bladder style water container. The latter was mentioned in the context of sending that remaining water out for testing.

People are ASSUMING that 1) the bladder is a 3L camelback, and 2) that there was no other water brought along. I've never seen a statement from law enforcement that the bladder was their ONLY water - just that they had one, and it had some water left in it. There may have been several other large containers, probably empty (because they drank it all). We truly don't know what they had with them.

This is almost irrelevant as they likely died of heatstroke rather than dehydration. If they had enough cold water to submerge in then they may have survived.

My understanding is that the humidity was low, so you could get some beneift from evaporative cooling. Getting your temperature down would keep you lucid which seems important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The theories on this thread are now running in circles because posters are not reading prior posts. And how the heck did gluten free donuts enter the mix? I don’t have the will or fortitude to sift through for the answer.

because absolute stupidity.

A donut shop owner near where they lived was quoted as saying mom often stopped by with baby to buy a gluten-free, sugar-free donut. People theorized that she had an eating disorder or some other issue.

[Anonymous]

I'm coming into this late, I know, but was the dog leashed? What compelled the dog to stay? Wouldn't the dog have wandered off instead of staying with the family? It also seems strange to me that they all would have succumbed to heat stroke at the same time. Not everyone's bodies reacts to extreme temperature at the exact same time. The mom was found only 90 feet away. Let's say dad was beginning to suffer from heat stroke, sat down with the baby in tow and with the dog beside him, and the mom was well enough to try to go get help. She only made it an extremely short distance before she succumbed too. I guess it is plausible they were both already in the later stages of heat stroke, he sat down, she started to walk to get help or try to get to the car, and she too became overcome by it and died a short distance away. I am starting to think this was gaseous and related to some sort of freak CO2 poisoning. The way they were found seems like whatever this was was acute and happened too fast for them to react or get help. I really hope toxicology helps sheds some light on this