What happened to this California family?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

This is literally an original point. (I think.)

Doesn't GPS require service? They had no service.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

This is literally an original point. (I think.)

Doesn't GPS require service? They had no service.

Maybe they took photos along the hike. Those might give a clue. Any unsent composed text messages might be a clue too.

[Anonymous]

Yesterday LE said they left for their hike "mid-morning" which is an update on the family having been seen driving in the direction of the trail at 7:45. Maybe they have geo locator data from the phone or perhaps they went out for breakfast and that info is now known to LE. It was in the 90s by 9am and went up significantly after that. Regardless of apps or temps at their home, they would have felt the heat when they got out of the truck. They would have seen the tree cover had burned down (Jon had hiked the trail or part of it prior to the fire). It would have been too hot for the dog and 12 month old before they started.

Source please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

Sure, put toxicology aside. Likely nothing to see there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So I just read this entire thread, start-to-finish. At the beginning, I was in the mass asphyxiation camp, like a gas or carbon monoxide, because I assumed the hikers were on an easy hike, close to their car and were overcome with a freak environmental toxin.

Then, as a few more facts were released, I moved firmly into the heat stroke camp. The fact that the sheriff thought they were near the end of an 8 mile hike. The extremely difficult terrain and elevation, combined with the heat of the day. Learning more about heart stroke and how it can come on suddenly and lead to delirium. I think that a number of plausible scenarios could lead to all 4 of them succumbing close to each other.

I wonder how many pictures they'll find on their phones (assuming they used the dad's phone to take some). I wonder if it will reveal more clues.

I think it's likely that a series of mistakes and bad judgment calls all resulted in a tragic situation. I'm not victim-blaming here. We are only human.

The most reasonable post in this entire thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

This is literally an original point. (I think.)

Doesn't GPS require service? They had no service.

GPS just requires a clear view of the sky. And sometimes not even that. But it will have to log and not update your location history until later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

I'm guessing the warrant was to get that data. Especially if he downloaded his planned route and recorded it with AllTrails.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

This is literally an original point. (I think.)

Yes, this would be actual data to help narrow down what happened.

Instead of speculating…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

This is literally an original point. (I think.)

Doesn'tAll Trails.

re service? They had no service.

GPS just requires a clear view of the sky. And sometimes not even that. But it will have to log and not update your location history until later.

Phones have such rich sensor data, it really only needs sporadic GPS synchronization to accurately record movement in 3 dimensions. IPhone record some of this data by default and there are apps that may record more. Certainly if he were recording his hike using all trails, they will have a very precise record of their movements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I just read this entire thread, start-to-finish. At the beginning, I was in the mass asphyxiation camp, like a gas or carbon monoxide, because I assumed the hikers were on an easy hike, close to their car and were overcome with a freak environmental toxin.

Then, as a few more facts were released, I moved firmly into the heat stroke camp. The fact that the sheriff thought they were near the end of an 8 mile hike. The extremely difficult terrain and elevation, combined with the heat of the day. Learning more about heart stroke and how it can come on suddenly and lead to delirium. I think that a number of plausible scenarios could lead to all 4 of them succumbing close to each other.

I wonder how many pictures they'll find on their phones (assuming they used the dad's phone to take some). I wonder if it will reveal more clues.

I think it's likely that a series of mistakes and bad judgment calls all resulted in a tragic situation. I'm not victim-blaming here. We are only human.

The most reasonable post in this entire thread.

Nah, this stuff has all been mentioned before.

[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.

Certainly.

But critically analyzing nonfactual assumptions isn’t helpful at all though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Toxicology aside, I think they biggest clues in this investigation are going to come from the GPS data on Jonathon's phone. What time did they start the hike? Which direction did they go? How long did it take? How long did they linger at the river? Was there any wandering or doubling back on the trail? How fast were they moving? All of those questions could be answered.

This is literally an original point. (I think.)

Doesn't GPS require service? They had no service.

GPS and on board sensors do not require cell service. Some phones and configurations will record some subset of position data on the device for some period of time (days usually). There are also apps that will record granular position data on the device if they're open. So it's a big "it depends". I haven't seen anything official indicating Android vs IPhone though its clear he regularly uses an app that is intended to record position data while hiking.

[Anonymous]

*used =/

[Anonymous]

News said they ruled out algae and mine gases.

Most plausible is heat stroke. No need to go on sweltering hike to kill yourselves in nature.

[Anonymous]

Really, if they wanted to kill themselves, sleep medicine would've been easier. Or jumping off a cliff. So it must be heat stroke. Unless one of them poisoned rest in remote area where they knew escape unlikely. It's a possibility, but I doubt it.