Brave woman hiker's last journal entries finally revealed
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Anonymous
| Yeah I don't get plunking your butt down for 28 days and not moving. At some point you realize the SOS texts didn't send and you get up and make movement to find people or a trail or a road. It's the AT, even in Maine, unless it were the 100 Mile Wilderness, she would have eventually run into something. |
Anonymous
| I took a compass and map class at REI recently. While I can utilize a topo map better than I could before, you still have to know where you are when you got lost in order for it to do any good. And isn't one of the things hikers are told to do of they get lost is to stay put and wait to be found? If you keep wandering around you might wander into territory that's already been searched and won't be searched again. Hug a tree, right? But that only helps if someone knows to go looking for you. If she were truly solo then she'd need to keep moving. |
Anonymous
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I feel bad for her and her family.
But jeez, July in Maine? I have been hiking in the NE for decades, since I was a little kid, and it's densely populated enough, and mild enough, that you could follow a stream and end up finding a town in 5-10 miles or so. Looks like, from the map, she could have followed a stream and ended up on route 16 or 27 within a few miles. NO idea why she hunkered down instead. She survived long enough that I don't think she must have been malnourished, dehydrated, or anything like that to begin with. |
Anonymous
The theory is that he died from eating wild potato seeds or "grass peas". They were labeled as safe in a survival guide he had, but they can cause a permanent paralysis and would have left him unable to escape to safety or survive. It's pretty sad stuff: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-chris-mccandless-died |
Anonymous
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You don't swim or hike alone. Now you know why
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Anonymous
But standard advice is to stay put and let searchers find you. |
Anonymous
For 28 days!? What what point do you say "hmmm this isn't working" |
Anonymous
Please reveal the acceptable age range for thru hiking the AT. |
Anonymous
| Old and stupid is very harsh. She survived 28 days on her own. I think that's pretty good for a woman in her 60s. She was too inexperienced, just like Cheryl Strayed. People should truly prepare to do any strenuous or remote activities. |
Anonymous
That dude pissed me the fuck off. I hated that book. |
Anonymous
| 66 isn't OLD old. She was probably injured. God, you people are such assholes. |
Anonymous
The reports I've read of the incident do not provide evidence of this. They suggest she went off trail to pee, got lost / couldn't find it, then went in search of higher ground to try and get her help text to go through, and then at some point set up the camp where she was eventually found. The reports suggest she was at that camp a long time. They also imply she had a history of navigational issues on trail. Like many of these situations it appears to be a series of compounding small bad decisions that ultimately led to tragedy. |
Anonymous
I think if she was injured she would have put it in her diary, right? I think she was just helplessly unprepared for the situation she was in and probably shouldn't have been hiking alone. |
Anonymous
if average life expectancy is around 80, then that makes 40 roughly middle age. I think we can agree 66 is on the downward slide toward the end of one's life, so yes, it is in fact old. |
Anonymous
No. But I think we can all agree that people that hike regularly are in better shape on average and probably live well past "average" life expectancy and can be incredibly robust at 66. |