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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve been following this thread with interest since the beginning but may have to bow out. It’s all just so horrible. If this is what happened (dad unable to push on - whether heat stroke or toxic algae or aliens or whatever - and then mom trying to save them all on her own) they were truly in [b]an impossible situation[/b]. You can’t leave the infant behind with her incapacitated dad. You’re too weak to carry the baby out and uphill yourself. You can’t sit down next to them and do nothing. Just awful.[/quote] NP here. I think that's just it. People are arguing that it's unimaginable for the mom to leave her baby (to defend one theory or another) aren't realizing that in a situation so intensely stressful, physical and emotionally--and perhaps disorienting with the onset of heat stroke--the mother may well have taken off on her own as the best shot she thought she had, [u]either[/u] to find help for herself only, [u]or[/u] help for her baby/husband/dog. Some things that could have made their hike (even downhill part) take even longer than expected (resulting in their uphill climb being pushed later into the heat of the day?): 1. The baby's presence would have delayed them a lot, even beyond being a load to carry: Few 1-yr olds will be content to stay put in a carrier for 2, 3, or more hours straight. The parents might have had to interrupt their hike as she got fussy, to take her out of the carrier for a bit. Even just giving her a drink would involve a couple of minutes' pause. These breaks could have happened repeatedly in the course of a several-hour hike, adding a lot of extra time even from the initial point of the hike. The baby may have even needed a diaper change that they did on the trail. (Seems inconvenient to do on a trail, but if a kid is smelly/uncomfortable, parents would do a change quickly and make it work.) As the child got more and more uncomfortable in the heat, the need to calm the baby may have also caused them to pause more. 2. Since the trail does go down by the river, it's possible that the family may have tried to cool off, or let the dog cool off, in the river. Even if they weren't harmed by toxic algae blooms (see #4 below) this again would slow them down and throw off their intended timing. 3. The mines may be ruled out as a cause of fumes/death, but is it possible that the couple were curious to find mines and explore a little? Because the mines are disused and likely overgrown, maybe the couple didn't locate any (because in there they could have cooled down, I suppose), but wasted some time looking for them. Other conditions that I don't think have been teased out as much as they could be: 4. I don't know the details behind the toxic algae theory, but I suppose one factor arguing against this has been that the family had water in their packs. But it's not hard to imagine that maybe one or all of the party drank some: --(i) maybe the dog did go in the river, and drank it (if a hot canine came near a cool-looking river, wouldn't it make a beeline for it, and of course drink?); maybe it started to get ill after a short while, needing carrying (it'd explain why the dog was right near the dad) and thus adding to the couple's strain; and/or --(ii) the couple decided to conserve their own water by taking drinks from the river. --(iii) they decided to cool off the baby in the river (as in #2 above), and in the process, the baby got some water in its mouth, perhaps inadvertently or perhaps as an attempt to get the baby to get hydrated/cooled. I'd not let my 1-yr old drink from a river, but they could have been unaware of the dangers, felt the natural location made it relatively pure--especially if they felt that they'd desperately need to keep hydrated and that this need would justify the risks. (This, in fact, could have led all of them to drink from it, as in (ii). 5. Someone upthread mentioned that the mom might have been breastfeeding and therefore could have been more dehydrated. Many moms do breastfeed a child older than 1 yr old. This would have also delayed their timing. I am wondering whether the possibility that they went into the river at some point is so compelling for the investigators that they are not eliminating the possibility that toxic algae exacerbated/contributed to the heat stroke. An article I briefly skimmed online mentioned that in the past, closing trails because of potential algae, or even just warnings of it, makes people steer clear and local businesses get upset if it's unproven. So the authorities could be wanting to see whether it's a contributing factor but being cautious.[/quote]
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