Anonymous wrote:Climate change played a role with the dead trees and high temps. Even if it's summer and hot but you forgot to check the weather, you'd expect temps to reach what's typical, like 90 or 95, not over 100 degrees. Parents with babies are already weakened from sleep deprivation. Parenting a baby is hard. They may have been wanting to relive their past adventures, and were eager to take the baby with them. Also, you have to consider that emotional stress played a factor. When the first victim fell ill, that's an enormous stressor to the heart. Increased respiration from stress alone can dehydrate you. Stress probably sped up the process.

On that exposed trail even 90 degrees was probably too hot for the dog and baby.

Climate change played a role with the dead trees and high temps. Even if it's summer and hot but you forgot to check the weather, you'd expect temps to reach what's typical, like 90 or 95, not over 100 degrees. Parents with babies are already weakened from sleep deprivation. Parenting a baby is hard. They may have been wanting to relive their past adventures, and were eager to take the baby with them. Also, you have to consider that emotional stress played a factor. When the first victim fell ill, that's an enormous stressor to the heart. Increased respiration from stress alone can dehydrate you. Stress probably sped up the process.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on of the Arizona posters who posted 300 pages ago that it was inconceivable to me to leave on a bike like that so late in the morning especially with a dog and baby. I think people around the world are really going to have to adjust their expectations about what they can do given the rising global temperatures. Stay safe everyone. Mother Nature has a real wicked side.

Yeah, WTAF were they thinking?? And why didn’t they turn back way sooner? I would have attempted that hike with a dog and a baby in ideal conditions. Sounds mean but this seems like sort of a Darwin Award to me.

I think they took the wrong trail. The trail forks. One is an easy road the other a death trap. They weren’t stupid they were lost.

This is also what I've thought all along. The S-L trail isn't even on AllTrails and I'm sure that the area is not exactly well marked. I personally think that the beginnings of heat stroke were what caused them to attempt to go up the S-L trail in the first place. Turning around and re-tracing their steps might have taken longer, but there was at least the possibility of some kind of cover down by the river. Not saying it would have ultimately been helpful. Maybe it would just have been the first death by toxic algae experienced by people instead of this version.

I grew up in Colorado and live in Oregon now and have a ton of hiking experience in total wilderness as well as hiking in more curated areas. It is really easy to over-estimate your ability and/or under-estimate the difficulties presented by terrain and climate. As climate change progresses, this has just been getting worse and worse. I think we can expect to see this happen more and more as things heat up and inexperienced people are put in situations they can't deal with.

Anonymous wrote:It doesn't take 3 months to determine it was heat exhaustion.

This is one of the most stupid posts on this topic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on of the Arizona posters who posted 300 pages ago that it was inconceivable to me to leave on a bike like that so late in the morning especially with a dog and baby. I think people around the world are really going to have to adjust their expectations about what they can do given the rising global temperatures. Stay safe everyone. Mother Nature has a real wicked side.

Yeah, WTAF were they thinking?? And why didn’t they turn back way sooner? I would have attempted that hike with a dog and a baby in ideal conditions. Sounds mean but this seems like sort of a Darwin Award to me.

I think they took the wrong trail. The trail forks. One is an easy road the other a death trap. They weren’t stupid they were lost.

Anonymous wrote:The Twitter thread says it was in the 70s when they started out. Maybe they didn’t know how hot it was going to get?

It also said the app he used to find the hike did not show the total distance or the elevation change. Now that is what I find absolutely ridiculous. You don’t leave for a hike without at least knowing how far you’re going. And every hiking tool I’ve used shows elevation change.

A million pages ago someone mentioned there was a similarly named, less intense trail in the area. I wonder if they got the trails mixed up?

Probably all of these things really. They didn’t know how hot it was going to get. They didn’t know how long the hike was going to take (a lot longer than expected). They didn’t know that the path had no shade because of previous forest fires wiping out most of the trees. And perhaps they took a wrong turn and ended up on the very intense and longer trail that was steep with no shade. They were both overconfident and inexperienced and it lead to a tragic outcome.

If you hike down into the Grand Canyon from the much more developed South Rim, there are numerous signs warning people about heat exhaustion and dehydration. Reverse hikes (i.e. uphill on the way back) can be extremely dangerous, because most people have difficulty truly gauging their level of exhaustion as well as how challenging the same terrain would be on the uphill.

There have been a few stories in the past year about the numbers of inexperienced hikers that have taken to the trails during COVID. I'm an avid hiker with a wilderness EMT certification, and some of the stuff I've seen people do in the last year astounds me. People on long, sun-exposed hikes with dogs, no water, and only a cell phone app. Our wilderness areas are, and should be, accessible to everyone...but some basic safety education is lacking.

Folks, please learn about the 10 essentials and some basic outdoor safety! Let someone know where you are going, even if it's just an easy day hike. I really don't want to have to be the stranger who finds you injured and has to administer first aid.

They started the hike early, and I think they did not intend for it to turn into an all-day ordeal. After all, they'd been living in the area for about a year, right? They knew how the heat quickly built up, and they had to know about the fire that killed all the trees along the hike. They knew their older dog wouldn't manage a strenuous hike in high heat. They knew their baby needed supplies.

We will never know what caused them to continue hiking into the heat. I went on a little hike in the New Mexico desert. It was terrifying. It was hot as hell, brown scrub and brown rocky soil everywhere, I was worried about rattlesnakes and I was not comfortable in the heat. We passed a dog skeleton by the side of the trail, with a collar still around its neck. Terrible. I'm sure that's a fairly common sight in very hot dry areas. I sure as hell wouldn't have taken an older dog and a baby for a day-long hike in those kinds of conditions, and pretty sure they did not intend to do that either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How can some parents be so dumb?

Thrill seekers. These hiker crazies all brag about their extreme hikes and brushes with death.

Come on. No one knows why exactly they took that route on that day. When they started out it was apparently much cooler and perhaps the hike was longer and more difficult than they had planned.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The saddest part of this whole thing is the likelihood that the order of death was probably dad, mom, baby, dog.

No, I think the baby died first, the parents were distraught and couldn't function. Or dad felt very sick, sat down with baby to rest and died. Either way distraught mom eventually tried to go for help but didn't make it.

I would think the baby died first as well. Babies do not have the same ability to regulate temperature as adults and I imagine being inside a carrier would make it even hotter.

While true, the baby was not expending any energy. I really am guessing that the dad was the first one to struggle and he was forced to sit down, but it had already passed the point of no return. The mom was already struggling but was mobile, so she was going to get help. She then collapsed up the trail. I assume she would have only left if she thought that the dad was still capable of taking care of the baby, so he was probably still conscious when she left. All conjecture, of course.

I was skeptical of hyperthermia just because it was so strange that they still had water (now we know they didn't) and that heat affects people much differently. But I guess the obvious answer was right. The terrain there is brutal and it was a fatal miscalculation on their part.

I posted my HS theory back around page 10-ish or so. I don't think we'll ever really know 'why'. My best guess is a tragic cascade of miscalculations:
1. Lots of 'adventure tourism' gave them false confidence in their abilities and preparation
2. The research they did was inadequate for understanding how extreme the terrain would be
3. Online pictures from before the 2018 fire made it look like the S-L trail would be well shaded with plenty of trees
4. The downhill trek in the morning was probably fine. But once they were at the river, there's no way out except 'up'. Turning back or going forward, you still need to go 'up' ... and if they still didn't understand that S-L would be completely shade-free, that may have looked like the better option than going back up the way they went down.
5. When the first one (dog or baby or adult) started having trouble, the logical thing to do would be park one adult with dog & baby at the river, and 2nd adult go for help. But they only had one water bladder, so they couldn't split up. So everyone slowed down to help the struggling person/animal, dooming all of them.

Very poor decision to have all of their water in one bladder (an analogy of eggs and baskets comes to mind...). But that was just one of many poor decisions that, on its own, might have been survivable. It's the compounded effect of ALL the poor decisions and unfortunate circumstances that killed them, IMHO

I also posted my HS theory way back. Agree but people DO NOT UNDERSTAND how quickly your mind can also turn to MUSH in the heat. It is the first sign of heat exhaustion. YOU CANNOT MAKE RATIONAL DECISIONS.

Much like hypo-thermia and the climbers who disrobe, hyperthermia eliminates your ability to think clearly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^Literally just typed this out, and then saw that Alex Baldwin shot and killed someone on set. Maybe that will turn into a true crime deep dive now.

Stop. That was an accident (of a type that has happened before) and a tragedy for the person who died and the one who is still hospitalized.

It's incredibly ugly and disrespectful to them and their loved ones to joke that it'll "turn into a true crime deep dive."

Get your true crime jollies somewhere else. You'll manage to survive a day or two until another juicy conspiracy comes along, ghoul.

Yeah, okay. Good luck continuing to post on 200 page threads about true crime speculation that true crime speculation is wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on of the Arizona posters who posted 300 pages ago that it was inconceivable to me to leave on a bike like that so late in the morning especially with a dog and baby. I think people around the world are really going to have to adjust their expectations about what they can do given the rising global temperatures. Stay safe everyone. Mother Nature has a real wicked side.

Yeah, WTAF were they thinking?? And why didn’t they turn back way sooner? I would have attempted that hike with a dog and a baby in ideal conditions. Sounds mean but this seems like sort of a Darwin Award to me.

I posted my HS theory back around page 10-ish or so. I don't think we'll ever really know 'why'. My best guess is a tragic cascade of miscalculations:
1. Lots of 'adventure tourism' gave them false confidence in their abilities and preparation
2. The research they did was inadequate for understanding how extreme the terrain would be
3. Online pictures from before the 2018 fire made it look like the S-L trail would be well shaded with plenty of trees
4. The downhill trek in the morning was probably fine. But once they were at the river, there's no way out except 'up'. Turning back or going forward, you still need to go 'up' ... and if they still didn't understand that S-L would be completely shade-free, that may have looked like the better option than going back up the way they went down.
5. When the first one (dog or baby or adult) started having trouble, the logical thing to do would be park one adult with dog & baby at the river, and 2nd adult go for help. But they only had one water bladder, so they couldn't split up. So everyone slowed down to help the struggling person/animal, dooming all of them.

Very poor decision to have all of their water in one bladder (an analogy of eggs and baskets comes to mind...). But that was just one of many poor decisions that, on its own, might have been survivable. It's the compounded effect of ALL the poor decisions and unfortunate circumstances that killed them, IMHO.

I think it's wild that the Gabby case and this case both reached resolution in the last 24 hours. What will DCUM talk about now?!

Anonymous wrote:I’m on of the Arizona posters who posted 300 pages ago that it was inconceivable to me to leave on a bike like that so late in the morning especially with a dog and baby. I think people around the world are really going to have to adjust their expectations about what they can do given the rising global temperatures. Stay safe everyone. Mother Nature has a real wicked side.

I mean...I live in California and have hiked through most of the state since the 90s. It's inconceivable to me as well. It gets really hot here! I actually got somewhat overheated a couple of weeks ago on a hike, in October.