
Hunt for the Death Valley Germans (2015) - brudgers
http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
======
ubertakter
As part of my job, related to activities at China Lake Naval Weapon Station,
I've worked on a test range in Coso, about 45 miles northwest of the area
mentioned in the article. I've also been down to Trona and Searle Lake. I _can
't imagine_ going off pavement in that area without experience and training.

As a further illustration of how remote this area is, the safety briefing for
the range mentions two important points: 1) if you are injured and it's not
life threatening, it will take 3-4 hours to get you to a hospital. Someone has
to drive you off the range to meet the ambulance just east of Coso Junction
since there's no way an ambulance can get into the range. The terrain is to
rugged. Coso Junction is also about an hour north of Ridgrecrest/China Lake.
2) if you are seriously injured, the only way out is on a helicopter. It takes
about 25 minutes to get a helicopter up to the range.

This area is starkly beautiful and there's a lot of interesting things to see
and do, but it is _absolutely deadly_. You can't go in unprepared.

~~~
wickerman
I find this sort of story super scary because I come from a similarly big
country with vast expanses of nothing. I know of an elderly couple who a
couple of years ago died of a heat stroke after they got lost on their way and
took a different route, which led them to a dirt road in the middle of a
desert (Salinas Grandes in Córdoba, Argentina).
[https://www.lacapital.com.ar/informacion-gral/un-
matrimonio-...](https://www.lacapital.com.ar/informacion-gral/un-matrimonio-
jubilados-murio-deshidratado-al-perderse-cordoba-n1323140.html)

And they had cellphones. They asked for directions. They simply were confused,
took the wrong route, their signal disappeared and they ran out of gas.

------
jmalicki
"That sort of treatment is typical of the level of professionalism I’ve
experienced from the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office. And I have taken away a
very valuable lesson from it all. If I ever find myself in a dire situation in
the backcountry of Inyo County and require rescue, I would crawl on bloody
hands and knees over miles of jagged rock until I reached either the Kern or
San Bernardino County lines. Then, and only then, would I set off my Personal
Locator Beacon or SPOT device. A person needs to do everything possible to
maximize survival…."

------
rurban
I live in the town where they came from. There are definitely mountains here,
even more frightening ones than in the Death Valley. The Saxon Switzerland
mountain climbers even defined the rules of modern rock climbing. Their
problem was the desert, they were more afraid of the rocks than the desert.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Switzerland_climbing_reg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Switzerland_climbing_region)

------
InclinedPlane
There was a period of several years when this sort of thing (weird content
people put up because it was stuff they were personally very passionate and
knowledgeable about) was more or less most of the what the internet was. I
think about that sometimes.

~~~
tapland
There are very similar sites like the one posted still going on about missing
people in hard to search areas. I will try to get my friend who's into it to
provide a link.

~~~
n3uromancer
The author is actively participating in the search for a hiker who got lost in
the Joshua Tree National Park in 2010:

[http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-
rescue/searchi...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-
rescue/searching-for-bill-ewasko/)

~~~
supernova87a
That one had the coverage in the NYT Magazine as well. I wonder in that case
did the guy get abducted or some similar victim of crime. Turns out that
wandering off alone in the uninhabited desert actually can be dangerous.

------
sctb
Past discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12019567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12019567).

~~~
smackay
It's still worth your time to read it. I read the article when it was
originally posted and I am still struck how, in the wrong environment, you can
be two small decisions away from disaster.

~~~
bennyelv
On reading the article I had the same thought... I've driven (as a tourist in
a hire car) up the road that they were ultimately trying to get to if they had
made it over the pass, heading round to the north of death valley and then
down Badwater road on the eastern side of Death Valley.

It didn't seem to be a stupid thing to do, we had lots of water in the car, we
stuck to paved roads and although we probably only met one other car on the
way north, once in death valley there was occasional traffic.

There have been several times when I've set off down dirt tracks in unsuitable
vehicles for a bit of an adventure, and so far haven't come unstuck, but it's
always been in western europe and not somewhere like this.

So maybe I'm just like the germans in this situation...

But then I looked at the map and started scouting around at where they had
decided to go...

It may have been a couple of small decisions that led to disaster once they
were up there, but the larger decision to head off up a 40 mile sandy/rocky
dirt track to get over the very imposing mountains in the desert in July was
the one that it was obvious (from my point of view) not to take.

~~~
erentz
> It didn't seem to be a stupid thing...we stuck to paved roads

It doesn't sound like you did anything stupid. You didn't go even remotely
close to where the German's went in this case. They went into areas on roads
that nobody would normally tackle without a serious 4x4 and a backup plan.
They went down the westside unpaved road up to Warm Springs Camp and the
Geologists Stone Cabin. The thing reading it that surprised me is that they
tried this in a station wagon, not a 4x4, and never got the sense to turn
around, and then from the Stone Cabin they went waaaay into serious offroad
territory trying to drive down the wash.

[https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2p...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2pQ&usp=sharing)

~~~
bitL
That's pretty normal for Europeans. 4x4 are rare and roads are often in worse
conditions in mountainous areas that even some Fiat Punto can climb without
any major issues. Most US folks would freak out without a proper Explorer or
similar. It's like when in Germany you regularly see females driving 130MPH on
the highway on their way back from shopping; it would freak you out but it's
totally fine over there. So my guess is that those Germans just took it as a
typical overcautious American thing and did it the same way they would do it
in Austrian Alps or Canary Islands. Their main mistake was not to turn back,
but again, moving forward and extreme resilience to pain is one of their
national attributes anyway.

~~~
pthreadses
This is not at all my experience. I'm an American living in Germany who pretty
regularly goes to the Alps, the roads are nothing remarkable. The amount of
infrastructure built in the Alps is remarkable, but Americans are not going to
bat an eye at the road conditions in the mountains of Europe, nor are they
comparable to what people are talking about here.

~~~
bitL
That's true if you are a tourist in Alps, but as a native you'd know some
really dodgy mountain roads that your clunker could climb without much
trouble, but no American would ever attempt them without a proper 4x4 and life
insurance. There is also a factor of underestimating distances due to latitude
differences, i.e. Europe is drawn much larger and US much smaller than it
should be in comparison, so looking at a map is very deceiving.

------
gwbas1c
Looks like a very long read. Given that I'm at work now, I won't be able to
read this until tonight or this weekend.

Could someone be so kind as to give a 2-3 sentence summary? Looks like some
German tourists got lost in the desert, and the author tried to track them
down or retrace their steps?

~~~
Latteland
Some visiting tourists got stuck in Death Valley without enough water or food,
and they tried to walk out but it's a vast, hot, dry place. No one could find
their bodies for a long time. It's a great story, I remember reading it
before.

~~~
ifdefdebug
> and they tried to walk out

From reading the story, the crucial mistake might have been made when their
van got stuck: instead of trying to walk back to a shelter with spring water
supply they knew about because they had been there on their way out, they
walked deeper into the desert trying to reach a military area where they hoped
to find soldiers. They walked way beyond the point of no return and didn't
find soldiers.

------
newman8r
One of my favorite youtube channels just retraced the steps of the Germans
based on the blog article [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-KUF-
xiV5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-KUF-xiV5o)

------
sizzzzlerz
Read this some years ago but it's still a fascinating story. Having visited
DVNP several times, I can certainly attest to the desolation of the landscape
but I was there in winter and early spring and I certainly wasn't in areas
like these. The pictures actually do the area justice. But to take two small
children into such an area during summer with absolutely no preparation is
simply criminal. What were these people thinking? It's good the families of
the victims received some closure but it goes to show how making simple
mistakes can easily lead to disastrous results.

------
close04
> But we were impressed with one amazing fact: To reach this spot required
> them to have hiked 8 or 9 miles over rough terrain, in street shoes, in
> July. In my mind they had earned a lot of respect for this accomplishment.
> This was a tough group.

People will do extraordinary things fighting for their lives and for their
children's lives.

------
KorematsuFred
As an avid Death Valley fan I have been to the place several dozen times in
last 4 years. I have only driven (on road and off road) and never dared to
hike for more than 1 hour.

Deserts are a very deceptive places where the danger is never apparent.I have
met many people who have underestimate the desert and what it can do to you.

------
tdons
Last time this site was posted I spent a saturday reading it. Very interesting
and gripping stuff on there.

------
Odenwaelder
This was an incredible read. Thank you for sharing (again).

------
Davetron
Is it just me or is has otherhand.org suddenly started looking for a login?
Read most of it yesterday, went to read the rest today and now can't :(

~~~
wickerman
Same, it was working for me yesterday and now it's asking for a login. Just
look up the page on the wayback machine.

------
akgerber
I just ran into this nice article with some companion maps linked from the
Wikipedia page: [https://medium.com/@jay.penner/the-hunt-for-the-death-
valley...](https://medium.com/@jay.penner/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-
germans-companion-reading-79a7836d7c55)

------
netsharc
It seems he password-walled his site in the last 12 hours, probably because it
got "viral"?

Luckily I managed to read his hunt for the crashed A-12 before he did.

