
How 1,600 People Went Missing from U.S. Public Lands - jgrahamc
https://www.outsideonline.com/2164446/leave-no-trace
======
jonnycoder
"he lists such ­recurring characteristics as dogs unable to track scents, the
time (late afternoon is a popular window to vanish), and that many victims are
found with clothing and footwear removed. Bodies are also discovered in
previously searched areas with odd fre­quency, ­sometimes right along the
trail. Children—and remains—are occasionally found improbable ­distances from
the point last seen, in improbable ­terrain."

I've been hunting for 7 years and my first thoughts are that:

-Found without clothing and footwear can indicate hypothermia

-Improbable distances and terrain is not a surprise. I've felt mild panic set in when I wasn't where I was suppose to be in terms of meetup spots and felt the need to rush uphill or avoid using common sense in the moment. I've also scaled some scary terrain (I'm no rock climber or mountain goat) and I've heard stories from guys I hunt with who have done some stupid scary stuff when it comes to terrain

-The other comments read like a bad movie that tries to scare us into believing the forest is the most dangerous place in the world other than your own sidewalk, where a stranger will kidnap your kids at the most opportune moment. Most of my coworkers throughout the years all think I'm crazy when I tell them I go hiking and hunting in the forest, as they believe I'll be eaten by bears. By the way, I saw a baby black bear about 15 yards from me last season, cutest thing in the world, and so was his mother as I was walking away :)

~~~
LordKano
About a year and a half ago, I was out hunting and stopped to listen. I closed
my eyes and absorbed all of the sounds around me. I got into the moment and
when I opened my eyes, I had lost my bearings. I knew the area well enough
that within a minute or so I deduced what was where but I didn't have that
instinctive feeling of where things were. In that moment, I understood how
people can get lost in unfamiliar woods.

People who live their entire lives in urban or suburban areas have no concept
of just how far two miles through dense woods really is when you're on foot.

Don't ever take nature lightly, it's been killing us for a long time.

~~~
nkrisc
I've personally experience that same feeling after closing my eyes for some
time and losing my bearing. I didn't realize how important visual cues were to
maintaining my internal dead reckoning, while I wasn't even moving!

------
cwbrandsma
I live out west. It isn't that hard to start going in a direction and not see
anyone for days.

My brother volunteers for Search and Rescue (Search and Recover most of the
time). If someone dies in the desert, because of the sage brush and other
grasses, you can easily walk right past a body and not know it (assuming there
is no smell)

~~~
Declanomous
I concur. I play a lot of disc golf, and it's amazing how hard it can be to
find something that is in brush and grass.

I've put down my bag while looking for discs before, walked 20 feet, turned
around to go back to my bag and not been able to find it. I've seen where
discs have fallen, immediately run over to the spot, and not been able to find
them despite looking for nearly an hour.

You can be standing with someone, point out something on the ground to them,
and they won't be able to see it until to are basically touching it.

I've done Search and Rescue training as well. What I've taken from both is
that you do not want to be lost, and if you are lost you do not want to be far
from where people are expecting you to be. This is in part because you want to
narrow the search area, but also because people have an incredible ability to
overlook things that aren't expecting.

One thing I didn't realize before I did all of this was how useless looking
for a given shape is. Unless it is extremely flat, you are probably just
looking for splashes of color. You would not believe the amount of color there
is in the middle of a forest, or a field, etc, until you start looking for a
particular color. Flowers, garbage, mottled sun, you can basically get any
color you imagine out there.

I think we like to imagine we've reached a point where we can know everything
we want to about our planet, and the only limiting factor is what we can focus
our attention on. That's not true though. Even with effectively limitless
resources, it took over a year to find Steve Fossett's body. The world is an
incredibly vast place, and we are incredibly small.

~~~
xoa
> _I 've done Search and Rescue training as well. What I've taken from both is
> that you do not want to be lost, and if you are lost you do not want to be
> far from where people are expecting you to be. This is in part because you
> want to narrow the search area, but also because people have an incredible
> ability to overlook things that aren't expecting._

> _One thing I didn 't realize before I did all of this was how useless
> looking for a given shape is. Unless it is extremely flat, you are probably
> just looking for splashes of color. You would not believe the amount of
> color there is in the middle of a forest, or a field, etc, until you start
> looking for a particular color. Flowers, garbage, mottled sun, you can
> basically get any color you imagine out there._

Very true. This is the same sort of basic issue that a lot of optical
illusions and magic tricks are based on. Human brains (and to some extent
probably many animals in general) tend to out of necessity be a lot more
sensitive to change vs static imagery and use a lot of processing shortcuts.
There is so much data constantly coming in that processing all of it would be
paralyzing, so a lot of the work really is throwing most of it out.

That's also why active signaling is so valuable in emergency situations. Even
without touching on any sort of networked devices, tools like colored smoke
flares, LED lamps/torches with a strobe feature, highly reflective metallized
boPET (aka Mylar and other brands) flags or streamers light enough to have
significant motion even in very minimal breeze, alarms, etc are all quite
valuable because their dynamic and artificial nature makes them stand out more
clearly from farther away. The problem comes with them needing at least some
level of consciousness and ability to take action to deploy.

I do think there's more room still for innovation in safety equipment when it
comes to automated emergency signal systems that can be linked to
biomonitoring and thus respond automatically to signs of distress if the user
doesn't cancel it after a given timeout. There are some products on the market
right now, but the ones I'm aware of are purely electronic and depend on S&R
having a receiver of the right type and/or on availability of network
coverage. Satellite-based emergency signals don't seem to be practical or
economic enough yet for ubiquitous usage. They both can still be incredibly
valuable, but in addition it might be nice in some situations if automated
deployment could be linked to non-electronic signals. For example, a compact
self-contained system attachable to the top of a backpack with mylar balloon
(possibly with a small strobing LED lamp), enough helium for auto-inflation,
and a 100-200 ft tether that could be triggered automatically or manually.
Standard mylar balloons can remain taut for a good 5 days and float for a
couple weeks before losing too much lift, and the weight and cost of the basic
components should be reasonable. While of limited use in certain environments
like dense forest, in many areas it'd have no trouble reaching full extension.
A floating bobbing reflective object (or at night lit by even a minimal LED)
should be visible from a significant distance vs something on the ground but
be safer and easier to deploy then trying to climb something to achieve
vertical. Effective signal lifetime vs other consumables seems like it might
be favorable as well. Or maybe there is something like this already?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> Satellite-based emergency signals don't seem to be practical or economic
> enough yet for ubiquitous usage.

It's not as much a tech or time problem as it is a physics problem. Getting a
signal from many Earth transmitters to a satellite receiver takes a lot of
power on the transmitter side. More power by a lot than for one satellite
transmitter to a bunch of Earth receivers!

~~~
ghaff
Physics isn't really an issue. Locator beacons are a thing. But they're
standalone GPS size (i.e. not watches) and have subscription fees in the $100+
per year category so they're really more for people like solo hikers in remote
areas etc. as opposed to the average consumer.

~~~
mds
Speaking of watches, the Breitling Emergency has a built in locator beacon.
Not exactly cheap though.

~~~
ghaff
Interesting! It also does seem to be a little bit of an operation to activate.
I suspect that for most situations where you might have a realistic need for
such a device, carrying a small Garmin or SPOT isn't a big deal.

------
scarhill
It's easy for even a big search to miss someone, even when that person is
alive. Geraldine Largay got lost on the Appalachian Trail in Maine, survived
for 26 days, and died less than 2 miles from the trail, yet a large search
didn't find her, and her remains weren't found for more than two years after
her disappearance:

[http://www.pressherald.com/2016/01/29/maine-hiker-
missing-2-...](http://www.pressherald.com/2016/01/29/maine-hiker-
missing-2-years-died-in-sleeping-bag-inside-tent/)

~~~
avenoir
I have read multiple sources over the years that her remains were found at a
place that was searched numerous times. The strange thing is that a lot of
these missing people cases mention the same thing - body found in a heavily
searched area to the amazement of the search party. However, none of this
stuff gets any press because it all sounds hokey pokey. The guy who
investigates these things, David Paulides, is an ex-cop/detective. He publicly
states that he has no clue how these people are disappearing and never throws
out opinions in fear of ridicule and dismissal. I encourage to listen to some
of his interviews on this. It's all truly fascinating.

------
SiVal
Maybe phones should all have an emergency distress mode--a separate mode like
airplane mode that conserves power and sends out an intelligently designed
sequence of pings using a standard protocol, some of which encode GPS data,
some try to reach a cell tower, others just try to just broadcast a ping as
far as possible to get attention, maybe even an attempt to ping a satellite.

Also, make every phone a _receiver /decoder_ of this peer-to-peer protocol (no
cell tower required), so that searchers would become a swarm antenna using
only the personal phones everyone already had.

You would have to have your phone, but lots of hikers and runners do, and you
would have to be conscious and able to turn on the distress mode if you got in
trouble, but in most cases people are, at least part of the time. There would
also have to be a cost to using the system, so people wouldn't constantly do
it as a prank.

This upgrade to the tech we already have could prove useful in so many ways.

~~~
zie
There is actually a standard [0] and devices that meet this standard you can
buy from places like REI [1]. That will send alerts/help and get you found.
They require no monthly fees, etc. You can also buy "fancy" ones like the spot
[2], that don't generally meet the standard but allow you to send messages
besides "EMERGENCY".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-
Sarsat_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-Sarsat_Pr..).

[1] [https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator-
beacons?r=c&ir=catego...](https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator-
beacons?r=c&ir=catego..).

[2] [http://www.findmespot.com/en/](http://www.findmespot.com/en/)

------
jessaustin
_...In­terior tried to build its own data­base to track law-enforcement
actions.... The result, the ­Incident Management Analysis and Reporting
System, is a $50 million ­Database to Nowhere — last year, only 14 percent of
the several hundred reportable incidents were entered into it. The system is
so flawed that Fish and Wildlife has said no thanks and refuses to use it._

I know, this is normal, and one shouldn't get upset. It just feels like $50M
is enough resources to accomplish quite a lot, if it were properly allocated.
It feels like people should be in prison for this.

~~~
Retric
The technology is only a tiny part of this. The much more expensive part is
getting everyone that should be using the system to actually use it.

~~~
jessaustin
They're civil servants, not outlaw bikers. If they're told to use a new
system, they'll try. If USF&WS says a system is unusable, while BLM NPS and
BIA enter only 14% of what should be entered, I'm willing to believe that the
system isn't usable by the users who are supposed to use it. Besides we're not
talking about that many people. The whole department is only 70k employees,
and less than half of those would be in the field. Let's grossly overestimate
and say it cost $800 per user to print out some manual binders and tutorial
DVDs. That leaves $22M left over for actually building a very-low-volume (TFA
says "several hundred reportable incidents" per _year_ ) CRUD app and tying it
to other relevant systems. Only, after spending that $50M, we got nothing.

~~~
Retric
Spoken like someone who has never actually done something like this.

The general problem is the people building the system don't have authority to
force others to use it. Think herding cats at night.

~~~
jessaustin
Somebody signed off on spending $50M. If they didn't have buy-in from someone
who reports to SecInt, that's _another_ monumental screw-up.

I _have_ built and deployed systems that lots of users used for their jobs,
which were quite a bit more involved than a simple reporting CRUD, and which
handled far more than a few hundred transactions a year.

~~~
Retric
System complexity is not what I am talking about. As soon as your talking
several agency's it becomes a ridiculous mess. If you get buy in and it's a
priory then everything can go really smoothly, but thinking in terms of just
technical problems is a tiny park of cross agency systems.

------
mutagen
If you enjoyed this article, there's a rather deep rabbit-hole documenting the
search for a German family that went missing in Death Valley about 20 years
ago.

[http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-
hun...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-
death-valley-germans/)

~~~
teh_klev
HN discussion about that particular story:

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

------
barking
All that searching and his body found only 1.7 miles from the ranch defies
belief. Also the fact that he was found in the direction in which he had set
out. It really sounds like the search wasn't systematically done at all.

~~~
Someone
Suppose that, on average, it takes you one second to ascertain that there
definitely is no body on 10m² of ground.

Then it would take 100,000 seconds to search a km². Rounding down by 15% or
so, that's a full 24 hours.

A 1.7 mile radius circle has an area of 20 km² (again rounding down). So, by
this extremely simple model, searching that circle would take two man-months
at eight hours of searching a day, seven days a week. At ten times that speed,
it still would take a week or so. Most people would get bored and move farther
out before that week was over.

So, is that 10m² per person-second a good guess? I won't know, but looking
around my living room, I doubt I could do double that rate there, so I (very,
very tentatively) conclude it isn't completely bollocks.

There will be places where searching can be done much faster, but also ones
where it is much slower, if only because navigating there is slow.

~~~
maxerickson
Their plan for the run and the terrain would constrain the highest probability
area quite a bit more than a circle around the ranch.

~~~
barking
Yes, an arc of even 60 degrees looks too big

------
Zigurd
>Joe’s body was 1.7 miles as the crow flies from the ranch. Searchers had been
close. In November 2015, Keller and David Van Berkum had come within several
hundred yards. “I regret not searching there on the 25th of July,” Keller told
me. “That’s where I wish I’d started. What part of here would take a life?
It’s not the meadow on top; it’s the cliff.”

In populated areas you can skid off the road into a pond and not get found for
years, if ever. When you hike even heavily travelled trails, all kinds of
wildlife is just outside your range of perception along the trail. It's easy
to stumble upon a bear's den, for example. Missing skiers can be 10 meters
into the woods, off a marked trail, in a hole at the base of a tree.

Searching for a cold corpse in a fairly wild area is a low-odds roll of the
dice, not a determination that a body isn't there. Unless you have something
like a mobile phone or body heat that can be sensed at a distance, you have,
at best, a well-trained dog's nose at ground level, limited by where the dog
and handler can reach. Human senses have much lower odds of success.

------
verytrivial
Reminds me of [http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-
hun...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-
death-valley-germans/) another very compelling read.

~~~
ghaff
I've read that a couple of times. His final theory seems pretty plausible. In
addition to Death Valley being a huge place, no one was really thinking like a
German family with no real experience of just how vast and remote much of that
area is.

Of course, that search took place when their car was found months after they
disappeared. No one searched for them at the time because all that was known
was they hadn't returned their car and had missed their flight.

------
DanBC
See also the Pima County Missing Migrants project. When a corpse is found in a
desert a group of people try to identify who it used to be and inform
relatives.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21029783](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21029783)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01v5sq8](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01v5sq8)

------
cathartes
It's a really sad story.

But for me, the upside to this story is knowing that it is still fully
possible to disappear in these places, which makes me all the more convinced
these lands are worth protecting. For many, the subconscious draw of truly
wild places is often that how they stand in sure counterpoint to the modality
our society has adopted (i.e., so many people go the wilderness to "get away"
or keep their mind off things.) Not every square inch of this world needs to
be made friendly to humans, though, but I don't think everyone wants to fully
accept that even if they normally pay lip service to conservation principles
and the important of our national parks and wildlife refuges. So excuse me if
I come across as callous, but if people don't bring their phones or come in
the least prepared for their "walk in the woods," I'm not sure I quite see a
problem that _society_ needs to bend over backwards to solve.

~~~
jessaustin
Particularly not when "society" is a sparsely populated county with a low-six-
figures budget for the entire sheriff's department. The dude died when he
landed at the base of the cliff and his body was found a year later by a
hobbyist. That means everything the county spent looking for him was
completely wasted. I wonder if the family, entitled as they seemed in their
grief, used any of the money they raised from donors to reimburse the county's
expenses? I wonder, as well, if the hobbyist actually received the advertised
$50k reward? He seems like someone who knows what's going on, so I wouldn't be
surprised to find that he had split the reward with the county.

I fell while downclimbing a cliff off-trail in remote federal lands in
Colorado, but landed mostly on my backpack. That fall, the night I spent
finding the trail again, and walking out the next morning are some of my best
memories. This wasn't a tragic death.

------
zie
There is actually a standard [0] and devices that meet this standard you can
buy from places like REI [1]. That will send alerts/help and get you found.
They require no monthly fees, etc. You can also buy "fancy" ones like the spot
[2], that don't generally meet the standard but allow you to send messages
besides "EMERGENCY".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-
Sarsat_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-
Sarsat_Programme)

[1] [https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator-
beacons?r=c&ir=catego...](https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator-
beacons?r=c&ir=category%3Apersonal-locator-beacons&page=1)

[2] [http://www.findmespot.com/en/](http://www.findmespot.com/en/)

------
davidw
Completely tangential, but "faith, hope and charity" are also the 'names' of
Oregon's Three Sisters mountains, more commonly referred to as South, Middle
and North.

~~~
pc2g4d
And Mount Bachelor is thus named because it stands apart from the Three
Sisters. Originally, though, I think it was named Brother Mountain.

The occurrence of "sisters" geographical names is a common pattern.

~~~
davidw
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bachelor#Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bachelor#Name)

------
rwallace
Are there statistics on how often such searches have found the missing person
alive? Or even some representative cases?

~~~
peter303
I read 14ers.com, a Colorado based hiking social network. A lot of incidents
are real time. Someone will be overdue several hours, then both a social
network alert and formal SAR will start. I'd guess about half have happy
endings. Just last week a climber of Pyramid near Aspen was overdue. He
survived a 2000 foot fall and hobbled out to a joyful reception.

This week starts the spring break danger period. Invincible college newbies
post nearly impossible trip plans. And I roll my eyes.

------
swayvil
Strange stuff happens in the wilderness. Strange beasts sighted. People
disappear.

Some say that it's because what we call "reality" is, to a significant degree,
conjured into being by our collective attention. So the edge of the collective
(civilization or whatever) is the edge of reality.

~~~
maxerickson
I think vastness has a lot more to do with people not being found than
anything strange.

~~~
simplyluke
Agreed. The sad but likely explanation for most of these disappearances is
that they simply became lost and succumbed to elements within a few days, or
injured themselves and became immobilized. When there's no one for miles and
miles in any direction, you're very much on your own.

~~~
ghaff
Once you get off a trail, it's very easy to get disoriented and lost,
especially if you can't see major landmarks to orient yourself by.

Quite a few years ago, before smartphones and handheld GPSs, I went to take a
walk from where I was staying to a relatively nearby lighthouse on the coast.
I didn't take a compass with me and, as soon as I walked into some woods, I
very quickly realized that I had gotten disoriented and wasn't sure which
direction I had come from.

I did find my way out really quickly but it was really a "well, that was dumb"
moment and a realization that if you step off a trail into the woods you could
end up getting very lost very easily.

~~~
simplyluke
There was a nature preserve at the end of my block growing up. Maybe 2x2 miles
of light woods with a creek and some minor trails. I explored it regularly and
often had to find my way home by walking in a straight line to the edge of the
woods (where there would be recognizable streets in the town).

When I'm backcountry I always have a GPS and good maps. You can lose a trail
walking 100 yards off it to check something out.

~~~
ghaff
>often had to find my way home by walking in a straight line

Which often isn't straightforward, especially in uneven terrain. "Walking in
circles" may be a cliche but it definitely happen when you don't have a
distant point to lock onto.

------
swasheck
This hits close to home. My dad was raised in this area and I go down here
quite often to escape the stresses of "city life" (live in Denver) and spend
time with my parents. He tells me so many crazy stories, mostly surrounding
weather. One of the most notable was a similar situation to the missing
campers scenario wherein a freak, late spring snow storm dumped over two feet
of snow overnight on my dad and a college buddy. They really didn't believe
that they were going to make it out alive and they were making end of life
plans for identification when S&R arrived. He said that he learned that he
only thought he was prepared, but that event taught him to prepare even more
thoroughly and to expect the unexpected. He was lucky.

Here's a map, just for reference.
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CS1dchOHf79iGj4GHdlqWHkvpx...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CS1dchOHf79iGj4GHdlqWHkvpxA&usp=sharing)

In fact, a just a few days after Joe (now I know is name) went missing, I was
up in that general area on a solo camping trip of my own (Kerr Lake, on the
map). I also spend time in the La Jara Reservoir area (in an area known as
Jacob's Hill on the map). I remember how rainy that summer was and how much
time I spent in my tent that long weekend. During one of the breaks in the
rain, I went wandering around and was struck by how remote everything was. I
was used to the remoteness of the La Jara Reservoir wilderness area, but this
was on a totally different level. I've linked to a few pictures from my
aforementioned trip. One is of my poor dog trapped in a tent with me at Kerr
Lake. The other two are from the Conejos River, a few miles south of the
Platoro Reservoir. In one you can see some of Platoro's buildings. Admittedly,
this is probably about 15-20 miles north of Rainbow Trout Ranch, but the
pictures were taken on my drive down the same road on which Joe and Collin
were running and I would have driven past that area (2015-07-29).

The terrain, as described in this article, is imposing but tranquil. There's a
fun rock formation in the area that locals call "Monkey Face" because it looks
like a monkey's face from the road. Unfortunately, years of weather have
eroded it so that the features are not as prominent. Unfortunately, I don't
recall noticing any S&R activity. I've ridden through the canyon with my dad
many times, but this was my first time driving it (37 years old) and I
remember remarking to myself about how beautiful it is and how I wish that my
family had retained their property in the area.

Conejos County is extremely poor. Their taxpayer base couldn't sustain a
significant S&R budget even if a law enacted it. There would absolutely need
to be significant federal support. As the article mentioned, the amount of
wilderness in this area, both in the plains of the San Luis Valley and in the
remote San Juan forest lands, would be a rough place to get lost in general.
That there's simply no real budget for organized S&R exacerbates the problem.
It is a nice escape, but it is no place I would want to be stranded or lost.

My heart breaks for Joe's family. I can't imagine losing my only son. How
traumatic. I have further thoughts on this, but I believe reverence for their
loss is a higher priority than pressing into those thoughts.

[https://imgur.com/a/FZavX](https://imgur.com/a/FZavX)

~~~
205guy
Thanks for posting this, the map and photos give a better idea of the terrain,
which the article failed to do.

------
nepotism2016
Sounds like first season of True Detective

------
MK999
I always intended to read "Missing 411" after hearing the author speak on the
radio, but haven't made time for it.

------
mkstowegnv
There is nothing surprising, technological or policy relevant in this article.
Although better than a previous similar HN story (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12674976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12674976)),
it is just a run of the mill tabloidish Outside Magazine article

