Any chance they died because they walked into a carbon dioxide accumulation?
CO2 is heavier than air and can accumulate in natural hollows. I've read about game animals suffocating rapidly when they walk through CO2-filled hollows, but can't immediately find a link. Natural CO2 emission does kill trees [1].
Very good proposition.
This can happen next to old mines, waste rock piles especially. Not so much that the CO2 kills you, but it displaces the oxygen. You enter an oxygen deficient environment. Suffocation can happen almost instantly.
Similar to confined spaces.
However with weather changes, lets say a low pressure system moving in, the CO2 exhales from the surrounding porous rock. You starve for oxygen, almost immediately. And even the oxygen in your body gets sucked out.
It has happened before, it took a long time for coroner's to figure out. Mine rescue personnel even get killed, thinking they can hold their breath.
Have often wondered why this is isn't presented more to the public, so they can be warned. Avoid hollows, low spots, etc, especially in old mining country. (The reactions in the rock use up the oxygen pricing CO2 - But that's a longer discussion...)
Here is an article about 4 men that died next to a waste rock pile in BC, Canada, from lack of oxygen.
Another problem is almost all health and safety sensors use oxygen as a baseline for testing, so in a lack of oxygen they do not work accurately. So even experts can get caught in such an extreme situation.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lack-of-oxyg...
Didn’t know this happens outdoors. Does the CO2 rise well above the surface though? I’ve heard there are “Dog Caves” [1] around the world where CO2 is low in the cave and will kill short animals but spare adults.
CO poisoning leaves a telltale bright red skin coloration in human victims. CO prevents oxygen release from hemoglobin, making venous blood near the skin as red as arterial (oxygenated) blood. I think responders would have seen this if CO was the toxic agent.
It's puzzling - as you pointed out, CO2 poisoning causes extreme distress. You'd think victims would have shown evidence of that.
Maybe as another poster described, asphyxiation occurred not due to CO2 poisoning, but to oxygen deprivation through displacement of air by CO2. Oxygen deficit asphyxiation is very fast (seconds) and asymptomatic.
It will be interesting to see what they finally determine CoD to have been.
As someone who lives nearby part of the year, I really think this story has taken on a life of its own. It's true that there is some gross algae in the South Fork Merced but from all of the public info, they didn't even make it that far. If you look at where they started and where they were recovered, you'll see that in between is a fully exposed descent down a series of switchbacks. It was extremely hot that day. They probably died of heat exhaustion. It's unusual for it to get the dog too, but if they didn't have water for themselves, they probably didn't for the dog. It's not hard to imagine getting to the bottom and realizing you're in serious trouble.
This family closely mirrors mine, so I've followed the story closely, and it seems like they just made a grievous error in judgment in an area they weren't familiar with.
it seems highly unlikely the mother, father, and dog all died of heat exhaustion at the same time, unless the dog died/passed out and they were carrying it. Even then, I would have suspected the mother/daughter taking cover and the dad going ahead.
Incredibly rare. Huge numbers of people hike the PCT in the desert every year, and some years 1 or 2 people die of heat exhaustion. It's never big groups of people at the same time. Same with heat-related deaths at Grand Canyon, Death Valley etc.
The article says that they were avid hikers. I’m not familiar with the area, but carrying plenty of water seems like a relatively fundamental bit of prep. Am I missing something?
Safety tip: carry plenty of water and a personal locator beacon. You have to pay for the hardware and register it, but afterwards it's free and is a reliable way to summon emergency services from anywhere. It sends an emergency signal received by satellites and rescuers will be alerted of the location of the signal.
I used to be an avid hiker, on one trip I got to the trailhead and realized I had forgotten to fill the water bottles. I usually took 2 or 3 liters, but there was only half a liter in one of the bottles from the previous hike. It was really hot that day. I went on the hike anyway. I almost died.
actually, the most avid hikers i know usually are overconfident, and underestimate their water needs. I always carry excess water, even after years on the trail, and always have to give some to my even more well traveled companions.
Back when I flew gliders, every educated pilot knew that the intermediate (aka "avid") pilots killed themselves the most. This is well established statistically. Overconfidence, complaisance with risk, etc.
"… [Y]ou could make it to a high level of expertise but then succumb to the complacency fed by your successful experiences, you could be beaten by the ever-present need to accomplish objectives (save time, save money, achieve schedules), or you might rebel against unrealistic SOPs and burdensome regulations.
Either way, you are living on borrowed time. Fortunately, you can change things."
Tony says Rangers are notorious for going out on missions without a safe amount of water or food. He said they nearly took casualties on that rescue mission due to dehydration, and that if he did it again he'd take less ammo and more water.
Also, see Aaron Ralston, the guy who disappeared for a week because he got his arm stuck under a rock in a slot canyon. He says his biggest mistake was not going out alone, but rather neglecting to tell anyone else about his plans and schedule. This kind of thing is super common among experienced outdoorsmen and women.
The avid hikers I knew in SoCal and WA never made this mistake. They always knew how much to bring, usually bringing extra and dumping out what they didn't need at halfway. In SoCal I brought 2 liters minimum. You must have a different definition of "avid."
Absolutely this also I went kayaking with some professionals that had some major accomplishments, like ocean crossings. I was the only one to take an extra paddle they all made fun of me for it guess who saved the day when we needed an extra paddle 4 days from civilization.
Emergency beacons are overkill for hiking and camping. But they're mandatory for backcountry skiing IMO, where there's a significant risk of an accident that makes you invisible from the surface, e.g., by avalanche, or falling into a tree well:
I don't think you understand how beacons work. Avalanche beacons have a maximum range of around 60 meters. And you don't activate a beacon after an accident, you turn it on at the start of your run, or preferably at the start of the day. They only help us if we have a general idea of where someone might be buried, and even if we have a strong signal, we're still usually using our poles to actually find the person.
If we're talking about hiking and trekking, then we're talking about PLB's with satellite com. PLBs cost hundreds of dollars, and they must be registered with the SARSAT database. I personally don't know anyone who uses one for hiking or mountaineering. Do you?
Inreach Mini is totally worth the weight, not just for SOS but texting people (2-way) or getting weather reports. I've used it just for meeting up with people who also had Inreaches in places with spotty reception (many climbing areas). On a big climbs you can send check in messages to people at home.
Unless you are in the middle of a desert, not bringing gallons of bottled water is OK. Water from some natural sources is safe for drinking (knowing which kind is important here); being able to boil water makes things even better. On the other hand, I myself have made day-long trips without consuming any water at all; looks like it is not far from truth that one can easily survive without water for a few days. (I would also note that to me it seems that for some people who I observed constant drinking water is more of a bad habit than a necessity.)
Grew up in northern California. What is suspicious was the death of the dog. The dog can live 2-3 days without water - and most likely would have found some. (They smell water).
The hazard of which is greatly overstated. You are probably fine drinking the vast majority of alpine springs if there aren't livestock grazing nearby. I rarely bring purification and I've never gotten sick.
Purify when you can, absolutely - but if you have to choose between a stream and a spring, take the spring. Not guaranteed to be safe, but if it's popping up out of the ground, it's more likely to be safe than flowing surface water. Also, always consider what's up-stream.
I second this; a couple of years back I went hiking with a buddy, we had water but planned for a day hike that extended overnight, and we had to drink water from some streams. While I worried about illness, having water then meant we were able to get back to civilization, where if we got sick we could seek medical attention.
You’d be surprised how much of an effort it takes to safely descend a steep slope with poor traffic. Definitely harder going up but if you check it out on google earth you can get an idea of the grade.
Yes but there is still the fact that they all died together. The initial autopsy didn't provide clues (which they would be looking for heatstroke which has a particular signature)
They seem too well-educated to not be aware of toxic algae (very common throughout northern CA), and would know to not drink the water -- and certainly not give it to the child. Dogs do often tragically die every summer from drinking from streams, though. Similarly, it's odd for a responsible couple with a child and dog to not know to bring water, etc.
Heat or alage aren't impossible, but it sure does seem odd.
Lightning can kill without obvious marks, and it can kill several people at once. Not uncommon on a mountain. Poisoning or dehydration would not have happened to a group all at once.
"This is a very unusual, unique situation," said Kristie Mitchell, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office. "There were no signs of trauma, no obvious cause of death. There was no suicide note."
Not true at all. Lightning strikes often leave very little evidence. In particular, if the ground was wet and rocky, a strike some distance away could easily have electrocuted the family with no or minimal burning, and the actual strike location could be nearly impossible to find.
I've seen this with my own eyes. A couple of years ago I watched lightning strike a tree in the park across the street during a rain storm. Afterward the tree showed no evidence of the strike except for some bark blown off. There was no visible burning on the tree or the surrounding ground, but I guarantee that anyone standing near that tree would have gotten zapped.
Was talking to a vet, they claimed that most cases of herd's dying "from lightning" were botulism related or other poisonings. The herds graze together, and can die together.
But this is an extreme symptom of a direct or nearly direct hit. Many lightning victims have no visible injury.
Lightning isn't very good at killing people, but it's capable of hurting you from a great distance, because it takes so little current across your heart to cause problems. There is evidence that as little as 5 mA can cause cardiac arrest, and this is the rationale for GFCI protected outlets in homes:
Not always. We lost two horses to a lightning strike and if not for us being there at the time, we'd have had no idea why they died. They were both lying dead on the ground with a mouthful of grass and no signs of injury.
i feel like the common denominator between all four would be consumption of water (edit: well and the hike itself). My first suspicion is some kind of poisoning.
Canoeing and hiking away from habitation and livestock I regularly drink from lakes and streams without without worry or intestinal consequences so so far.
My doctor sister took a fright when I told her I make a point of bringing back water from glacial streams for mixing with single malts.
Canister stoves that produce a small amount of carbon monoxide have an unfortunate feature of making more CO with increasing altitude. Watch out: a stove in a tent that was perfectly fine at 5K feet becomes a source of CO at 8K feet.
If they were backpacking, I'd say carbon monoxide from a stove most likely. Otherwise maybe only lightning makes some sense. All this "toxic gasses" seems way too unlikely.
Thank you for the information. Though, I do wonder: how can boiling increase the toxin levels? Or does it simply increase the concentration because some water has evaporated?
Will increasing the concentration matter? Obviously I know nothing on the subject, but drinking 10ml of poison in 100ml of water must be as harmful, and thus toxic, to me as 10ml of poison in 50ml water, right?
Or we're assuming they don't drink all the water, in which case 20ml of the first solution will be less toxic than 20ml of the second.
Higher concentration may mean higher rate of absorbtion. If detoxification happens at a constant rate, then a quicker accumulation of toxins may bring you over a threshold you would not’ve gone over had you consumed a poison of lower concentration.
I might be wrong but I don't think boiling would work for chemical toxins ether. Unless it's life and death you should avoid collecting drinking water from stagnant sources always look for flowing water. If you have to collect water try and collect it from deep bellow the surface and far from the bottom.
How about distillation? There are emergency water-distillation kits that people bring on desert hikes. (I guess it would depend on whether the toxin forms an azeotrope with water.)
Is the idea behind this recommendation that these algae blooms have a harder time to grow on moving water? Or that moving water upstream will dilute any concentration of toxins?
Broadly speaking algea wants to be stationary. You see it floating on the surface in stagnant water, or sometimes attached to rocks in moving water. Dilution is also a factor, but if at all possible you want to avoid taking from anywhere with significant algea even if the water is flowing. Prominent algea likely indicates high level of agricultural runoff (maybe fertilizer, maybe manure).
If you have to and you can afford to spend ~$30 buy Aquamira. It's mainly advertised for reducing the oder of stored water, but it's also commonly used by backpackers to purify water. Anecdotally I've used it to drink stagnant water (when no better options, of course) repeatedly with no issues, whereas I and others I know have gotten sick from clean moving water we put through a filter (Sawyer squeeze). Aquamira is just a way to make bleach on the spot in the right concentration.
If you can't afford Aquamira or don't have access to an outdoors store that sells it you can get the same effect with household bleach. It's crucial you buy bleach that only contains chlorine, not any scents or additives (for example to make it thicker and stick to walls). See https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/emergency/making-water-safe...
After more research it seems you're partly right. Depending on the PH of the water and the type of cyanotoxins bleach might not be effective. It is effective in some cases, but not reliably.
If they are "avid hikers" like the article suggests, they would have brought water. Also doesn't explain why the baby died (don't think you'd give a 1 year old stream water).
Being an "avid hiker" is open to interpretation nowadays. A lot of my coworkers would call themselves "avid hikers", but they only hike stuff like Mount Si and Lake 22. For those unfamiliar with Seattle area hikes, those 2 are way more crowded than city parks and are in no way risky for anyone less than grossly unhealthy. I've been on hikes with them and their preparation involves bringing a single nalgene of water. They had never heard of "the 10 essentials."
It’s a train of people up Si with a slammed parking lot… I think that’s the point. It is difficult, but it is also highly pedestrian as far as trails go in WA. We are lucky to have such high standards here where even the most accessible and trafficked trails are incredible
> Also doesn't explain why the baby died (don't think you'd give a 1 year old stream water).
A one-year old is going to be heavily reliant on its parents actively taking care (in the short-term, most critically) in of hydration and heat management in the wilderness. If they are incapacitated by a toxin, that's quite plausibly fatal for the baby.
In a few rare cases people and dogs have died from just swimming in water contaminated by toxic algae. So not intentionally drinking it, but it's easy to accidentally swallow a little bit.
Cyanide salts would probably do it. Last adult who takes it chucks the container into the brush as their last action. The first responders have no way of determining that was cause of death, and it'd wait on the report from the corner (which will take days) or for someone to find that piece of evidence which tests positive for the chemical (which will also take days). There's 1,500 murder-suicides in the United States every year. A naturally occurring bubble of gas that kills an entire family is something that tends to happen zero times in a year. Poisoning as a means of murder-suicide is going to be uncommon but we can all think of Jonestown and Heaven's Gate.
We just don't like to think that is possible, but the coroner has probably seen enough horrible shit go through their table that humans do to each other than they'll have to take the time to rule it out.
i agree with aaron above--suicide is the most likely cause...quite possibly only one of the parents did it...so that would make it a suicide/multiple murder...
How would you do it? How would you kill a baby, a dog, an adult, and yourself in the woods while leaving no physical traces of those means? It doesn’t add up.
Suicide involving guns? Drowning with bricks? Suicide is not easy - curious how you think they commited suicide. Suicide of a whole family is complicated. "Under Mysterious Circumstances" - means to me the investigators are: wtf.
> "Under Mysterious Circumstances" - means to me the investigators are: wtf.
They will have a very good assessment of the situation. They are not "wtf"
They were/are missing something from their normal patterns. They had to react to protocol on the day. Now they will want something solid.
They will know how heat exhaustion looks, they will see all water bottles are empty for instance. It also is/isn't normal for that to happen within 2 miles of the car. Deputies also would not call them experienced hikers if they ran out of water. Nor would you expect people with their world travel and older age to hike with a baby with too little water. The police know a lot more than what we know and I'd find it unlikely from here the outcome will be different to what the police suspect.
We've warned you so many times not to post flamewar comments to HN that this is easily a bannable offense. I'm not going to ban you for this one right now because the GP was also a provocation, but we need you to fix this properly if you want to keep commenting here. This is totally unacceptable, and enough is enough.
Edit: actually, your recent comments have been so bad for HN that I'm going to ban you after all. Vandalizing HN that consistently is seriously not cool. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
They didn't "kill" their child. This is a freak incident.
If they just packed up their child in their car and drove on the freeway, and they all died due to someone slamming into them at high speed, it wouldn't even be national news.
Someone crashing into your car is not something one can easily mitigate the risk of.
But had they driven with a baby into a remote area, like a desert, without cell service, and they all died in some "freak incident", that would also be negligent in my book.
I'm not suggesting they did anything illegal. And if anyone wants to take their children into remote areas without a backup plan, that's their choice, I just think it's bad parenting.
No baby needs to go on remote hikes when there are much less risky hikes to be had. The parents were doing this for themselves. It was risky and selfish behavior.
"Someone crashing into your car is not something one can easily mitigate the risk of."
You can absolutely mitigate it by deciding how much time you spend on the freeway.
I don't think sharing a love of the outdoors with your kid is selfish at all. It's also keeping the parents in shape, which the kid typically benefits from. The fact that a freak occurrence happened makes it easy to judge, but this situation is not at all typical of families that do similar things with their kids (even babies).
Yes, of course... and you probably shouldn't drive at 2 am on a Friday night with children in the car, unless it's not easily avoided.
But you can only do so much. Everything is a calculated risk.
And there are plenty of ways to take children into the outdoors without taking the risk these parents did. There are thousands of miles of hiking trails in California alone that are not as remote and don't lack cell service as this location. That's my entire point.
I think if you look at it as "everything is a calculated risk," you'd find that the only way you'd rationally consider this any riskier that various other things they could have chosen for their weekend activity (such as a road trip) was through the 20-20 hindsight that is conveniently available to you.
Since we don't even know how what caused their deaths, it's quite premature to blame the parents for doing something risky.
People die doing all kinds of things that are absolutely worth doing. If we take too many cautionary tales, we end up swaddled in blankets on our couches for the rest of our lives (and then die early of our sedentary lifestyles, all the while hating the world we see on our TV).
Yes, they took a knowable risk (so does anyone who drives with their child). No, we don't know what killed them. We shouldn't let that prevent people from exposing their children to the outdoors, to places where mommy and daddy aren't constantly getting text messages, and from learning by exposure at a young age how to responsibly handle decisions under pressure.
By this logic you can justify almost any risk. The question is why bother taking totally unnecessary risks with children?
There are plenty of ways to take children into the outdoors without going places that are remote enough to not have other people relatively nearby and not have cell service.
A baby is not learning anything about handling pressure, regardless of what happens. They're entirely passive. And there's nothing wrong with turning off your phone while you're hiking (or using airplane mode), because you can always turn it back on, so the "text messages" excuse is pretty ridiculous.
Consider the possibility that you are wrong. It seems to me I'm arguing with people that have relatively little experience outdoors, while I have significant experience, and have seen first-hand how quickly things can go wrong.
I grew up taking months long summer vacations to a cabin that my father was building in the middle of British Columbia. No running water, outhouses, no road, you had to hike in or paddle down the lake. Fishing for Kokanee and Rainbow Trout. First time I went up there I was negative 6 months old and we went up there nearly every summer after that until I got out of high school. When I was around 6 years old we went up there in the middle of winter when it took cross country skiing about half a mile on the frozen lake to get there.
I've literally been that kid being taken into the outdoors by my parents.
They don't "need" them to survive and yet many people have been saved by their cell phones. We don't know yet, but there's a good chance these people might have been saved had they been able to make a 911 call. Or if they had been on a more popular trail with other people around. Regardless, they took a big needless risk and it ended tragedy.
Venturing into remote areas always entails significant risk. A loose rock can become a life threatening emergency in seconds. Having cell service mitigates this risk immeasurably, as does having other people nearby.
Taking a baby into this kind of environment is needlessly reckless when there are so many good alternatives.
Please, everybody, speculating about this very, very sad event is not helping anyone. Only the authorities can work out what happened. Let it alone, please.
Relax, it's just a discussion, one among countless other discussions around the world about all kinds of topics that may or may not be offensive to you.
Personally I find mysteries like this to be riveting. I'm sad about the family, anxious to find out what happened, and I'm interested in peoples' ideas here. Nothing wrong with that.
EDIT: I'm going to be really unhappy if this turns out to be poisoning by algae. That's a risk that I've never had to account for in life, and it's why I'm particularly interested in this incident.
I read the journal "Accidents in North American Mountaineering". I'm not a mountaineer much, but most of it applies to hiking. I don't read it to speculate on anything. I read it to learn from other peoples' mistakes.
A family went hiking and ended up dead. They made a mistake. So if I go hiking again, how can I avoid that particular mistake?
So tragic and heartbreaking.
I read that they were doing an overnight hike in a remote part of Yosemite called Devil's Gulch.
With a 1 year old? I love the outdoors too, but why take that kind of risk with a child?
"The family's Sunday hike was intended to be just a daylong hike, which prompted concern from multiple family friends when they didn't come back home."
On a day trip you bring enough water and some crackers / snacks and you are fine. On long hikes you can do filtration on the way, but a day hike not too bad to put the 2L camleback bladder in the daypack, I usually do a hard nalgene on the side if I'm hiking with others (always seems to get used).
Seriously, if you don't like drinking stream water, bring water. They even sell a 3L camelback.
If you don't like the weight (longer overnight trips) amazing options these days in terms of water purification (vs what we used to do with the filter pump / boiling).
At least for me for a day trip 3L (2 in pack, 1 in bottle) has worked fine.
Now toxins from water would be very interesting - so be interesting to see what comes back from that testing.
Do they know how hot it was? A big brimmed hat on everyone does wonders in the heat. I see folks out with no hat, almost no water fairly often - Ok if you can stop and call for help, not so great if you don't have cell service.
CO2 is heavier than air and can accumulate in natural hollows. I've read about game animals suffocating rapidly when they walk through CO2-filled hollows, but can't immediately find a link. Natural CO2 emission does kill trees [1].
[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-81/Intro/MonitoringData/CO2/CO...