Lori, we used to get called out occasionally (military) to assist SAR and Sherriff's department search the desert for missing backpackers. Found one body just a few hundred yards, well actually the Sherriffs Helo found it, just as we were showing up in a Jolly Green, from a house and highway. We were asked if we could backtrack the trail, and determine what happened. No problem. The person did absolutely everything wrong. That's about how we summed it up for the Old Man, slang for the Commander, who in turn faxed our findings to the Sherriff's department.
(It'd be a long story to go into it all, but the deceased, had they had the proper survival skills, could have easily survived. Instead someones life was wasted, and all those families, and others affected by the death of a loved one. One year, '80's, we got so many assist calls, that I almost lost track of my humanity, and developed pretty much a "tough ****" attitude". I recovered, but I was so sick of helping recover bodies, which wasn't my job anyway, that it was hard to feel sorry for the backpackers/hikers who were killed, by arrogance and ignorance. We too found remains of a skeleton, that we weren't even looking for, but to be honest, the Riverside County Sheriff was looking into that one as a possible homocide and body dump, we never heard anything else about it. So Pika's and Marmots aside, coupound factures, concussions, and a 1000 other things can hurt people unexpectedly, who ponder their security while sitting on granite. But hey, at least they "planned", I think.....Heck, when were you working with a SAR? Maybe we crossed paths?
J.


Edited by jbylake (10/08/12 09:26 PM)