A Sad Discovery During A Good Hike

[ElrondHubbard]

I've been trying to get out into the wilds regularly of late, and I've had some good hikes in various parts of the mountains that surround my home. Last Saturday I went out into the Funeral Mountains Wilderness, a rugged area adjacent to Death Valley National Park. My goal was to explore one structure in particular called Bat Mountain, which has some geological features which have fascinated and confused me for a very long time. Below is what it looks like during the approach. I could type page after page about the fascinating geology there, but I'll spare you for now. I started on the north end, off the picture to the right, and zigzagged my way south.



About an hour and a half into the trek, I was making my way up a very rocky slope, trying to figure out the relationships between the red, cobbly, gravelly sandstone I was on, and the white almost homogeneous limestone above me. As I stopped to catch my breath, I noticed an opening in the cliff wall ahead. These grottos in limestone are not at all unusual, the same type of chemical weathering that makes limestone surfaces so fiendishly sharp also hollows out caves and pits and ravines with ease. But this opening caught my eye, because it appeared to have been blocked up with stones on its lower part. Also, a stick or post of some kind leaned out of the opening. Someone had apparently been building some kind of shelter in the rock there.

I was a bit annoyed. I was taught from a young age that wilderness means wilderness, and both my Boy Scout training and my father's frequent admonitions had drilled into my value system that when exploring nature, leave it natural. "Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photographs", has been a mantra. Whenever possible, that's what I do. Also, I'm aware of the regulations about designated Wilderness areas, and I was within the Funeral Mountains Wilderness. One of those regulations is that camping is limited to 14 days. And that doesn't mean you build a cairn and come back to it later.

On the other hand, prospectors and native peoples were exploring this area long before there was any such designation, and it was possible that this construction predated the law. I moved closer to it to see if I could understand what it was.

I arrived at the foot of the cliff, where there was a large but navigable step into a notch that allowed a precarious approach to the cave entrance. On the ground scattered below that step were several weathered bones. They were human. My heart felt a bit unsteady after that, I spent a few minutes wondering what I should do. Were they old bones? Was this an archaeological site? Should I go away and simply leave it be? Did it need to be reported to someone?

I decided to check out further, and climbed the rest of the way up to the entrance. A couple more bones were on the path. I looked over the rock wall, and noticed that the pole I had seen earlier from a distance was actually an aluminum tent pole. This was not ancient. Inside was a further jumbled pile of bones, a pair of khaki trousers, the remains of a sleeping bag, and what appeared to be a wallet or checkbook. At this point my heart was completely in my throat, and I knew that at some time in the relatively recent past there had been a tragedy. And it was almost certain that someone was being missed, and had not come home.

I climbed back down to the lower ground, and pondered my choices. I couldn't call it an emergency. Whatever had happened here had happened years ago. It was probably not a 9-1-1 situation, it was a Saturday, and non-emergency law enforcement offices were probably closed. The nearest Sheriff's substation for Inyo County, California, was in Shoshone, nearly 50 miles away. They probably had someone on call, but they weren't likely to be willing to respond to a non-emergency such as this that would require some fairly rough hiking to reach. I decided to continue my hike and make the call Monday morning. The hike itself was rewarding and challenging, but the event cast a real pall over the day.

Monday morning I called the Inyo County Sheriff's office. The Shoshone number went to voice mail. I left a message and called the County Seat of Independence. There I talked to a real person, and she assured me they were interested and would get back in touch with me. About an hour later I was talking to a detective. He took as many details as I could give him, and then said he would call back again. He called again in the afternoon, saying he had arranged a coroner, a CSI specialist, and another detective to join the case, and wanted me to meet them to lead them to the site the next day.

I met them as arranged, and we went back on Tuesday. When they first saw the opening on the cliff, the detective acted suspicious that I would have seen it at all -- how did I know it was there?

"I'm not going up there!" he said at first. "It's not worth it. Somebody's going to fall and get hurt. We need a search and rescue team with ropes. Did anybody bring a rope?"

"It's not as hard as it looks," I offered. "A 60-year old man can do it."

Then they saw the scattered bones at the foot of the cliff and became more interested. Two of them ended up at the grotto entrance seemingly without realizing that it was too difficult.

Watching them at work made me glad to be a geologist, and not a crime specialist. They were incredibly professional and efficient, but they were jaded and cynical from too many bad experiences. They took it all in stride, with dark humor and casual jokes, while for me the entire experience was incredibly sad.

The man's name was Bruce, he was born in 1954. A year older than me. He had a passport and a driver's license, both from Colorado. The team all agreed that he'd been there more than two years, possibly five years. That didn't seem very long. My previous hike on Bat Mountain had been longer ago than that.

Judging from the context and the empty pill bottle found with the remains, they ruled it a suicide. I opened my mouth when I shouldn't have, incredulous that anyone would go to such effort to hike this far, just to end their own life. It seemed incomprehensible to me.

The detective looked at me and said "Sir, this is the forth suicide we've had this year, just from Colorado residents alone, that turned up in the desert. Believe me, it happens all the time." He pointed back at the entrance. "That guy did not want to be found."

All the others nodded in agreement.

They decided not to recover the remains in the cave right away, but to send out a search and rescue team, with ropes, the next day. They thanked me for reporting the find, and I thanked them for taking my original call seriously. We hiked back to the cars, and I left to finish my day.

It's been hard not to keep thinking about the whole situation. However incomprehensible to me the events that could motivate a perfectly healthy (seemingly) mature man to trek out into the remote wilderness to purposely leave the world forever, the fact that he chose this place, this landscape which I have such affection for, makes us kindred spirits in a way. He must have been drawn to these mountains somehow, and that much, at least, I can understand. In that respect, I feel the loss of a fellow traveller.

I hope that he, and whoever was waiting for him, wondering about his fate, will now be able to find some sort of rest. I wish them all peace.

[Bando]

Last Saturday I went out into the Funeral Mountains Wilderness

Are you pulling our collective leg M8?

[ElrondHubbard]

Are you pulling our collective leg M8?

You don't think it's a real place?

http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/barst...ins.print.html

Dude, don't make me post all my rock pictures! You'll all regret it!

[Bando]

No not that lol.

Just wondering who brings a sleeping bag to a suicide, decomposes into a skeleton in less than 2 years, then gets up and throws some of their bones down the trail which you immediately recognize as human.

[Jtbny]

Hopefully there will be closure for his family now.

Edit: your dead guy story is far better written than my last finding of a dead guy story would have been.

[Mark1T]

Elrond, thank you for posting this and it obviously took some deep thought and time for you to write about it. Glad you did so it may give you some comfort. At first, I saw the length of your post and was a little discouraged, but after the first paragraph, I appreciated your writing skills and I could tell that each word was genuine.

Yes, it is sad that Bruce chose to go out in a way that he could never be found and in such a desolate area. Makes you wonder why he made those decisions and what drove him to take those pills, knowing he would not wake up. However, a question came up - Sure, he made every effort to not be found, but he did leave his ID, which he could have discarded. Why did he leave his ID or did he even think about it?

If you had not found his remains, they would have probably not ever been found, at least for many, many years. It may have been destiny for you to have found him, as a fellow traveler. RIP, Bruce.

Thanks for sharing.

[ElrondHubbard]

No not that lol.

Just wondering who brings a sleeping bag to a suicide, decomposes into a skeleton in less than 2 years, then gets up and throws some of their bones down the trail which you immediately recognize as human.

I wondered about the two years thing myself. The CSI person and the coroner both explained to me that in the hot desert climate, decomposition occurs extremely quickly. Human bones are easy to recognize when one is a coccyx and the other is a hip bone. The bones outside of the cave were weathered and starting to crack, the bones inside still looked fresh. There are plenty of animals around, particularly coyotes, that are only too happy to pull bones away from decomposing flesh.

As for the sleeping bag, who knows? The suicide was the coroner's call, not mine. I find hiking for miles out into the desert and clambering up a cliff face, then building a rock wall to create a shelter, all as a prelude to suicide, rather incomprehensible myself. My own guess would have been an injury that he couldn't walk out from. But I'm not the expert on the scene. It wasn't my call to make.

[Bando]

C'Mon and share some of the real pics, like the tent pole.

I agree with other replies, the family will be happy to get him home and get some closure. Glad you could be that link and solve that mystery.

[ElrondHubbard]

C'Mon and share some of the real pics, like the tent pole.

I agree with other replies, the family will be happy to get him home and get some closure. Glad you could be that link and solve that mystery.

You'll have to go to the cops to get the grisly stuff. That's not my line. I'll post rock pictures until you run off screaming, but I don't want to be so disrespectful of the dead, especially in that situation, that I'd either take pictures or post them. If you don't believe me, so be it.

[Bando]

I believe you.

[ElrondHubbard]

Thanks. I think you're really just trying to keep me from posting rock pictures.

[NorwichGrad]

I thought you were gonna say you encountered a mean,
lean desert possum and you couldn't shoot it cuz you're in Cali.

It's always sad to hear about losing one's life. But I'd like to think that your discovery of Bruce will lead to closure. Thank you for sharing.

And I agree with Mark. You, sir, eez a great writer. You got madskillz. If this geology thing doesn't work out, you can always be an author.

You're also a great photographer. And you're not even Asian.

[Big_Sky_Guy]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Lots of back country up here and we lose people every year, whether by accident or on purpose.

[Karl_Hungus]

There are numerous things in the desert that could have killed this guy -- injury, dehydration etc., and yet they concluded it was a suicide just because he had an empty medicine bottle with him? Seems pretty flimsy....

At least his loved ones can now get some closure.

[Old-Time-Lifter]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Lots of back country up here and we lose people every year, whether by accident or on purpose.

Lot of mysterious disappearances out there.

[ElrondHubbard]

Thanks, all. I agree the suicide ruling seemed a bit far-fetched to me initially. It's a preliminary finding, and I expect the recovery team would have done a more thorough investigation as they gathered up all the bones and could then check the rest of the grotto. A good friend of mine used to be a Park Ranger in Death Valley National Park, and I was telling him about the whole thing on the phone last night. In his opinion the suicide interpretation was reasonable. He told me that Death Valley alone recovers four or five suicides a year, that people come from all over the world to die there.

Not something I can identify with, but I guess that's a good thing. People in that frame of mind simply aren't rational, and we can't judge them by any particular logical standards. I've been thinking a lot about BodyHard and his family for the last couple of days, and it sure brings home what he, and some other family from Colorado, must now be going through.

Overall, it just makes me thankful to have the kind of life and family that I do, and whatever demons drove Bruce to the bitter end of his existence have so far spared me and my loved ones. And on Thanksgiving day, I'm holding on to that.

[pryme]

Wow crazy story. Ive spent time all over death valley, onion valley, bodhi ghost town, those salt deposit places big mounds of salt. Not salton sea but ive been there too. Been to tge lowest elevation below sea level ect ect.

Some very remote places. Glad closure will come to this mans family. Wonder if there will be anything online about it in tge coming days or weeks?

[crupiea]

Sad story.

Well Done elron.

Just imagine that that poor sob did all the math before going up there an figured, without a doubt that this was the best solution for his problems.

even after living there even for a short time and feeling the majesty of it, he still felt that way.

You have to wonder what draws people to such a conclusion.

Good job on reporting it and following through.

[Dave1958]

Usually suicide is a cry for help. But we also must realize that people that commit that act are not in rational mind. They do things that make normal people scratch their heads. These things may make more sense when family members are talked to about him. It also may make the waters muddier on what happened. Sad for all,but maybe they get closure instead of hoping for a doorbell to ring that never will

[Dave1958]

I had a friend that committed sucicide. He had left the area and moved away. He went to his hometown, bought supplies to die by CO poisoning, and a copy of the local paper. He read the paper, folded it and went to sleep

[Karl_Hungus]

Thanks, all. I agree the suicide ruling seemed a bit far-fetched to me initially. It's a preliminary finding, and I expect the recovery team would have done a more thorough investigation as they gathered up all the bones and could then check the rest of the grotto. A good friend of mine used to be a Park Ranger in Death Valley National Park, and I was telling him about the whole thing on the phone last night. In his opinion the suicide interpretation was reasonable.

That still doesn't seem reasonable to me. An empty medicine bottle is all that is needed to conclude it was suicide? Maybe he was camping and only brought enough medication for the trip and ran out. If they are going to conclude suicide -- with the devastating impacts that will have on the family -- I would imagine that they would need a bit more than an empty bottle. It seems more reasonable to rule the cause of death "unknown" as opposed to suicide. I dunno....maybe it is just a quick and easy way to avoid having to figure out what actually happened.

Sad story either way.

[Mark1T]

I was wondering how Bruce go there. I mean , in the middle of the desert without a car or at least a bike. He also had a tent. Some kind of vehicle had to have got him there. But, I am assuming there wasn't an abandoned vehicle around? Besides the pill bottle, the lack of transportation also raises questions. But, hey - maybe he was in good shape and walked fifty+ miles.

[Bando]

I was wondering how Bruce go there. I mean , in the middle of the desert without a car or at least a bike. He also had a tent. Some kind of vehicle had to have got him there. But, I am assuming there wasn't an abandoned vehicle around? Besides the pill bottle, the lack of transportation also raises questions. But, hey - maybe he was in good shape and walked fifty+ miles.

My understanding is that he had a horse with no name.

[Squid24]

My understanding is that he had a horse with no name.

lmao, Cause he'd been thru the desert ....damn now it's stuck in my head...thanks

Great story, but I must admit that it is hard to swallow suicide with everything NOT there, along with what was there.

I think they were in a hurry to get out and to just eliminate assumptions?

[Mark1T]

My understanding is that he had a horse with no name.

That would indicate that Bruce has been there since the 70s. We are getting closer to figuring this all out.

[ElrondHubbard]

I was wondering how Bruce go there. I mean , in the middle of the desert without a car or at least a bike. He also had a tent. Some kind of vehicle had to have got him there. But, I am assuming there wasn't an abandoned vehicle around? Besides the pill bottle, the lack of transportation also raises questions. But, hey - maybe he was in good shape and walked fifty+ miles.

One of the things that was on the agenda for the investigators was to look for any abandoned vehicle reports from the last few years. Remember they couldn't call in any of this stuff from the scene. There was no radio and no cell phone coverage there.

[pvsampson]

Usually suicide is a cry for help.

Yes.Because of course the person will get plenty of help after killing themself.

[Clinos]

No not that lol.

Just wondering who brings a sleeping bag to a suicide, decomposes into a skeleton in less than 2 years, then gets up and throws some of their bones down the trail which you immediately recognize as human.

Clinton appointee or associate.


Too soon?

[JimmyJonny]

One of the things that was on the agenda for the investigators was to look for any abandoned vehicle reports from the last few years. Remember they couldn't call in any of this stuff from the scene. There was no radio and no cell phone coverage there.

I know termiinally ill people who have committed suicide similar to this. They just wanna be alone and in peace. Often they don't want their loved one to find them deceased.

Medical records may show a reason, ya never know.

[ElrondHubbard]

I know termiinally ill people who have committed suicide similar to this. They just wanna be alone and in peace. Often they don't want their loved one to find them deceased.

Medical records may show a reason, ya never know.

I don't think the loved ones are better off not knowing. At least I hope that closure would be better for them than never knowing what happened. I can only hope that's true in this case.