There’s some weirdness in this story, but also… this is Colorado. This was Leadville. This was Mt Elbert.
People go up there and come back 2 days later, and that’s not unusual. People do things like Nolan’s 14. They stash cars as supply depots on ultra runs. They drop cars off as a shuttle (ie, drive four hours away, and hike back to the first car, then get the second car a day or two later). They go backcountry for days, camping out and trying to be alone. We have BLM land where you don’t need a permit for dispersed camping, so no one really knows where you are. There are spots where you get no cell service for hours of hiking time. Not everyone on crazy adventures even has folk looking or waiting for them. Yes, that’s best practice. But not everyone’s practice.
I like that the hotel was worried enough to report him late. My brief touches with Lake County SAR have been good - they are great folks truly trying to help others out. I have a COSAR card. Most folk in the high country look out for one another, but they also will leave each other alone a lot.
Except for ignoring texts, this guy’s behavior isn’t all that odd up here.
note - I once tried to hike Mt Elbert, ended up back at the car 16 hours later, having come 200 feet from the summit and failed to get there.
I got one of those once. I had forgotten to turn off the ringer on my phone, and it went off while I was lecturing. My students were amused when I explained that I had just received a spam call from myself.
I’m not disagreeing he should have done things differently, but this is a narrative told entirely from the point of view of some pissed off searchers. His narrative may have been he tried to call but had no signal, and then his battery was too low so he turned off his phone.
I can relate to everything about this except for going for a long hike alone… that is something I have literally never considered doing in my life. But I could totally see how some one who didn’t perceive themselves to be in danger might not take calls (especially from suspect numbers) or might even have texting turned off or unsupported by the moble plan etc etc. It’s not that weird to just pay for a limited number of texts or things like that for people who don’t like expensive phone plans or… phones… very much.
Most of the spam calls I get don’t leave a message - or even necessarily do anything if I answer the phone.* Either way, if someone doesn’t leave a message, I have to assume it’s a spam call (it’s not like I’m going to call back a random number that called me), and listening to messages is the only way I can distinguish a spam call from a real call.
*There’s just silence on the other end, for some reason. I don’t know how this is working for them - in the old days, when telemarketing calls would have a live person behind it, they’d sometimes call multiple people, connect with whoever answered first and hang up on everyone else. Now they’re all automated, so it doesn’t really make sense that the hang-ups and silence calls are more common now than ever, unless a certain percentage are simply there to see if they’ve connected with a live number, and that information is going in a database for later use.
Huh, I think I vaguely remember reading something about that with certain non-US numbers. I can’t imagine that working very well these days. I notice almost all the calls are from (presumably spoofed) regular phone numbers, and there are a lot of them, so if that’s still going on, it doesn’t account for even a noticeable percentage of the calls.
I’m trying to picture why the authorities would lie especially when the hiker could easily tell his side if he felt they were lying to make him look bad. In other words it’s a lie they could easily get caught at.
I also don’t think SARs teams are the type that would lie about a hiker because they are angry.
It would be nice to hear the hiker’s version but he has no obligation to talk to anyone.
Getting that close is damned impressive. Hiking in and around Leadville itself can wreck a person.
A different perspective wouldn’t make it a lie. The SAR people just have a different perspective on the incident. One of their perspectives, to be sure, is to make sure their calls are never ignored. So this narrative is, in its way, good for them.
Hiker guy might indeed say “yeah, I ignored all calls and texts because I didn’t care. Fuck those SAR people.” Or he may say “my battery was dead,” or “my phone was wrapped in a watertight container and turned off, because I was completely unconcerned. I told the hotel I might be out late.”
I go on short and long, long hikes into terrain where there are few or no humans, and I do it frequently. My phone is off, and buried in my pack. If I tell my family “back in 1-2 days,” I wouldn’t expect them to raise a fuss until day 3. I wouldn’t expect a hotel to raise a fuss at all.
Apparently it hasn’t been mentioned here yet, so I’m just going to mention my assumption about what really happened:
He met someone while hiking, and went home with them. Turned off his phone. Got back the next morning and discovered a lot of effort had been made to find him, so he quickly made up a cover story. He can’t admit the real story because he was cheating on his partner, or he’s a closeted gay, or whatever.
