• Welcome to Sleuth the Wild, a new space with room to stretch out and explore the nooks and crannies of wilderness mysteries, mishaps, and the missing. Start by hitting that REGISTER button, choose an original (not in use elsewhere) handle, and email Lost Mitten if an issue develops. Bring your friends, sleuths, outdoorsy folks, experts, newbies...Help us develop something special here, find some answers, and learn new skills. You never know, one day you could be the missing or the mystery we solve...
  • Temporary contact for Admin: lostmitten@sleuththewild.com

Deceased NH - Emily Sotelo, 20, missing at Franconia Notch in the White Mountains; Nov 2022

Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever

Hangin' Out
Trippy said:
I’ll play along with this question, @Cliffed Out . Where did others go on Lafayette when storms came in? It turns out, there’s a book called “Death in the White Mountains”. The author is Julie Boardman. I don’t own the book, but I’ve found a blogger who goes into detail on the contents, and there are a bunch of examples on Lafayette.

Ta da!

Ummm….the examples are fatalities, duh, hikers were caught above treeline unprepared, and should have turned around when things got bad.

One guy survived by going east of the ridge (into the Pemi wilderness) but, wait for it, “he was carrying a sleeping bag rated for minus -30 degrees, a foam pad, extra clothing, a cell phone, map and food”.

ES had none of that….

This blog is at

www.sentinelsource.com

Exploring the cold reality of death in the White Mountains

“Death in the White Mountains;
www.sentinelsource.com www.sentinelsource.com
Click to expand...
Well, @Trippy , that little exercise had promise, but I guess it didn't pan out. There was the guy who committed hypothermia suicide up on the ridge, too. Perfect place for deathly hypothermia; pretty much synonymous.

Gosh, this case is making me feel gloomy.
 
Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever

Hangin' Out
Cabin Fever said:
Updates today: nothing new as far as a find.

More gobsmacking (careful with the tone, now, Cabin Fever) details emerge.

—Sunday was only one of several days this week ES was planning to hike 4,000 footers
—she and her mom were staying in a local hotel for the week
—mom is hoping ES built herself a shelter and will be ok
—ES belonged to a White Mountains FB group and had previously invited other hikers to join her (no definitive on whether anyone did)
—ES wore base layer pants under her hiking pants. No definitive on what is meant by "hiking pants" (yoga tights, maybe?)
—ES wore "hiking sneakers". This terminology has evolved from yesterday when all we heard was "sneakers". Unclear what "hiking sneakers" would be that would make them different from "sneakers". Whatever, they're low cut, per mom.

It seems mom is going into defensive mode with the extra details, since I bet she's had a lot of criticism. Well, she has, for a fact. Has she even been outside and felt how cold it is in the valleys, never mind on top of Lafayette? What is mom wearing?

As for the concept of a hypothermic teen building a shelter at -30 degrees and wind, well..... someone is not being realistic. It's like the fantasy in the Steve Keel case that he was out there alive in the tundra sustaining himself for a whole month by eating berries.
Click to expand...
Oops, I didn't provide the source for these details:

www.wmur.com

Search continues Tuesday for lost hiker in White Mountains

The search is continuing Tuesday in Franconia Notch for a missing hiker from Massachusetts.
www.wmur.com www.wmur.com
 
Bucket Hat

Bucket Hat

Administrator
Pemigewasset Valley NH SAR explains clearly what can happen if you rely on your cell phone when hiking. This is likely the situation we have in the ES case, but it's a factor in many.

Proper clothing and footwear are critical for all hikes, and hikers should bring a headlamp, map, and compass regardless of how short of a hike they plan to take. Some hikers try to rely on smartphones for navigation only to discover, often at an inopportune moment, that most mobile mapping apps don't work without cellular signal and phones batteries drain quickly when they are in areas with no service (common in the White Mountains). Hikers caught out after sunset have also discovered that mobile phone flashlights are not very bright and also quickly drain the phone's battery, sometimes leaving them stranded in the dark without a way to call for help when the battery runs out.

www.pemisar.org

SAR in NH

About Search and Rescue in White Mountain National Forest and the State of New Hampshire
www.pemisar.org www.pemisar.org
 
Naughty Pine

Naughty Pine

Hangin' Out
For all we can look at the map of the ridge and come up with alternate routes down off the ridge, I doubt ES had a map. I'll bet she was relying on AllTrails or something on her cell phone. Not only is it highly likely her phone went out of battery because of the cold, if she used a route on AllTrails, it might not show a wide enough view to see alternatives. And there's no way she's going back the way she came if she made it all the way to Liberty. If she was unable to turn back from the get-go, there's psychologically no way she'd be turning back after making it along the ridge. Maybe not even after getting to treeline on the way up and getting a clue about the weather.

I really think we're looking at recovery within 2 hours hike of where ES was dropped off, but she may have become lost in that space of time owing to an uncooperative cell phone, so she couldn't get a map.
 
Naughty Pine

Naughty Pine

Hangin' Out
Bucket Hat said:
The piece of that nearest Lincoln is flat railroad bed. IIRC there might even be a warming hut in the parking lot at the trailhead. Maybe just restrooms? I’ve been back there, but it’s been years. My mind is dim…
Click to expand...
Internet chat says this would be a bad route because at 6 miles, it's longer than the other possibilities down from the ridge. But that flat railroad bed would be EZPZ. You could maybe even do that in the dark. And coming out to the busy road near Lincoln/Loon would have more opportunities for getting to a warm place than the other options on the west side of the Lafayette Ridge.

Also, if the plan was to go down the Flume Trail and be met by mom at that trailhead, thinking it would be safe...ES might have assumed the Flume Visitor Center was still open. It closed on October 23 2022. There's nowhere else I can identify there that would be a safe place to meet mom. And is mom sitting in the car there freezing if ES is late?
 
Bucket Hat

Bucket Hat

Administrator
Sigh. There's reporting that the search moved to the recovery phase this afternoon.

As a New Hampshire National Guard helicopter ferried search teams to peaks in Franconia Notch on Tuesday, Fish and Game officials said the effort to locate a hiker missing there since Sunday is entering the recovery phase.

www.unionleader.com

Search for hiker turns to recovery

FRANCONIA — As a New Hampshire National Guard helicopter ferried search teams to peaks in Franconia Notch on Tuesday, Fish and Game officials said the effort to locate a hiker
www.unionleader.com www.unionleader.com
 
Hates Ramen

Hates Ramen

Diggin' It
Bucket Hat said:
Sigh. There's reporting that the search moved to the recovery phase this afternoon.

As a New Hampshire National Guard helicopter ferried search teams to peaks in Franconia Notch on Tuesday, Fish and Game officials said the effort to locate a hiker missing there since Sunday is entering the recovery phase.

www.unionleader.com

Search for hiker turns to recovery

FRANCONIA — As a New Hampshire National Guard helicopter ferried search teams to peaks in Franconia Notch on Tuesday, Fish and Game officials said the effort to locate a hiker
www.unionleader.com www.unionleader.com
Click to expand...
Interesting tidbit from that. ES was a sophomore at Vanderbilt.

And this:
Sotelo was supposed to rendezvous with her mother in the parking lot at the Flume Gorge between 3 and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, but she never arrived...

and this:

While she carried a “small amount of food” in a backpack and a water bladder, the water in the bladder would likely have frozen....

The fellow in charge of the search reiterates here that the shoes were sneakers.
 
Owner

Owner

Administrator
This is a photo of the entire Lafayette ridge right about now. Lafayette is the tallest, and IIRC Liberty is on the right, and conceals Flume. The knife-edge to the left of Lafayette goes to Mount Garfield (out of view).
This vista is across the interstate from Lafayette, taken on Cannon Mountain. At the foot of Cannon Mountain (a ski area) is the headquarters and frequent staging area for Pemi SAR, which has been the volunteer lead on this search.
Copyright and attribution: Image and Copyright: Eric Shaw White, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Layfayette_panorama.jpg
 
S

Sora

In the Groove
Owner said:
This is a photo of the entire Lafayette ridge right about now. Lafayette is the tallest, and IIRC Liberty is on the right, and conceals Flume. The knife-edge to the left of Lafayette goes to Mount Garfield (out of view).
This vista is across the interstate from Lafayette, taken on Cannon Mountain. At the foot of Cannon Mountain (a ski area) is the headquarters and frequent staging area for Pemi SAR, which has been the volunteer lead on this search.
Copyright and attribution: Image and Copyright: Eric Shaw White, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

View attachment 77
Click to expand...
This photo, sadly, says it all.
 
Trippy

Trippy

Right On!
Hates Ramen said:
Interesting tidbit from that. ES was a sophomore at Vanderbilt.

And this:
Sotelo was supposed to rendezvous with her mother in the parking lot at the Flume Gorge between 3 and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, but she never arrived...

and this:

While she carried a “small amount of food” in a backpack and a water bladder, the water in the bladder would likely have frozen....

The fellow in charge of the search reiterates here that the shoes were sneakers.
Click to expand...
How in the world was ES going to time a hike of that length and difficulty with that degree of specificity? So she’d get back to her mom between 3 and 3:30 at the Flume parking lot. What was she going to do if she arrived early? She’d freeze. Late? Her mom would freeze, though IIRC she didn’t call SAR until after 7. (Though that figure doesn’t make sense to me, since SAR sent out search parties immediately. I’m not sure they could/would do that in the dark for the safety of their SAR members. Maybe SAR arrived at the Lafayette trailhead after 7? I can’t sort this one out.)

The casual way decisions were made in this case, in an extremely high risk outing, is really bothering me. What about this hike would allow you to project such a specific time frame?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top