Said a sister, quoted in
"Family living off grid found dead in Colorado forest/The bodies of two women and a 14-year-old boy were discovered in the Gunnison National Forest near Ohio City" (London Times).
At the campsite, alongside the bodies, were empty food cans, a single packet of ramen noodles, books on wilderness survival and a lavatory area, alongside what appeared to be the start of a lean-to shelter.
“I wonder if winter came on quickly, and suddenly they were just in survival mode in the tent,” said [the coroner]. “They had a lot of literature with them about outdoor survival and foraging and stuff like that. But it looked like they [bought supplies] at a grocery store.”
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44 comments:
She just pulls the kid out of school, and no one notices?
I doesn’t seem they were living off the grid.
"Colorado, death"
Lol I love the juxtaposition of these two tags. Deep in the firey land of Colorado, the dark lord forged in secret one ring to rule them all. And into it he poured his malice, his cruelty, and his will to dominate all life. The very air you breath is a poisonous fume. This women and her family, questing to destroy the ring, ran out of Lembas bread and had to resort to Ramen noodles. Sadly, it was not sufficient.
One does not simply walk into the land of Colorado. The land of death.
Unfortunately behind the paywall. From the except: "At the campsite, alongside the bodies, were empty food cans, a single packet of ramen noodles, books on wilderness survival ..."
If you read enough books on say, how to become an aircraft pilot, you can fly a plane.
What a tragic story of unpreparedness in the wilderness, yet isn't it interesting the words from our new lexicon, 'gay', 'lesbian', etc. curiously absent when normally it's trotted out and displayed at full mast, at every opportunity.
The Ohio Valley is a very beautiful area in Colorado, one goes up over Cumberland Pass and the entire natural park, the town of TinCup, the Taylor reservoir, and the collegiate range is laid out before you. It's remarkably beautiful, my favorite place in that state.
Its dangerous when you don't know, how much you don't know. Darwin at work
It would be interesting to know if they were right-wing preppers or left-wing "the planet is dying" types, or whether their politics can't be put into a box.
It appears their camp was a 3 to 4 hour hike from the nearest town. I don’t see how 3 people die of malnutrition, as is being reported as one possibility, unless they were snowed in. Freezing to death seems more likely. It’s curious that the father of the boy didn’t report him missing.
Wow, good for them. Most people try something like this and give up when it gets hard. Not these people. They decided to “live off of the grid” and they did. For the rest of their lives!
Foraging is hard. Not just for the depth of knowledge but for the huge physical effort it takes to get the kinds of calories you need to survive. It's a young persons game.Most of us old farts couldn't do it.
Get yourself in a situation where you cannot drive or walk out due to deep snow, very low temperatures, wind, sleet, inadequate shelter, wet wood so no fires can be built, and no skills to find food and well... that will be the end of that.
My family lived in Gunnison in the early 1960’s in the mountains. Grand parents aunt and uncle, cousins.
There had been a forest fire and you could log salvage timber for free. So they they loaded up the sawmill in southern Missouri and off we went. First thin they did was to set up the sawmill and build rough cabins. Spent 2 winters there. My earliest memories are of that place. By today’s standards it would be considered living in poverty, but to me it was paradise on earth.
I can see why they wanted to live there. Also glad that my dad, uncle and grandpa were strong and determined enough to know how to weep us alive.
Maybe we were just lucky.
subscription needed to read. ugh.
I know where Ohio city is... it's not a city!
Homeless people. Not the only ones camping in Colorado.
This story reminds me of "Into the wild," the story of that kid who decided, with no preparation, to live in the wild of Alaska. I've been to the spot where he started into the bush and n ot far from where he starv ed to death. What is it with these people who imagine they can survive in the wild with no preparation?
This was likely influenced by 20 years of reality TV, to include Survivor, Survivorman, Naked and Afraid, and the like. Did they not watch any episodes filmed in cool/temperate regions? Colorado is cold and mountainous, while actual survival can be tough even in the tropics. Masochistic Les Stroud of Survivorman often spent a week without food or sleep in some random location while animals stalked him and insects bit him. He struggled a lot, even as fairly well trained in survival.
"Foraging is hard. Not just for the depth of knowledge but for the huge physical effort it takes to get the kinds of calories you need to survive."
Leftists are working to reduce farming productivity all over the world.
"She just pulls the kid out of school, and no one notices?"
Parents do that all the time now. Finals week, project due but they're off to Disney World.
Teachers complain but admins kiss parents' ass.
Rusty said...
Foraging is hard. Not just for the depth of knowledge but for the huge physical effort it takes to get the kinds of calories you need to survive.
I’d say especially depth of knowledge. Knowing which plants are edible and where to find them, and — just as importantly! — what plants are poisonous is just for starters. Did they have the means to hunt? Did they know how to stalk game and kill it and gut it and skin it and cook it? Did they camp near a river and bring fishing gear? Late fall brings out bears looking to fatten up; did they have a means of defense?
Into the Wild all over again.
It would be interesting to know if they were right-wing preppers or left-wing "the planet is dying" types,
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vegan or omnivore? did they drive or walk? start any fires?
My first thought was the same as @Enigma's, although my reference is "Alone". This show always has a warning screen, and the contestants make clear how dangerous and difficult survival living is. The eco-Puritan glamor might attract people who think they can do it, though.
btw - an area not far from there is on fire.
What is it with these people who imagine they can survive in the wild with no preparation?
@Dr. Michael K., perhaps it’s what Enigma wrote in his comment at 9:38 about TV shows, though I’ve channel surfed past “Naked and Afraid” episodes where the people are in serious trouble and no doubt grateful for the backup provided by the filming crew and medical staff nearby. I wouldn’t care to try an extended period of wilderness survival, and I made Eagle Scout and OA — though over sixty years ago. I’m minded of a vignette in Krakauer’s Into the Wild where he climbs a small mountain overlooking a town in Alaska and gets stuck up there at night. He can see the lights of the town below, but he has no way to contact anyone down there, no one down there knows what he set out to do or where he is at. No one will miss him and come looking for him. The two women and the boy were just three miles from help, but like Krakauer on his mountain peak no one even knew to come looking for them, much less that they were in trouble.
They would have done better to start off small and work their way up to living "off the grid" in survival mode.
A weekend at a state park where they could learn at least how to start and maintain a campfire would have been a good place to start. Also, living off canned goods is not exactly roughing it and but you need a large supply to last more than a few days. And books are good but practical experience learned under a skilled survivalist may have given them a better chance at actual survival. Could they identify and find edible roots and wild plants? Trap animals for food? It does't sound like it. Living off the grid sounds romantic until you experience it. A few days without power after an ice storm or hurricane rids you of that notion pretty fast. They put a fourteen year old kid in a dangerous and obvious deadly situation as well. They all paid for their ignorance and stupidity.
"What is it with these people who imagine they can survive in the wild with no preparation?"
People who think like that are everywhere. They're the ones who want to shut down "factory farms" and wonder why people don't all just grow their own food and trade with each another. You know- to stick it to the man and save the planet.
The Colorado Springs Gazette has the story with no paywall.
Darwin strikes again.
Well, they picked one of the worst places in the Continental US for this. The story is that Gunnison would often come in as the coldest place in the Continental US. It was ruining tourism, so they closed the weather station there, and the coldest place moved to Frasier. We had a memorial almost a month ago in Dillon, CO, and a bunch of those attending had gone to Wasted State College there (as had the deceased). Many of the stories had some element of how friggen cold it was there. There is also typically a bit more snow there than in the rest of the CO Rockies, but not as much as in the San Juan’s to the SW of there.
He had been in my patrol in Boy Scouts, and not all of the stories were complimentary - such as when he left his boots too close to the fire one night. He was 11, and I was 14. We learned to do winter camping then. Even getting a fire started was a problem. Then, after college, we had much of a decade of camping in snow caves, before we could afford to stay in huts and yurts, on our annual backcountry ski trip (it got worse - by our late 50s we would sometimes get dropped off by chopper in the Canadian Rockies).
I concur with Levi Starks, above. First order of business is shelter. Then, if you don’t have your own sawmill, wood for heat. A lot of wood. Well, propane if the truck can get to you. But here, wood. In NW MT, where we spend the warmer six months of the year, one big old house in town, always has a stack of wood by first snowfall 6’ high along one complete edge of the property of wood ready for winter. What were they going to eat? It takes a lot of food to survive the winter. Fall should have been when they were bringing in a couple elk. Need veggies too. Canned are just fine, if you aren’t canning them yourselves.
And today, the #1 thing that I would want - a satellite phone.
Sadly we don't get to pick our "parents".
Conservative preppers wait to go into their hidey holes after the trouble starts. Lefties not so much
On the plus side, they didn't get eaten by bears. Clearly not the worst of all possible wilderness deaths.
Near as I can tell it was reported that they were found near or in the Gold Creek Campground. I have dirtbiked several times from that very campground. They werent found until Jun/Jul because the road was probably blocked by snow. No one comes around to plow it....way beyond county maintenance. And these things
And when people got access to the campground they probably smelled that familiar decaying flesh smell that you get with dead cattle/livestock.
That campground is just above 10,000 ft in altitude on a deadend road about 7 miles from Ohio (City) which is an old mining ghost town where people now have cabins and might summer there.
Once the snow flies (usually about October), there is nothing up there. Unless they were experienced hunters hunting game such as Deer and Elk (illegally I might add) there would be zero things to eat. Nearest big town with supplies is Gunnison which is 27 miles away. Winter lasts at 10k feet from about Nov 1- June 15th. Clearly they werent knowledgeable about how things work in the winter time on the west side of the continental divide in Colorado. Snow depth this year was immense. I'm sure they were snowed in without ability to drive down to Ohio, Parlin or Gunnison. Gunnison river valley and its tributaries are also one of the coldest areas for overnight lows in the state.
Also looking at the link I provide below, only people that would potentially come around are snowshoers or nordic skiers since snowmobiling is not allowed on the forest service roads and trails right nearby.
https://trails.colorado.gov/places/na~1899002#activity=motorcycle
...she didn’t want them to get wrapped up in what the world was coming to...
Mission Accomplished
Levi Starks at 8:58 am: What a beautiful story. How lucky you are that those days comprise your earliest memories.
There used to be an old Ketchikan, Alaska transit bus sitting in the woods. It seems like every spring they were removing the dead from the bus. People that were going to ride out the winter in an un-insulated, un-heated bus with broken windows.
The bus has been removed. It was an attractive nuisance
Yes not a bad location. McIntyre Gulch, some gold and more silver, not really commercial. It was looked at once for large quartz crystals for pure silicon in electronics but other places ( say, Spruce Pine NC)were better. As some say, there has been more money put into the ground than has been taken out of it. Not so true today after Nevada’s Carlin gold.
Living off the land isn't easy, but some folks can do it.
He said he lost weight steadily at first. After a while he was nothing but bone and muscle. After that, he said he stopped losing weight, and he also stopped thinking, and he started moving. He said he became just another carnivore in the forest. As his thinking subsided, his senses came to the fore. He said he could smell deer, and his head would snap around without volition when the odor hit his nostrils. He began to think like a deer.
More at the link.
They could have just moved to a small town and gotten off cable and the Internet. Not sure hard-core prepping is ever good.
If you follow the series, "Alone", you'll find the biggest obstacle to survival is between your ears. Most of the contestants talk themselves into quitting.
I know where Ohio city is... it's not a city!
It's not Ohio either.
Theodore Roosevelt damned near died on his Brazilian expedition due to inadequate planning.
Larry Niven famously said that Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
People don’t realize how easy (literally) living is, today.
Enigma said...
"
This was likely influenced by 20 years of reality TV, to include Survivor, Survivorman, Naked and Afraid, and the like. Did they not watch any episodes filmed in cool/temperate regions? Colorado is cold and mountainous, while actual survival can be tough even in the tropics. Masochistic Les Stroud of Survivorman often spent a week without food or sleep in some random location while animals stalked him and insects bit him. He struggled a lot, even as fairly well trained in survival. "
I was a Les Stroud man till he went off the rails and started looking for Big Foot. I have Survivorman's videos and book. Excellent resource!!
SOS, with Creek Stewart, is another good one with many lessons to learn. Watched all of his shows.
Pretty faced Bear Grylls was to at first till he went all movie star nuts.
But no, I would not on purposely put myself in such dire straits unless I had tons of canned food for emergencies as well as a good shed to live in AND I took some survival courses from such as Creek Stewart!!!
Another example: Emily Sotelo in New Hampshire.
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