By the time authorities found their car in a remote stretch of Death Valley National Park, Alexander Lofgren and Emily Henkel had been missing for four days.
Inside the abandoned white Subaru was a note: “Two flat tires, headed to Mormon Point, have three days’ worth of water.”
The 8 April discovery marked a turning point in the desperate search for the Tucson, Arizona, couple. Soon after, rescuers from the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office found Mr Lofgren, 32, and Ms Henkel, 27, in an isolated part of the California desert near Willow Creek.
The two were on a ledge so steep, the agency said in a news release, that rescuers could not reach them until the next day, 9 April. When they did, they found Ms Henkel injured. And Mr Lofgren, an army veteran and congressional staffer, was dead.
As is virtually always the case with these things, the rescuers found the vehicle first and then they found the people. So if the people had stayed with the vehicle, they’d have been found sooner. Vehicles can only go a limited amount of places..those places are called ‘roads’. So, that means the searchers have a much smaller list of places to search if they are looking for a vehicle. So..stay with the vehicle.
Moral of the story? Stay with the vehicle. And staying with the vehicle is a lot easier, even in Death Valley, if your bring along some basic gear and supplies. Two flat tires and your cell phone doesn’t work? String up a couple tarps, sit still in the shade, drink from the several five-gallon jugs of water you brought, and catch up on rereading ‘Atlas Shrugged’.
thus the name ‘Death Valley’ and not ‘Full of Life Valley’. Crossing through there soon on my motorcycle headed to Yosemite, in the early morning.
Pro Tip: Don’t leave the asphalt and listen to CZ.
If you are going to travel in areas that are remote, it makes sense to have a PLB like this one
https://www.amazon.com/ACR-ResQLink-View-Buoyant-Personal/dp/B07PPJGFKK/
Or a Baofeng and 15 minutes of time programming the Inyo County amateur, public safety, and public works repeaters into it before they left. https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?inputs=1&ctid=196#cats
A young couple and their infant son died of hypothermia near my AO last winter after they got stuck while off-roading in the National Forest, they were about a dozen miles from the county’s fire/police/ems repeater tower. Many rural counties, like where this family and the couple in Death Valley died, still use analog FM.
I will defer to anyone who knows the Death Valley N.P. area repeaters with great familiarity, but absent such an SME, I doubt there are any repeaters inside national parkland there, or any put outside placed such you could hit them from inside of Death Valley with anything less than a microwave tower or SATCOM.
The area they were in is at an elevation of -100 to -200 ft, and the surrounding mountains, all, AFAIK, inside the N.P. range from 1700′ in elev. to 10,000’+, for 20 miles in any direction. They were at the bottom of a well, with only what’s up in the sky available. Even if they’d reached Mormon Point, it’s at an elevation of 46′, and the surrounding mountain ranges are thousands of feet higher than that.
A PLB, OTOH, would be just the thing, since those hit orbiting COMSATs and get relayed back to earth.
They were literally in a comm deadspace, at the bottom of a well, 25+ miles from anything.
It’s so desolate and remote you could practice Mars missions there, or film movies about it there, and not even need to keep anyone out because there’s miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. Even sidewinders would have to pack in food and water there.
But they could have simply walked west to Badwater Road, and then followed it north to civilization, with minimal muss and fuss. Salvation was stupid simple, except to someone not even as bright as that.
These two must have been a special kind of stupid.
When we get the rest of the story, it’s almost certainly going to be nothing but an unbroken chain of fail.
Three National Park Service repeaters in Death Valley:
https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?inputs=1&aid=4513#cats
The one on Rogers Peak, at 9,000+ ft of elevation, looks the closest. About 20 miles away from the Willow Creek/Mormon Point area, and nothing taller between them and it.
I’m not a Ham operator, so indulge me.
So there are, in fact, zero repeaters available to the public inside NP turf.
So you’re suggesting if they’d known about those NPS repeaters, and if they had illegally modified a VHF handheld to broadcast on a restricted federal LE freq well outside the 2M band, overlooking the multiple illegalities because of exigent circumstances, that they could’ve called for help on the NPS freq?
If you’re saying something else, please enlighten me.
That’s a lot of ifs to solve a problem they could have gotten out of about nine other ways, far more easily.
You could, for example, just buy a VHF aircraft handheld and put out a mayday on 121.5, and hit a passing 757 overhead on the way to Vegas or Reno, using the same exigent circumstances excuse.
Or just bought a SAT phone and dialed out, breaking 0 laws in the process.
Ditto for a PLB, like an ACR or a SPOT messenger.
But, much like just walking out up the road, that would have required thinking ahead and using their heads for something besides a hat rack, skills manifestly far beyond their ken.
Just saying.
Not saying it’s the only method, nor the best method, but for $25, maybe a few extra $$ in upgrades, and 15 minutes of research before leaving, it’s a viable method and very likely would have saved both this couple and the family in my AO that froze to death. Oh yeah, and F*** the FCC and anyone else that has a problem with an unlicensed SOS/station in distress hail.
And a road flare in your spare tire, or any tire for that matter, makes for a VERY visible signal.
Talked about this story with my wife when it broke, and reminder her of James Kim from TechTV. STAY WITH THE VEHICLE.
n
As someone who spent many years managing wilderness SAR operations, I can confirm what you’re saying is absolutely true. Even if you are away from a vehicle, STAY WHERE YOU ARE. It is infinitely more difficult to locate a moving target.
I never understand this either. Being from Tuscon they should have known better. It looks like they had plenty of water and likely couldn’t be stretched that three days out a bit. It looks like they had a map of some sort, but didn’t realize how bad the hike would be. When I go out into the desert I bring a radio and list of local repeaters. Cell phones are just not reliable enough for that kind of work.
If they were on a road could they have driven on at about five miles an hour with the flat tires?
And Steve nails it. On roads that flat, they could have slowly driven out on flats, or even on bare rims.
And even if the vehicle eventually died at some point, they would still have been miles closer to the exit.
My wife and I have reached the age where we no longer travel the boonies. But we do sometimes travel the road less traveled, and since one never knows what may happen, we carry a personal locator beacon (and maps, gps receiver, plenty of water and some food).
Something missing here. Two young people, and it wasn’t that hot in Death Valley this time of year. Also, he was an Army Veteran of Afghanistan, and should have known a few basic things. What’s missing?
Whats missing is his wanting to show off his outdoorsman skills to the young lady so instead of doing the safe but unsexy thing of staying put he decided to march out.
Or she nagged him into it.
CZ,
Over the years you have stressed “Stay put with the vehicle”
You are proven “Spot On” once again. Ohhhhmmmmm…….:)
Lots of details missing but based on the vague description of the steep ledge they were on (too steep for the initial rescue personnel to reach them) I’d bet money that there was some kind of fall involved and either he died trying to assist her or she was injured trying to reach him after he fell. I’d guess he likely died from his injuries rather than heat or dehydration.
But honestly, just wild conjecture at this point!
Darwin Award winner, have done time at 29 Palms in the summer(june/july),real easy to find out why the Army declared it “unfit for human habitation” and gave it to USMC.
Army Veteran? Forgot his training, he did.
Quote from a John Wayne movie: “Life’s tough. It’s tougher when you’re stupid”
Kurt
You assume he had some sort of actual wilderness survival training in the first place.
Outside of a few specialized areas the Army doesn’t do much of that.
I carry a puncture fix kit and a cheap bike pump in all of my vehicles, along with a get home bag. It might suck to pump a tire up with a bike pump, but it beats getting dead…
Hey, it’s not all gloom and doom: one dead congressional staffer is probably a good start. Especially one smart enough to get in this situation.
And if he left no progeny, slam-dunk Darwin Award.
“Because nothing says “slow learner” as much as does “Hey babe, let’s set off on foot across the fiercest desert on the continent, so fierce in fact that it was killing white people on this continent since Cortes came through on horseback, with just what we can carry ourselves.”
(For those soft-pedalling it because April, seasonal avg. April temps are mid-90s every day, and mid-60s at night. With a humidity running in single digits.)
Instead of, maybe, setting a tire on fire each day at noon, until someone came to check out the smoke.
[Oh, and FTR: from the area they were apparently in, they could have walked the 30 or so miles from a line between Willow Creek and Mormon Point, back to the nearest civilization at the Furnace Creek Inn, almost entirely along a paved 2-lane blacktop road for the entire route, in a night and a half, laying up in shade during the day, and arrived there with water to spare, proceeding thence at the leisurely pace of 2MPH. And probably flagged down anything moving at the first opportunity, possibly never getting in so much trouble from the start, with nothing more than a AAA auto club map, no compass, no GPS, and no cell phone. Just shoe leather, and more common sense than either of them, or even both combined, possessed. Of course, to perform that exploit, they’d have had to follow the road, instead of hiking deeper into the wilderness to another sun-baked rock in the middle of nowhere, and where’s the adventure in that?? Regular Lawrence of Arcadia, was this guy.]
Pity he never learned helicopter IFR:
I Follow Roads.
What a schmuck. ZFG.
These are the kinds of people who take the Palm Springs Tramway to the top of Mt. San Jacinto and trudge off into the wilderness with cutoff shorts, a T-shirt, an energy bar, and a bottle of water on a summer day. Mt. an Jacinto looks safe enough, with towns at its base on three sides. Still, Mt. San Jacinto kills several of these tourists every year. One guy, an experienced hiker, got lost on that hill. About a year later, they found his skeleton. Yet a year later another guy, also an experienced hiker, got lost up there. He survived. How? He stumbled upon the campsite set up by the previous hiker! Everything was still there; the tent, the sleeping bag, food, and water! He was eventually able to attract attention and was rescued… one year, TO THE DAY, after rescuers found the first hiker’s bones! I have no idea as to whether either of these guys had cell phones, but rule one is DON’T RELY ON CELL PHONES! They’re handy, and work most of the time. Nature, however, always sides with the hidden flaw. If you’re out there a lot, GET YOUR HAM LICENSE! Both of these guys could have hit eight or ten repeaters if they’d had radios.
…And WHY didn’t these people stay with the car??? Leaving the car… or the boat… or the downed aircraft… is the LAST RESORT. It’s highly visible shelter and defensible space! I manned the rail during several Search And Rescue (SAR) missions in the Coast Guard. A person bobbing around in a life raft is almost invisible. A person bobbing around in the water might as well not exist! These people goofed and paid the price for it.
When I go out into the woods or on a date with a newish person I send a GOTWA to my sister. That way if I don’t come back the search starts a lot faster and is much narrower.
You must have had some pretty interesting dates………
Of course I’ve had some interesting dates. Never any danger, I don’t really fit a good victim profile an I carry a gun. It’s really more about giving the fam piece of mind than anything else.
I had to respond because of the incredible insensitivity and stupidity of some/most of the comments so far. First, yeah it sooo easy to play monday morning quarterback and call people idiots for making critical mistakes. Cause all of you a re so perfect and never made a bad decision ever.
As for the basic idea of not leaving the car, while that is the general rule it may not be the wisest decision in every single case. They may have felt that it would have taken too long for their missing status to prompt a search. If they run out of food or water, and have to deal with the temperature swings in the desert climate, if they wait too long they have compromised their ability to successfully hike out. If the couple had been found dead in their car 2 weeks later, the same know-it-alls here would be criticizing them for not hiking out the road. Which in retrospect might have been the best move, since it was 12 miles to the better travelled road to the west.
Finally, they probably (?) knew that the Willow Creek route was technical, and maybe they were prepared for it. It seems likely they were prepared for a technical (rapelling)
descent down the canyon–otherwise they would have not made it half way down the canyon (2 miles in on a 4 mile route, according to the stories I’ve seen) It might have seemed like a routine canyoneering route to get to ‘civilization’ in which case that is way more attractive than sitting in your car waiting for possible help to come. We simply don’t know how the man died yet–it could have been a climbing accident that had nothing to do with their situation of being stranded. Until more information becomes known, you really ought to reserve comment on their decision making.
“it could have been a climbing accident that had nothing to do with their situation of being stranded.”
Uhm…if it WAS a climbing accident, it would have had everything to do with being stranded because being stranded was why he would have been climbing in the first place instead of driving his Subaru to his destination.