Rick Deutsch, the Hike Halfdome guy, joined some of us for a 14-miler at Mount Diablo on Sunday. He had to get back to town to fly off to Las Vegas, where he met a pal who took him hiking way up in the hills outside Sin City. Rick reports:
As we approached the 2 vehicles, we gasped when we saw that all the tires on both trucks were flat and quickly saw the knife marks. Damn! Now what? We were 8 miles up a windy dirt one-lane road and with little hope of human help. No cell phone signal. So Jim and I walked the 8 miles feeling confident since we carried the 10 essentials. Our
That just totally sucks. . .and reinforces the misanthrope in me. Isn’t there a way to catch these guys? (And certainly they were guys.) Tire marks? Footprints? SOMEthing!? At least you took it “in stride”, Rick!
Unbelievable! I wonder if this is an isolated incident, or is there some history of this kind of thing in the area? I hope this is being reported to whatever local authorities exist. Someone that would do that is crying out for
Jim and I pondered the “who” question during our 2 1/2 hr downhill hike for help. Since nothing was stolen except for the other truck’s spare…it may have been a “mountain” man who just did not want people to come back (we won’t). Kind of a deja vu to “Deliverance”. Jim is a very active hiker / ecologist and said he has never heard of anything like this. He thinks it’s a conseqence of the huge population increase – riff-raff moving in. Since the police told Jim to “file a report” the next day . . . and it took him 2 hours on the “process” I doubt they are pursuing it with gusto. Fingerprints on a dusty car might not pull off…and if the person does not have a “prior” they will not be in any database.
It was odd, that Jim was concerned that the “bad guys” might be waiting for us on our hike down to “finish the job”. I was too Polyanna and just wanted my foot to stop hurting!
Rick
http://www.hikehalfdome.com