For anyone local there---is it unusual that NO one looked around the site of the wreck? People went out on searches---could you look over off the road and possibly see below?? It looked pretty dense to me but just curious of the area. I also remember people saying they looked along roads that could have been traveled and there was no sign of an accident yet now its reported this large boulder was out of place---I dunno so many new questions now...sigh
I don't understand about the boulder either - I'm still trying to process all this with my tired brain.
And if she parked on the grassy side of the road and it was slippery that day, there should have been tire tracks going over the edge.
If she drove over the boulder somehow the other rocks should have stopped her fall, it seems to me, unless it was a completely freak accident. To be fair, there had been heavy rain earlier in the week from the tornadoes. But where are the tire tracks?
The tree where the jeep is lodged and all the trees around are a deciduous trees. Looks like a group of oak trees to me, and that makes sense for the area. They would have had huge canopies of leaves over them between April and now so even if someone could have looked down from the Brow, they wouldn't have seen the jeep from above.
The fact is, people did drive the roads and search the roadsides several times. But this is a sheer vertical drop. Even if you went out onto the edge and leaned over - which most people wouldn't do because it's very dangerous - you could never have seen that jeep in the summer time no matter how many people were searching.
From below on the W. Road you can't just look up through the trees. There is a tangle of vines and trees that cover the mountainside for some distance. It's a dense green mass all summer. And basically, you can't really stop on the W and look around whether you're going up or down or you might have a wreck yourself.
And as a local I have to say that there are literally a thousand other places on that mountain where you might expect someone to go over the edge, and I'm sure people checked those places first. The reason police never rapelled down there to that particular place is that they wouldn't have suspected someone could roll/fly off in a jeep without some evidence left on the road.
But what's also significant to me is that there aren't many places on the mountain that don't have guard rails or rock walls either. How did she just happen to go over right there where the road isn't even curvy or particularly dangerous? I have no idea. So the question remains what was she doing there and where was she going?
