CA - Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, daughter, 1 & dog, suspicious death hiking area, Aug 2021 #6

[Pumphouse363]

May I attest to my experience on the onXmaps.com map Jon accessed on Saturday night? I doubt it will matter to @jonjon747, but the rest of you may be interested.

1. Jon did not "create" the loop hike or "create" his route. onX clearly shows the trails the GC family took.

2. On the onX map, HCT and SL have different trailheads. I don't know what reality is, but it's possible that their car was parked closer to HCT than SL, whose trailhead appears on the map at the end of HCR.

3. Jon may have had a downloaded map with him on his phone.

4. LE or someone else was able to access and see what actions Jon took on onX.com on Saturday night, presumably by logging him as Jon.

5. How do I know onXmaps.com is the app Jon used? Thanks to @Pumphouse363. And because LE accessed it and could see Jon's research. The terminology LE uses is the same as terminology on the onX map. And because the LOOP is clearer on onX than on any other app map or real map I've seen. It literally jumps out as a loop hike. Every other map I've looked out, the three trails formed a loop but it was difficult to make out.

6. onXmaps.com refers to itself as a hunting app. However, it is a sophisticated digital mapping app similar to apps I've used in genealogy and in oil/gas leasing known as ArcGIS mapping: "ArcGIS Online is a cloud-based mapping and analysis solution. Use it to make maps, analyze data, and to share and collaborate." In my opinion, Jon-- as a gifted software and tech professional-- would have liked a mapping app that seemed state-of-the-art and offered various tools.

7. Finding onXmaps.com answered dozens of questions I had. That makes it credible for me.

8. As always, I could be wrong.

Also the FBI haven’t been able to access information from his phone yet - as per Sheriff’s press release.

 

[K9Enzo]

I can’t even imagine how overheated/hot the poor baby felt in the carrier. IMO

 

[Pumphouse363]

I believe you about onX.
So may I ask - now that the “final investigative update” according to the sheriff’s office has been released - what do you think could have happened instead?
Do you think they were forced?
Do you think the only evidence they did the loop is the mapping of waypoints but that tracks or other physical signs are lacking?
Respectfully.

I m still working on it.
MrsEmmaPeel stated in thread number 1 (I think) that the probable COD was HEATSTROKE based on the recent death of another person in the area. Two months down the line and that’s pretty much spot on!
I am still formulating my thoughts which is why I came on here originally. Some of my posts have been deleted - as I am not a verified member - and I am unwilling at present to put my thoughts in print. The people on here have been really helpful and considerate to the feelings of the family but I have sometimes found it difficult not to be able to contribute more.

 

[Yvettea]

Also the FBI haven’t been able to access information from his phone yet - as per Sheriff’s press release.

I have wondered this same thing (about the FBI access) yet LE certainly acts as if they have been able to access the phone. IMO

ETA: maybe they are able to access the information on “the cloud.”

 

[neesaki]

I m still working on it.
MrsEmmaPeel stated in thread number 1 (I think) that the probable COD was HEATSTROKE based on the recent death of another person in the area. Two months down the line and that’s pretty much spot on!
I am still formulating my thoughts which is why I came on here originally. Some of my posts have been deleted - as I am not a verified member - and I am unwilling at present to put my thoughts in print. The people on here have been really helpful and considerate to the feelings of the family but I have sometimes found it difficult not to be able to contribute more.

Have you checked out Mariposa Sheriffs FB? There’s a comment by a CC indicating that the “internet crimes ...... task force “ was brought in. There are also other comments alluding to something nefarious, such as ‘the truth will come out sooner or later”. Though it is the sheriffs FB, I don’t know what the rules are about discussing the comments here.

 

[Owlpellet]

I’ve been wondering whether it’s possible that the family only intended to hike down to the river and then leave by some other means. e.g. a rendezvous with a friend coming down by boat/raft from Wahona to Hites Cove.

In this link, there’s a photo of them on a boat with their dog in a life jacket so it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

California family found dead on hike killed by extreme heat, sheriff says

I’ve been trying to see what the river is like down to Hites Cove from the point they would have reached it. General descriptions of the Merced talk of white water, then an area of calm where you’d be be floating lazily down. It would have to be like that to risk taking a child and dog along.

In this scenario, obviously the friend didn’t show. Maybe they left a message to say the trip was off because of the algae but the family didn’t receive it. Maybe they forgot or over-slept. And they’ve been keeping quiet because of the terrible consequences.

It’s just a thought. It could partially explain why they seemed to be so unprepared for their journey and travelling with so little gear, which is leaving so many of us at a loss to know what to think. Maybe it could be put to rest by someone familiar with what the river conditions are like in this section.

 

[Auntie Cipation]

He could have been researching it for something completely different. Plus he and EC were aware of the ongoing heatwave. They have known this area for the last four years as well.

I want to mention again, as I have in the past, my interpretation that this summer's west coast heatwave was extreme to an extent beyond what those familiar with local summers might have expected.

So even those familiar and acclimated to summer heatwaves in a given geographical area could easily have been taken by surprise at the brutal severity of the heat during the week this tragedy happened.

(remember that heat impacts are not limited to the immediate effects of the maximum temperature recorded -- other factors such as how many hours of extreme heat, how much or little cooling relief the nighttime temperatures brought, humidity, wind, etc would shape how people's bodies reacted to the heatwave.)

I agree with everything you say here. No, nothing definitive in tracking details. Even the footprints in my mind are questionable because in an earlier thread in #5 there was discussion of wind and how fast the wind was happening in that area around the time the family may have been there. So we are left with questions still. IMO.

I have only seen posters speculate about wind, but I admit I didn't make note of the wind data back when posters were providing info about the possibility of a lightning storm. Do we know for certain it was highly windy that week?

I believe the LE have certainty about their footprint evidence but have no reason to share that level of details with the public. They have repeated more than once that footprint data indicate the family completed most of the loop and I do not doubt them.

Or being lifeless in their carrier. Either way when there is no movement of the baby that should and would signal something wrong with the child.

First, I'm not sure about this -- because babies nap a lot and that would provide the same lack of movement. Second, we have no reason to think they ignored their child in distress -- they were trapped in a no-way-out situation. They were clearly trying to get out of the environment but sadly it overtook them before they got far enough. MOO

 

[rahod1]

What they were wearing tells me they didn't understand the challenges. For me, it's that simple. They weren't just dealing with heat: they were also dealing with mind-blowing sun exposure. Sunscreen won't deal with 4 hours of that blast of UV. I wonder if they had sunstroke, too?
This trip went way beyond planning an overly-strenuous hike. (IMO it didn't reflect perfectionism, either, since IMO perfectionism doesn't apply to hiking, which is by nature unpredictable.). There were so many problematic decisions in the planning stage before they set out. They didn't check the forecast or guess from the temperature the day before? They hadn't enough experience hiking with the baby that they were familiar with their average pace? Water, water, water....

Certainly true. I indicated in my post you responded to that they were woefully unprepared. But in my mind the fatal flaw, lack of understanding the challenges not withstanding, was the failure to CHANGE THEIR MINDSET on completing this hike when signs of early stress became manifest. Had JG been closely monitoring the infant and dog (as well as his OWN status), the family could have done a 180 in time to return safely, regardless of the failure to prepare and recognize the conditions. It's very possible that even proper preparation ALONE wouldn't be sufficient to prevent disaster in this case, given the brutal conditions that confronted them. What would have saved them was the early realization that, AT A MINIMUM, the infant and dog were in jeopardy. So MINDSET and failure to be flexible to changing it, was at the core of this tragedy. MOO

 

[Satchie]

I have wondered this same thing (about the FBI access) yet LE certainly acts as if they have been able to access the phone. IMO

ETA: maybe they are able to access the information on “the cloud.”

IMO, this may be a lower priority for the FBI, their phone-unlocking staff may be busy with more time-sensitive current homicide cases...

 

[MrsEmmaPeel]

I wish I could comfort you, @Pumphouse363, and others who believe J and E would never have done anything to harm their baby and dog. I have written openly on here to say that I willingly put my children in very dangerous, even deathly positions many times, on an empty beach in Guatemala with tides and rip currents so severe even the locals didn't go there-- and many more 3rd world adventures including sending my 8 yr old son on a day hike in Mexico with grown men and a guide while my son had no water, no hat, and wore shorts and tennis shoes. (My son was sick for two days. I now know it was the heat.) I can't convince you that J and E may have done something similar, but I can say without a doubt, I endangered my children. I didn't do it on purpose, and maybe I didn't know any better, but I did it.

With luck, my children survived. Other children do not survive their parents' mistakes.

Perhaps regret for my past is what has made me so interested in this sad story.

 

[Marysmith]

I wish I could comfort you, @Pumphouse363, and others who believe J and E would never have done anything to harm their baby and dog. I have written openly on here to say that I willingly put my children in very dangerous, even deathly positions many times, on an empty beach in Guatemala with tides and rip currents so severe even the locals didn't go there-- and many more 3rd world adventures including sending my 8 yr old son on a day hike in Mexico with grown men and a guide while my son had no water, no hat, and wore shorts and tennis shoes. (My son was sick for two days. I now know it was the heat.) I can't convince you that J and E may have done something similar, but I can say without a doubt, I endangered my children. I didn't do it on purpose, and maybe I didn't know any better, but I did it.

With luck, my children survived. Other children do not survive their parents' mistakes.

Perhaps regret for my past is what has made me so interested in this sad story.

Thank you for sharing your story. I did endanger my niece once and realized afterwards and felt horrible.
I don’t believe there was any malicious intent here - just naivety.

 

[Satchie]

I don't think most younger, outdoorsy people know about heat stroke at all, and if there's one consolation from this case it may be that it raises awareness of the risk.

 

[MrsEmmaPeel]

@Pumphouse363 as I understand the map on onXmaps.com, it gives me a map of the area. Then I create my own map on top of the basic map, and it is saved on my account. So my map is my map. Jon's was his. We both started from the same base map. Some things can be added to the base map if you have a pro-account. Public trails, highways, rivers are not things that are added. As I understand it.

 

[RickshawFan]

I really care not much how long or how close they worked on it extensively if there's no concrete solid proof about their hiking route activity.

I've been saying it all along about half a dozen times here that there's no hiking trail app that even covers HCT to SLT in one loop because none of the apps even covers or lists SLT at all.

How could JG have mapped the loop route ending at SLT if it's not even listed anywhere on most popular and not so popular apps?

What other more solid proof is out there to conclude that they hiked good 3~4 hours in a scorching heat with baby and dog?

I think there's got to be something more than a guy just searching and mapping a trail.

The mapping issue (or insufficiency thereof) is just one piece in this puzzle. There were many other choices in the process that on their own could have put the couple in a precarious situation, no matter the choice of route in that canyon.
For instance:
-doing any kind of hike in that canyon in summer
-hiking in those temperatures
-not wearing clothes for the weather; did they also get sunstroke, I wonder?
-not carrying enough water (what they took would have been good for about 20 minutes of hiking in those conditions, IMO, when you consider it had to be shared between two adults and a dog).
-no hats

So, even if LE were hypothetically wrong about the route (and they have electronic evidence that the route was planned in advance), they weren't wrong about this whole list of items, that on their own were enough to cause a catastrophe.

 

[RickshawFan]

Imo/Moo there is much more to this tragedy
than simple human error. I see the possibility of serious mental health issues operating or something outside of JG and EC that forced them to be in that very perilous environment, especially perilous for a tiny little 12 month
old and Oski, the children who Graced their lives. There has to be much more to the story.

We can't comment on mental illness on this site. However, I want to make a broad brush statement. When discussing mental illness in a sleuthy context, we're generally talking about one person. Here we have two.
IMO either member of this couple could have stopped the trip. Both were unprepared (cf her clothing choice); both didn't bring enough water; both didn't place dependents first; both kept going; etc. etc.
Generally speaking, I'm sure we could impute all kind of reasons to an individual making choices like this, and maybe mental illness would be on our list. But that TWO adults made these choices? IMO you can't readily put that in a "mental health bundle".
My mind is blown that two people could choose to do this.

 

[Lex Parsimoniae]

I’ve been wondering whether it’s possible that the family only intended to hike down to the river and then leave by some other means. e.g. a rendezvous with a friend coming down by boat/raft from Wahona to Hites Cove.

In this link, there’s a photo of them on a boat with their dog in a life jacket so it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

California family found dead on hike killed by extreme heat, sheriff says

I’ve been trying to see what the river is like down to Hites Cove from the point they would have reached it. General descriptions of the Merced talk of white water, then an area of calm where you’d be be floating lazily down. It would have to be like that to risk taking a child and dog along.

In this scenario, obviously the friend didn’t show. Maybe they left a message to say the trip was off because of the algae but the family didn’t receive it. Maybe they forgot or over-slept. And they’ve been keeping quiet because of the terrible consequences.

It’s just a thought. It could partially explain why they seemed to be so unprepared for their journey and travelling with so little gear, which is leaving so many of us at a loss to know what to think. Maybe it could be put to rest by someone familiar with what the river conditions are like in this section.

I think it highly unlikely, we've had two years of severe drought, I don't think it was possible to float down the river in mid August.

 

[RickshawFan]

Moo...it was Burning Man hot. Moo. All Moo.

I'm thinking it was quite a bit hotter than Burning Man, and Burning Man has water, cool spaces, and people to rescue you. But yeah, Burning Man without the frills.

 

[rahod1]

I wish I could comfort you, @Pumphouse363, and others who believe J and E would never have done anything to harm their baby and dog. I have written openly on here to say that I willingly put my children in very dangerous, even deathly positions many times, on an empty beach in Guatemala with tides and rip currents so severe even the locals didn't go there-- and many more 3rd world adventures including sending my 8 yr old son on a day hike in Mexico with grown men and a guide while my son had no water, no hat, and wore shorts and tennis shoes. (My son was sick for two days. I now know it was the heat.) I can't convince you that J and E may have done something similar, but I can say without a doubt, I endangered my children. I didn't do it on purpose, and maybe I didn't know any better, but I did it.

With luck, my children survived. Other children do not survive their parents' mistakes.

Perhaps regret for my past is what has made me so interested in this sad story.

@MrsEmmaPeel
Same here. But this case is different than my previous actions and probably yours too.
If I may, let me ask you this: If you were on this hike with your son and family dog when he was 1 year old ( you were much younger then) with the same *preparation* this family had, would you have turned around at some point? I know what I would have done (age 25 when my son was 1 year).

 

[Owlpellet]

I think it highly unlikely, we've had two years of severe drought, I don't think it was possible to float down the river in mid August.

Thanks

 

[ItalyReader]

I m still working on it.
MrsEmmaPeel stated in thread number 1 (I think) that the probable COD was HEATSTROKE based on the recent death of another person in the area. Two months down the line and that’s pretty much spot on!
I am still formulating my thoughts which is why I came on here originally. Some of my posts have been deleted - as I am not a verified member - and I am unwilling at present to put my thoughts in print. The people on here have been really helpful and considerate to the feelings of the family but I have sometimes found it difficult not to be able to contribute more.

We respect that you’re not ready.

In the past you mentioned you might become a Verified Contributor if you had the right information and if other family members were ok with it.

Is it fair to say the family is choosing for now to keep details private and that’s why you are waiting to share?

If so, I respect that. It would be a long, painful grieving process no matter what the situation.