Found Alive UT - Holly Suzanne Courtier, 38, Zion National Park, 6 Oct 2020 #2

Just a super funny OT story...I used to teach Special Education, many of my students were blind and developmentally delayed. One time, "someone" ate all of the Easter candy. And the parents tried to find out who did "it". No one admitted it. The Dad got super mad, and put everyone in the house on restrictions, for the missing candy, and the lying.

Except my student. And he was the ONE who ATE all of the candy. Super cute. No one ever suspected him of being able to find candy, "steal it", eat it, and not leave a trace. He is also non-verbal, so he couldn't say anything. And he only understands a few words.

It came out, because he was smiling the whole time. He KNEW he did it. And the "evidence" was in his room.

Just like HC, she knows what she did. Unlikely she will ever cop to it, or be charged.

 

IMO it's bizarre that a 100-pound woman would regularly fast and also bizarre that her family didn't see any harm in it. MOO.

They were having dinner, but Courtier told [younger sister Jillian Oliver] that she wasn’t eating anything because she was fasting, which was something she did with some regularity. Oliver said her sister was a free spirit prone to spontaneity and that she didn’t tell Oliver she was planning to go to Zion but said she was in a good mood.
...
Oliver was ecstatic when she learned her sister had been found. She had spent six days at Zion receiving updates about the search. At each meeting, the search and rescue teams would say again that she didn’t have any food or water. Oliver reminded herself that because her sister fasted so often, maybe she’d be able to survive.
Questions remain about Woodland Hills woman found alive after going missing in Zion National Park

 

Hmm. That could definitely be.

 

Yes. I keep coming back to the feeling that she was just camping out there, hid from searchers and made up a story when she realized how big her disappearance and the search had become and how worried her family had been.

 

And yet she walked out on her own.

 

Less than that. If walking would take her around 15 minutes, crawling would take no more than a couple hours.

 

Im thinking of my own hikes at night. It depends on if there’s curves in the canyon or not.

 

Sounds very much like an eating disorder. The "fasting" could have been an excuse so that her family wouldn't be suspicious or ask questions. Imo

 

Could very well be IMO. She looks healthy in her FB photos but 100 pounds at 5'3" is pretty slim. I guess if she looked skeletal to her family they would have tried to get her help.

 

It is pitch black dark in Zions at night. Not sure what phase the moon was at when HC was at ZNP. Otherwise, there is zero ambient light in that park.

Did HC have a flashlight or other light source with her?

 

The full moon was on the 1st, so it was waning on the 6th. I'm sure still quite bright, but I'm not sure how much light it would give off in such a remote location.

Edited to correct date of full moon.

 

I actually doubt that she even knew how to bury waste/trash successfully. Critters loooooove to dig up buried toilet paper. IMO if she had done the inevitable half-baked job on burying trash, it would be sprinkled all over the site within a few days. Evidence!

No doubt she was using the restroom.

They won't have cameras in the restrooms, but I wonder if they're in the general vicinity. I have a feeling NPS has photos.....

 

I arrived at this question, too. IMO she couldn't have been in pitch black darkness at night, because she would have said something about being scared of the dark. Her family would have said something. IMO the darkness didn't bother her because she had a light, likely one with her and..... the restroom.
Also, the shuttle drives on a road right across the little river. It's busy there. I wonder if that little road was lit, so the camp spot was actually quite light?

 

To me, they sound like exaggerated versions of normal. For instance, hikers get dehydrated. Normal. Sometimes they get very dehydrated. Also normal. If they keep going like that, "it might not be great on the kidneys". We all know that, right? Instead, the sisterhood turns it into: "she was on the verge of kidney failure."
Same with the "concussion". Same with bruises. People get smacked up on uneven ground out in nature, with trees hither and yon: it's not the mall.
And if the sisterhood felt verklempt at the notion that you could be so dehydrated you'd have trouble moving your lips and mouth? Welcome to mild dehydration!
And then there was the bit about being weak and woozy and not being able to go more than 5 feet before collapsing. Almost anything could bring this on, including—very likely—spending too much time in a hammock.

 

I also feel like many of the descriptions that seem unrealistic to us, seem so because we are presuming that if it happened, and was sufficient to keep her from being able to self-rescue, then those claims must have been true *the entire time*.

What I'm saying is, I think it's possible there actually was a time period when she was woozy and could barely move, and a time period when she lay unmoving, and a time period during her rescue when she could only walk 5 feet before needing a rest. But I do not think any of those things were true ongoingly. (the rescuers would not have permitted that, for one thing. They would have carried or wheeled her out, at the most possibly allowing her to try walking the last few feet or so if she was insistent.

But I think the claims were psychologically justifed, whether in her mind or those of her family, due to there being nuggets of truth in them.

Of course if those things were only true for short periods of time and did not prevent her from self-rescuing, then we are still left with the question of why she didn't do just that. I suspect, as I have all along, a different agenda.

MOO

 

OT, but look at case of Cassandra Bravo. Off for short planned hike. Experienced hiker by all accounts. Had a bad fall, found after two days but did not recover from her injuries, no doubt also made worse by hypothermia and dehydration.

It is not safe to hike alone!

 

There are no lights on the roadway in the Zion Valley nor are there cameras at the shuttle stop where the restroom is. Having walked in that area AT NIGHT a week before she went missing, it’s crazy dark! Even the light from a full moon only reaches into the narrow canyon for a few hours.

And guess what? It was actually TARANTULA MIGRATION SEASON at the beginning of October, where they leave their nests and travel the park in search of mates!!!!! We stayed in a cabin and were scared to step outside after dark just from the rangers’ discussion of spotting them. Yes, they are basically harmless but it would be #1 on my list of things I’d be afraid of if stranded on my own in the wilderness there.

 

if possible to recover deleted family/friends posts prior to her "disappearance"- documented in many news stories/social media comments sections - should and probably already has provided law enforcement answers/leads...this is so Rescued OC woman says stranger threatened her and her dog before they went missing in Inyo County forest – Orange County Register with a money/movie (seriously?) grab bent.

 

I actually think this is very on point, for several reasons. a) HC must have had a light, so as not to be in bad shape; b) HC must have had water; c) HC had another way to stay warm besides that skimpy "quilt" and the butt-freezing hammock which she didn't know would be totally unsuitable, because, yep, hammocks sleep VERY cold.
In general, situations like Bravo's are why SAR is so important. Playing games of hide 'n' seek with SAR is unthinkable: it diverts financial, personal, time, and emotional resources from life-saving missions.

 

This is so helpful!
No mention of tarantulas in the sisterhood's reporting. In fact, no mention of pretty much anything that humans are normally afraid of: black nights, pooping with no toilet, constant tripping hazards, running out of food, obsessing about how to get out of your situation, unfamiliar sounds, loneliness, spiders!!!!