A missing person report prompted a massive search and rescue effort in Oregon. The missing mountain biker managed to self-extract himself from the wilderness after 6 days, and has made it home safe.
I don’t want to live in America or anything but I’m so jealous that you have a country where you can wander off and get lost from all civilisation for 6 days. In England I don’t think I could find anywhere that I could look in a single direction and not see a bunch of houses. I couldn’t get lost for 6 minutes here.
It isn’t even that hard to do either. Tons of places where you can go for a week or more and not see anybody. Less so on the east side, but the Midwest and west half of the country is nice and quiet.
Last time I went backpacking, I was about a half hour from a small town and didn’t see anybody for a week while I was wandering around a large wilderness hiking trail.
The downside is that you can end up in a dangerous situation because there is no cell service and you may not see another person for days or more if you can find a road.
A lot of Europeans come here and think they are dealing with their type of “wilderness” and die because of their hubris. You can get turned around and walk for days in the wrong direction with no landmarks to navigate towards because all you see are trees. You can think a water bottle is enough to hike for a few hours in the desert, and find yourself dying while hiding in the shade with heat stroke. You can get mauled by a bear, killed by a mountain lion, violated by a Bigfoot, trampled by a moose, or risk starvation because raccoons stole all your food 3 days from your car. In the northwest and south east you may come across the biggest hazard, two-legged predators that may kill you or worse. Hundreds of people die in our wilderness areas every year, on average 360 die in just our National Parks alone.
violated by a Bigfoot
Could you expound on this so I know where to < ahem > avoid?
Definitely don’t go to 48.222, -121.368 and bend over a log with your pants down after midnight on a full moon.
Well now you tell me.
I would have told you sooner, but I like to watch.
I imagine it would take a fair amount of, uh, bushwhacking to get to that exact spot.
Australia enters the chat
Yeah, ya’ll have worse lands to venture into unprepared because everything wants to kill you.
Spider rain season is a nope for me dawg
I live just outside our capitol, St. Paul, in Minnesota and every morning I walk our dogs in a 35 acre wooded dog park that’s within the St. Paul city limits.
If you take the federal government out of it, it’s pretty great to live here. Unfortunately that varies state by state and we have an administration trying to destroy it.
I’ve been watching these “scary camping encounters” videos online. A lot of times the “scary” part is just a person coming up on someone’s camp site in the night.
In the US that might actually be strange because you can be miles and miles out into the forest. But every time the video takes place in the UK it’s like “come on, you can see a house/road right there”.
Yup. We have vast nature reserves that you can literally get so lost in that you die. It’s fantastic, and beautiful.
You have private homes that are older than my country. It’s fantastic, and beautiful.
We have many states in which you can start on one side and drive for 10 hours and only just cross into another country. It’s amazing.
You can start in your country and drive entirely through two other countries that speak a different language to end up in a fourth country speaking yet another language, all before having to stop for the night. It’s incredible.
Honestly, I think they’re both great places to vacation, but I’d rather live in Europe. Going backpacking is a once-a-year thing, and I’d rather have the once-a-day benefits of your public transportation system, and being able to pop over for a weekend in Paris. And for petite weekend walks, every country in Europe has enough parks to “get lost” for a day or two in… even the UK. The Lakes District is high on my natural wonders list to visit. Dartmoor and Exmoor both have some incredible natural scenery, and the parks around Dunster and Bath are gorgeous. And that’s just England!
But: yeah. If you’re going to throw on a backpack and live in the woods or mountains for a week, there are few better places than almost any of the national parks in the USA.
Men would literally rather be lost in the woods for 6 days than ask for directions. /Joke
Glad that he made it through alive.
Finally found the the Oregon trail?
Self-extract himself? As opposed to self-extracting someone else?
The rider is Ralph Sawyer, a 52-year-old mountain biker who is said to be familiar with the area.
his car was located at a trailhead by his wife Marcy. His cell phone had accidentally been left inside.
Class-A adulterer 😂 “Honey, I swear I was just lost for the week.” j/k
I’m really surprised that someone who goes into remote areas to bike wouldn’t have a bike computer (with GPS) or a fitness tracker watch (also with GPS) or a location beacon (with GPS).
The search for him covered 250 miles (and they didn’t find him)… 🧐
This sounds suspicious 🤔
A search crew can only cover so much ground at once, maybe it’s bullshit but crazier stuff has happened. “Missing” people have joined their own search parties not realizing they were looking for themselves until later.
I don’t know the specifics, but if he was there to mountain bike, then there would have been a trail, and they had been using ATVs to do the search. So unless he went way out of his way to leave the trail for whatever reason, then it’s still a very sketchy story.
It could still be true, but I think it’s super, super suspicious.
Consider the fact that he ended up getting back to his car (undetected, despite the vehicle being located before the search), which would imply he either knew how to get back, or he had a GPS device on him, then the whole idea about getting lost for nearly a week just seems way, way, way far-fetched.
In addition to ATVs, they also had motorbikes on the trail, k9 units, drones, a helicopter, and the goddamn military too. I mean, it’s as if he didn’t want to be found. 😂
That was my first thought too.
