[pct-l] Death on the PCT / John Joseph Donovan

[Don Billings]

I just caught an interesting TV show regarding two tourists from Texas who wandered away from the Tram area on
San Juancinto Mountain and got lost in 2006. They weren't really hikers. They were just walking a tourist trail and decided to go 
off trail but got confused.

They stumbled around for four days before being rescued. 

The interesting thing was that they stumbled across what appeared to be an abandoned
camp site. The tarp, backpack, shoes, and such were present. But upon evaluating what
they had found, they realized by the log book that they had found a man's camp site who
went missing exactly one year to the day before they found his camp. 

The remains of the thru hiker on the PCT were found two weeks later after they handed the
man's ID over to their own rescuers. The remains were only 150 feet or so from his camp. He 
apparently had become disoriented in snowfall and was an ultralight hiker w/o much gear. As 
a solo hiker, nobody knew he was missing for about 10 days. It was an irony that the man had 
always said his biggest fear was to die alone. And, he did. 

His name was John Joseph Donovan. He turned age 60 just days before he died. He wasn't an
inexperienced hiker but he did have a reputation for being a little sloppy and stubborn. He was
supposed to partner up with a friend who had wisely decided to postpone two weeks due to the snowfall
that year.

The story can be read at Backpacker Magazine: Oct 2006.

The young couple from Texas were the focus of the show I watched, but I researched the
back story of the hiker. I knew from the description on the show that it was a PCT event even 
though the TV show did not mention the PCT.

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