[pct-l] Fatalities on the PCT?

[Eric Lee]

Prapanna wrote:
>
Yes, that was at Evolution Lake in early July.  I did the JMT that year and
met Bob Kennan, who was the ranger in that area that year, and he said he
was notified that a backpack was in the lake.  When he went there he found
the body of a man there.  He tried to walk across the end of the snow
covered lake, wearing snowshoes, and fell through.
>

But that wasn't a thru-hiker or long section-hiker (neither was the drowning
at the Sandy River).  As Brick said, this gets a little fuzzy trying to
figure out who to include and who to exclude in the fatality statistics.
Any death is a tragedy, but if you're trying to assess the relative
riskiness of long-distance hiking then you probably want to focus on
long-distance hikers (as opposed to weekenders or day-trippers).

To expand on Brick's list, these are the ones I know about who were
attempting a thru-hike or long section-hike when they died:

* Jane and Flicka Rodman, struck by a vehicle in 1995 when they were
road-walking and a driver fell asleep and drifted off the road.
* John Lowder fell to his death on New Army Pass in 1999.
* John Donovan got lost and died (probably of hypothermia) in the San
Jacintos in 2005.
* No Way Ray fell to his death near Deep Creek in 2006.
* Richard Menke (Recycled) fell to his death at Kitchen Creek in 2006.
* Albert Mader (Lonetrail) died of a heart attack/natural causes in 2009.

To the best of my knowledge this is a complete list for the past 17 years -
there may be others before 1995 but I've never head reliable information
about them.  There were also one or two suicides but that's a different sort
of story.

Eric