Summary of Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford E-Book

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• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

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Summary of Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

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Andrea Lankford, a former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, embarks on a quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail. After leaving the National Park Service after twelve years, she discovers three young men have vanished from the trail. She joins an eclectic team of amateurs, including a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker. They track kidnappers, murderers, cults, psychics, and international fugitives. The search for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test, but their hardships lead them to unexpected places and people. The book explores hiker culture, determination, generosity, and hope, and the vast and treacherous nature of the natural world.

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GP SUMMARY

Summary of Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford

The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

Andrea Lankford, a former law enforcement park ranger, joins a team to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail. They track kidnappers, murderers, cults, psychics, and international fugitives. The book explores hiker culture, determination, generosity, and hope, as well as the treacherous nature of the natural world.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

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Summary of

Trail of the Lost

A

Summary of

Andrea Lankford’s book

The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

GP SUMMARY

Summary of Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

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NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Andrea Lankford’s “Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail” designed to enrich your reading experience.

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The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

Author’s Note

DURING THE FOUR YEARS I JOINED FORCES WITH A GROUP OF AMATEUR

The author has gathered over 60 hours of recorded interviews and files to search for three hikers missing along the Pacific Crest Trail. The narrative includes handwritten notes, case reports, news articles, emails, texts, screenshots, and photographs. The author has made minor edits to improve grammar and compressed statements for narrative efficiency. The geographic reference points are from the Pacific Crest Trail Data Book, fifth edition, published by Wilderness Press in 2013. The narrative includes reporting on suicide, with an early trigger warning indicating help is available and hope for recovery.

Introduction

In October 1995, a thirty-one-year-old supervisory park ranger for the National Park Service (NPS) found Gabriel Parker's abandoned vehicle at a trailhead near the Grand Canyon's North Rim. The park ranger, a supervisory park ranger with experience in search and rescue missions, spotted a cheap day pack filled with crushed cigarettes in the back seat. The park ranger, who had worked in Yosemite Valley, California, was in charge of coordinating and leading the physical search effort to find Parker. The search team focused on the paths that spoke out from Parker's vehicle and adjusted their search strategy accordingly.

The park ranger became emotionally invested in reuniting the missing with their loved ones, especially when they met the family. The search effort was winding down, and the ranger had to hand over the operation to local rangers who would respond to new leads but discontinue active searching while the park ranger returned home to resume their normal duties.

When the park ranger informed Parker's father about the impending change in leadership, he slumped, knowing that the NPS would soon call off the search. The park ranger tried to bridge the distance between them, but Doug, the park ranger's father, was left feeling helpless.

The author recounts their experience as a first responder in the Grand Canyon, where they faced the challenge of finding a missing hiker named Gabriel Parker. The park is a busy and dangerous area, and the rangers are understaffed and overworked. They felt guilty for not finding Parker and felt that they did not deserve to be thanked.

Eventually, they found Parker by accident, with two maintenance workers surveying a remote pipeline finding his body at the base of a three-hundred-foot escarpment of iron-stained limestone known as the Redwall. The author suspected that Parker had smoked a joint and lost balance while taking in the beauty of the Grand Canyon.

Three years later, the author left the National Park Service (NPS) and found solace in hiking the Appalachian Trail. They also wrote a few books, returned to school, and became a registered nurse. However, their twelve years as a park ranger left them feeling sad and disappointed.

The author is often approached by filmmakers or journalists seeking quotes about national parks, especially when a park visitor dies or goes missing. In 2017, they researched a case involving Chris Sylvia, who had vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail in California. Despite fifty professional searchers searching the area for five days, no sign of the missing hiker was found. The author advised the producers that the case was unique, compelling, and logistically practical, but the episode was dropped.

Chris Sylvia, Kris Fowler, and David O'Sullivan, three unmarried young men, disappeared from the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 2017 and 2016, respectively. The unsolved cases on the PCT are shocking and unprecedented, as it has been the site of sixteen deaths in the last forty years. The trail, which travels 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada, has been the site of various crimes, including water assassination, heat stroke, and falling trees.

The PCT Missing hikers were initially thought to be nature's casualties, but their bodies were found. The author embarked on a quest to answer these questions and partnered with a dedicated group of amateur searchers. Their efforts led to the discovery of numerous leads, including cell phone pings, discarded gear, wrecked cars, and bleached bones. The volunteers helped three families learn about their missing loved ones and helped the author's ankle with a titanium plate and five screws.

The story of Chris Sylvia, Kris Fowler, and David O'Sullivan serves as a reminder that on the trail of the lost, you may not find what you're searching for, but you will find more than you seek.

PART ONE

<h2>POINTS LAST SEEN

An Antidote to the Ills of Civilization

The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) was a groundbreaking idea that began nearly a century ago when teaching supervisor Catherine Montgomery received a sales pitch from a mountaineer named Joseph Hazard. Hazard, a mountaineer, had been reading about the Appalachian Trail and was inspired by Montgomery's idea of a long-distance footpath across the Pacific Coast states. Montgomery shared her thoughts with the Mount Baker Club, and the idea was sparked by Clinton C. Clarke, a Boy Scout leader who had been toying with the idea for years. Clarke formed the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference, which united government agencies and sympathetic groups, including the Boy Scouts of America, the Sierra Club, and the YMCA.

Montgomery's lofty idea and Clarke's passion led to the designation of the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail as the United States' first national scenic trails. Today, the PCT and AT are arguably the most revered long-distance footpaths in the United States, and neither of the PCT's earliest champions ever saw the fruits of their shared dream come to pass. Although they never met in person, Montgomery and Clarke may have enjoyed a hike together in the hereafter, as they departed this earth in 1957.

The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) was first officially established in 1968 by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). Eric Ryback, an eighteen-year-old with a relentless drive to follow unknown routes, set out to trek the entire PCT in one continuous journey from Canada to Mexico. The trail taught Ryback respect for himself, nature, and humanity. His book, The High Adventure of Eric Ryback, sold over three hundred thousand copies, making the first PCT memoir a bestseller.

Despite the success of Ryback's book, the PCT continued to play second fiddle to the AT, its shorter, but more celebrated sister in the East. Today, the PCT Association estimates that over a million people visit the trail every year. Some attribute the sudden increase in the PCT's popularity to the "Wild effect," a reference to Cheryl Strayed's memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the PCT.

The Wild effect inspired a new demographic of dilettantes to thruhike the PCT, but the growing number of novice and occasionally uncouth hikers has disenchanted some modern trail enthusiasts. The internet's tentacle reach into hiker culture would astonish the likes of Montgomery and Clarke, as well as fellow twentieth-century conservationists.

Clarke's "untrammeled by man" wilderness ethos also set the course for how the PCT would be built and managed. On this western trail, adventure seekers could experience nature in its rawest form, with the few rugged comforts hikers appreciated on the AT, such as three-sided huts for shelter and frequent trail blazes.

The PCT, a trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains, has evolved over time, with modern hikers becoming more relaxed and open-minded. This shift in attitude has put pressure on agencies like the National Park Service (NPS) and the United States Forest Service (USFS) to protect the public while preserving the natural environment. The "mountains without handrails" credo by wilderness managers and the rose-colored glasses many hopeful hikers wear make the trail seem less a test and more a cure.

However, beginner's optimism can only take us so far. Less than 12 percent of wannabe thru-hikers will successfully trek the entire length of the PCT in one go. Even Strayed fell short of this goal, hiking less than half of it. The journey requires sacrifices, including leaving family and friends behind, putting careers on hold, and giving up routine comforts like running water and shelter. Injuries, fatigue, and homesickness also erode dedication to completing the trail.

The first person known to have disappeared while hiking along the PCT corridor was Louise Teagarden, born in 1920. Three decades later, hikers discovered a human skeleton inside a sleeping bag near the PCT, which authorities suspected could belong to Teagarden. The bones showed no signs of trauma, and authorities identified her remains by comparing a known sample of Teagarden's handwriting to notes left behind on papers lying about the campsite.

Over the next fifty-five years, thousands of aspiring thru-hikers would attempt the PCT, with some going missing for hours or days, and one not found for months. However, all of these illfated adventurers were eventually tracked down and their cases were closed.