I heard last week that a man died on the JMT in August after a portion of the trail crumbled underneath him as he descended from one of the passes. The person who shared this story didn’t know any other details (she heard of it from a neighbor), so I was wondering if anyone in the forum knows anything about it. Thanks in advance for the info!
Lisa
Backpacker’s body found
She had been missing since Thursday, July 31, when she was last seen by her husband at the edge of the San Joaquin River. After a lengthy search, not a clue was found regarding the fate of Linda Salness, 56, of Hershey, Penn., but she was presumed drowned.
That presumption became reality three weeks later when, on Thursday, Aug. 17, National Park Service rangers recovered Salness’s body from a section of the river in the northernmost portion of Kings Canyon National Park.
The victim was spotted by a Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks helicopter pilot during a spotting trip. She was about a half mile downriver from where she was last seen, but the body had only recently become visible due to the receding water levels common at the end of summer.
Salness was on a backpacking trip with her husband and another couple. They had embarked on the John Muir Trail at Florence Lake and were camped at Aspen Meadow when she went missing.
This is the second fatality in Sequoia-Kings Canyon this year. On Wednesday, May 31, another woman, Patty Rambert, 57, of Laguna Hills, fell to her death on Mount Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park.
During 2005, 11 people perished in the parks, all of whom were male. Two were fall victims, two were struck by lightning, and one succumbed to hypothermia.
The leading cause of death in Sequoia-Kings Canyon is drowning. Six men lost their lives in park waterways last season.
Clark Fork