-In 95 percent of the cases, bad weather strangely follows a disappearance, washing out footprints and other clues and making it impossible to carry on a search until the weather clears. In 98 to 99 percent of the cases, tracking dogs are unable to find a scent or simply refuse to track.
-Almost 98 percent of the disappearances occur in the afternoon. Searchers have been known to cover an area over 100 times, only to later find the person, alive or dead in the same area they searched before.
-When Paulides first requested information from the NPS under the Freedom of Information Act about the missing persons, he was told they had no records. Later, an attorney called Paulides and asked him why he wanted the information. .........Paulides was shocked when the attorney told him that if he wanted the “non-existent” records from Yosemite National Park, it would cost him $34,000, and if he wanted records from all the national parks, the price tag would be a whopping $1.4 million.
-The FBI refused to give Paulides any information on the disappearance of another small two year-old boy who disappeared in Yosemite in 1957. In that case the boy simply vanished as he walked around the perimeter of his family’s camp site. Bloodhounds and hundreds of people searched for him. He apparently climbed 3000 feet straight up a mountain. He was found dehydrated and suffering from exposure with a tee shirt, no pants, one sock and no shoes.
Heres a recent incident:
The latest disappearance is of a 34 year-old California firefighter who vanished with his dog on Friday, June 13 2014 in the Los Padres National Forest in California. He was camping with a friend when he ran off shoeless, chasing his dog downhill toward a stream. His friend searched for hours, then had to hike two days out of the wilderness to find help. The area being searched is two times the size of the Grand Canyon. On June 19, the firefighter’s dog was found alive.
Mike Herdman, the California firefighter who disappeared two weeks ago chasing his dog during a backpacking trip to the Los Padres National Forest was found dead June 27. Like others who have disappeared into the national forests, Herdman was found at approximately 1200 feet above the river bottom which he had chased his dog into the day he disappeared. When his remains were discovered authorities were astonished to find him shoeless. Rescue crews spent nearly 5,000 man-hours searching and covered 50 square miles on foot and horseback, as well as by air, including the use of two drones. The sheriff stated it was unimaginable that a shoeless person could have traversed so far in such rough terrain.
