Missing hiker in Mazatzals - gpsjoe (Joe Domin)

[Dschur]

Hike Arizona urges anyone interested in searching to post or join an event.

If you go out, please track your hike on a GPS and post it for the benefit of future searches. Simply post it upon return. (if you need help ask the webmaster) Hike Arizona will see that it gets linked to a master map. If you have multiple variations in your group, please post all tracks. As more info is posted the map will evolve and the overlaps will be removed.

Searched Routes

Southern Ravines Map

Forecast Mormon Grove & Peeley

Crews looking for missing hiker
By Alexis Bechman

November 16, 2010
Tonto Rim Search and Rescue volunteers and Gila County Sheriff officers are currently searching for an overdue hiker.

The man, whose name has not been released, was last heard from nine days ago and is believed to be hiking near the Mt. Peeley trail or Sheep Mountain, off Forest Road 201, southwest of Payson.

The Gila County Sheriff’s Office first received a call that the man was overdue Monday, Nov. 15 about 9 p.m.

“The hiker has not been heard from since Nov. 7 and frequents the Mazatzal Mountain Wilderness area,” according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.

The missing hiker’s vehicle was located at the Mt. Peeley trailhead.



Six TRSAR volunteers are currently searching the ground. Earlier Tuesday, a Department of Public Safety Ranger helicopter did an aerial search of the area, but found no signs of the man

[Dschur]

Drove past there twice today first about 1030 and was totally engulfed with clouds to the bottom of the mountains... And then on the way home about 530 was the same... Rained in Payson off and on all day....

[CannondaleKid]

The forecast has improved drastically for Monday, low chance of rain and warmer temps so I will be going out on Monday. Based on some off-line communications I will be taking a different tack to search in a few specific areas where the odds are highest (rather than shotgun approach) of finding Joe.

[nonot]

Thanks for your continued efforts. Does anyone have plans to search Christmas Eve?

[juliachaos]

@nonot
I was thinking about it. Will let ya know.

[PrestonSands]

Hmmm...just a thought, has anyone explored the route of the old "pack trail" between the MAZ Divide and Cornucopia trails, that runs down the west side of Mount Peeley? It's shown on the 1964 & 1972 topos of the area: http://hikearizona.com/t2006/06/02/12850-888888_40.jpg

[joebartels]

Most of it, it's very light on the map but if you squint you'll see it

#17, btw... the brush in this area is not as high or difficult as lower or higher in the area

To use the old TOPO! layer on the old TrailDEX Map to see for yourself change the _g in location_g.php to _2007

[CannondaleKid]

One of the map sets I have on my Mapsource showed that trail so on 12/13 I started to go along it but, having all the SAR tracks loaded on my GPS, as soon as I got started on it I realized that "trail" had been covered by SAR3 already.

[joebartels]

Please take a moment to read a letter from Joe's son Christian...

HAZ AZH SAR letter.doc

(21.5 KiB) Downloaded 326 times

[imike]

Hopefully everyone will continue these great efforts to find Joe... I keep waiting to see the big banner headlining that he's been found! I'd like to think the search will draw to a successful close here soon, but if not I'm looking forward to joining the effort in the Spring... of course now, I'm going to have to ride my bike over ( entering 3 year phase of just bikes), so... I encourage everyone to get out there and keep looking!!

[CannondaleKid]

I just got back from our (Liz and Curtis were my search mates for the day) jaunt out to Sheep Mountain Summit. We found no trace of Joe although new ground WAS covered today. Truthfully I must give 98% of the credit to Liz and Curtis for their efforts.

- Curtis rappelled down from a bump in the ridgeline about .25 mi. ENE from Sheep summit, scanning some distance below.
- Liz went NW down from the summit some distance, circling around to the south before returning back to the summit.
- I (Mark) simply wandered around the edges of the summit taking some photos and scanning mostly down the NW side. [-X

I'm sure Liz will have much more detail to offer as she was much more familiar with the area than me. I think she and Curtis were going to grab a meal before heading home so I suppose you'll have to wait for her comments.

I'm just getting my tracks off the GPS at this moment so I hope to have it uploaded soon. After grabbing a real meal I'll add a new triplog. I returned to plenty of fresh chocolate chip cookies just teasing me... too much temptation... but I held myself to two so I still have an appetite. Ok, I lied, I also had 4 on the return trip. (Liz and Curtis each had two.)

A lot of work for an old man but other than giving my precious head a good whack by lunging up in a rocky area, not noticing a large rock overhang above me, I actually feel pretty good... just some arthritic knee pain now that I'm sitting. Yeah, I hear ya! :-({|=

[beckett]

@CannondaleKid
Sounds like a lot of area was searched. I admire each and everyone who is getting out there to search. I wish I lived closed. I'll try to make it out in the next week.
God Bless each one who searches.
Beckett

[sneakySASQUATCH]

I've been following this thread since the beginning an unfortunately only being in the state for 6 days this month and 14 last month have only been able to follow the impressive organization of resources to look for one of our own. I thought of searching from a pilots perspective and the difficulty of searching from the air. The hiking perspective and the type of bushwacking and the difficulty of finding a clue or a person in this type of terrain.
Now this is a shot in the dark, but several years ago in Oregon teaching a snow safety course for the ski patrol we had a couple new patrollers bury avalanche tranceivers during practice in the receive rather than transmit mode. Without boring you with too many details you can't find them with other transceivers at this point. I did some research that day and rented a pipe finder (metal detector on steroids) in town. It snowed a couple of feet overnight and our search area was 1/4 by a 1/4 of a mile because they were buried in an area with no surface or terrain reference. These small plastic avalanche beacons had enough metal in them that following a regular tranceiver search pattern I was able to pic up the metal over geologic and other things and find both of them buried in several feet of snow.
I am aware this is a much larger search area and I am unfamiliar with the area besides the Stiller hike in March and following the search effort, but if he had a camera, gps, etc. and other metal items with him it might be another option. I was able to detect the presence of metal from quite some distance with this thing and then zero in on the location. It took me less than 30 minutes to find both of them which were in opposite sides of the search area . Granted you cannot do a zig zag tranceiver type search in this kind of terrain, but you may be able to turn the sensitivity up and point it off of likely fall areas below and point it into the brush where you can't see. I don't know what kind of range you could get from these above ground, but it could detect buried pipe 15 or 20 feet down. It had more of a concentrated detecting area than a regular metal detector. I had to get people to leave the area because I was picking up people and the metal they had on their person. It was easily transportable and I'm sure they have made them smaller in the last 10 years. Someone may know somebody that uses one for work or a equipment rental place that would be willing to donate it's use. What impressed me about it was the distance at which I picked up the tranceivers and that I was able to tune out some background signals. Not to mention never using one and finding them quickly with only a general idea of where to look. It's a long shot, but I thought maybe another perspective might give others ideas.

[Grasshopper]

@bart01

I've been following this thread since the beginning an unfortunately only being in the state for 6 days this month and 14 last month have only been able to follow the impressive organization of resources to look for one of our own. I thought of searching from a pilots perspective and the difficulty of searching from the air. The hiking perspective and the type of bushwhacking and the difficulty of finding a clue or a person in this type of terrain.
Now this is a shot in the dark, but several years ago in Oregon teaching a snow safety course for the ski patrol we had a couple new patrollers bury avalanche transceivers during practice in the receive rather than transmit mode. Without boring you with too many details you can't find them with other transceivers at this point. I did some research that day and rented a pipe finder (metal detector on steroids) in town. It snowed a couple of feet overnight and our search area was 1/4 by a 1/4 of a mile because they were buried in an area with no surface or terrain reference. These small plastic avalanche beacons had enough metal in them that following a regular transceiver search pattern I was able to pic up the metal over geologic and other things and find both of them buried in several feet of snow.
I am aware this is a much larger search area and I am unfamiliar with the area besides the Stiller hike in March and following the search effort, but if he had a camera, gps, 2 hiking poles, etc. and other metal items with him it might be another option. I was able to detect the presence of metal from quite some distance with this thing and then zero in on the location. It took me less than 30 minutes to find both of them which were in opposite sides of the search area . Granted you cannot do a zig zag transceiver type search in this kind of terrain, but you may be able to turn the sensitivity up and point it off of likely fall areas below and point it into the brush where you can't see. I don't know what kind of range you could get from these above ground, but it could detect buried pipe 15 or 20 feet down. It had more of a concentrated detecting area than a regular metal detector. I had to get people to leave the area because I was picking up people and the metal they had on their person. It was easily transportable and I'm sure they have made them smaller in the last 10 years. Someone may know somebody that uses one for work or a equipment rental place that would be willing to donate it's use. What impressed me about it was the distance at which I picked up the transceivers and that I was able to tune out some background signals. Not to mention never using one and finding them quickly with only a general idea of where to look. It's a long shot, but I thought maybe another perspective might give others ideas.

Sometimes it's "darkest just before dawn"! I like this idea what do others think?

[snakemarks]

Sounds like the best idea, yet! I wonder why SAR teams aren't using this technology. If this works as well as bart01 says, it seems like a no-brainer.

[joebartels]

Lots of great ideas. Simply get out and travel ground that has not been covered ranks pretty high in my opinion.

[Tough_Boots]

I like this idea what do others think?

Interesting idea. They're pretty expensive but it looks like you can rent them for $52/day or $200/wk from this place http://www.geophysicsrentals.com/metrotech810.htm. I wonder how they react when not pointed directly at the ground. There must be someone on HAZ who works construction or contracting that might know more about this stuff.

[Tough_Boots]

another thought... with all the mines out there, would deposits of cinnabar possibly interfere with this? I'm totally clueless.

[Grasshopper]

There must be someone on HAZ who works construction or contracting that might know more about this stuff.

and like for SRP and Southwest Gas?

[CannondaleKid]

While I agree in theory it sounds like a great idea, and I'd truly love to see technology used in such a positive manner, but with some researching this type of detector I haven't come across anything that could do the job at a long enough distance to pay off. If it did a better job $50 a day doesn't sound bad seeing as buying it is about $3,000, but seeing it "in action" so to speak, I don't think it's viable in this form... check out the lower video on this page:
http://tracerelectronicsllc.com/tracer/ ... 810DX.html

In the demonstration it shows a man scanning by swinging the unit back and forth about 3' as he is walking along on pavement "in the vicinity of the line" and when it showed a hit, it shows the metal is 2' 6" below the surface. So even if this thing is 10 times as powerful as they are demonstrating, (and if it could, wouldn't they show that?) we'd have to come within 30 or so feet of enough metal to give off a good return.
So what could we expect a hit from to help us here?
Camera?
GPS?
Watch with metal band?
None of those have the density of a metal pipe as depicted in the video so much as I'd like to see a wonder tool to help us, this may be pushing the envelope.

If however there does exist something that can do this for an affordable price, I'd welcome it. Unfortunately my guess (and yes, it is an assumption) is that such capability would only be in the hands of government, military and/or large energy/oil companies for exploration, not pipe finding.

That's my take. I agree with Joe B, it likely will come down to putting more boots (or in Joe's and my case, Teva's) on the ground, more times and covering more ground each time. All we can do is try our best for as long as we can.

[Grasshopper]

I was able to detect the presence of metal from quite some distance with this thing and then zero in on the location. It took me less than 30 minutes to find both of them which were in opposite sides of the search area . Granted you cannot do a zig zag tranceiver type search in this kind of terrain, but you may be able to turn the sensitivity up and point it off of likely fall areas below and point it into the brush where you can't see. I don't know what kind of range you could get from these above ground, but it could detect buried pipe 15 or 20 feet down.

Maybe Bart can clarify how far "quite some distance" was?

So what could we expect a hit from to help us here?
Camera?
GPS?
Watch with metal band?
None of those have the density of a metal pipe as depicted in the video so much as I'd like to see a wonder tool to help us, this may be pushing the envelope.

All the above + GPSjoe always did hike with two Leki metal hiking poles (ie, two pipes ;) ).