Hi Laura,
First things first, I reject the hero title. I was definitely a good samaritan, but I don't like diluting the meaning of such an important word as "hero". I did the right thing, that's all.
I avoided putting my opinion about the things that transpired out there. I figured that the description would speak for itself. I had a long talk with Ranger Michael about the situation. He ran into Maxwell and Corey somewhere around LPL where Maxwell first got sick and he gave his opinion.
Apparently there was another Father/son pair that they were hiking with...at least in the beginning. And from what I gather, the other father was very macho and was pushing his son pretty hard too. Corey had mentioned that he thought the vomiting was caused pushing too hard physically. In the beginning, I doubt that he was vomiting with the same frequency as when I met them. I have a little bit of a theory that there was a competitive element that caused them to try to push through the pain.
None of that really matters though. I'm a Dad and I know that every word you said is true. At the first sign of something being wrong, i would have turned around and got my boy off the mountain. Even if it isn't AMS, let's just say that it is a stomach flu, this kid's level of dehydration was pretty serious. He looked to be about 90lbs and they put 5 liters of fluids in him. That's a pretty significant percentage of his body weight.
One thing that I was very happy to hear about was that the other people saw that the mountain lion had a fresh kill. It wasn't really stalking humans as it seemed that night.
Last edited by tdtz; 07/16/12 05:43 PM.
