Page 10 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - November 2013 Edition

The 9 Biggest Outdoor Mysteries The Biggest Outdoor Mysteries What is it we love about a good mystery? Most of our legendary stories without endings involve an unfinished last chapter of someone’s life, a missing body, or a found body with missing answers. Or, you know, a giant hairy half-man, half ape creature wandering the woods, or a gold-rich mine somewhere in the desert. 1. Bigfoot Without question the most famous of all vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time.” mountains, they resorted to readily available outdoor mysteries, aka Sasquatch, aka The Yeti, human protein, the idea that the Donner Party aka the new mascot for Leave No Trace. 5. Loch Ness Monster resorted to cannibalism while stranded in 1846 Actually requires no explanation. Bizarrely Another mythical creature, a Scottish and 1847 has always been disputed. In a makes an appearance in Slavomir Rawicz’ book dragon-like (maybe?) lake-dwelling beast published account in 1847, one member of the The Long Walk, which is used as evidence by whose existence is supported by nothing but party explained in detail how he ate Jacob those who dispute Rawicz’ survival story. anecdotes. “Nessie” is the Bigfoot of the sea, or Donner, and also that he ate a baby, raw, but Bigfoot is the Nessie of the forest, whichever then of course denied it years later.9. Why 2. Amelia Earhart way you want to look at it. climbers once wore bright Lycra Seventy-five years after she Everyone makes regrettable fashion choices at disappeared, we’re still looking for Amelia 6. The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine, some point in their life. In fact, the true Earhart’s plane, lost in the ocean somewhere Superstition Mountains, Arizona definition of “fashion” might be looking back near Howland Island, an uninhabited, remote It’s possible you could insert any lost on photos of yourself 10 years later and saying island in the south Pacific where she tried to gold mine in this spot — but the Lost Dutchman “What the hell was I thinking wearing THAT?” land during her circumnavigational flight is one of the most famous, and most scenic, But, Lycra. Tights. Nothing but a thin skin-tight attempt in 1937. Just two weeks ago, a $2.2 located somewhere in the rugged Superstition layer of fabric between you and all those man million search effort pulled the plug after Mountains in the desert southeast of Phoenix. In parts at the crag. It defies all reasonable finding nothing. Theories, including a crash the late 1800s, the murky story (which has explanation and remains…a mystery [] landing on an island controlled by Japanese several versions) says that the “Dutchman,” troops, the idea that she was spying on the German immigrant Jacob Waltz and/or another Japanese, the possibility that she tried to turn man named Jacob Weiser were given the UFO a small agricultural back mid-flight, and a story that she survived, location of a secret gold mine, which they never helicopter moved to New Jersey and changed her name. found and Waltz allegedly shared on his deathbed in 1891. The story, one of a dime-a- 3. Mallory and Irvine on Everest dozen “lost gold mine” stories in the American Melissa Crowe In 2007, Conrad Anker struggled trying West, gained fame when Adolph Ruth died to free climb the Second Step on Everest’s searching for the mine in 1931, his skull found If you want to know the scoop, there's no better Northeast Ridge — either proving that George with two bullet holes through it — and later his place to look than social media. Mallory and Andrew Irvine could have climbed checkbook, with a note in which Ruth said he After reports of a chupacabra-piloted the 5.9 pitch at 28,250 feet or proving that it was had discovered the mine. UFO coming in Thursday morning, DeWitt too difficult for the pioneering climbers (more County Sheriff Jode Zavesky turned to likely the latter). Mallory’s body has been found 7. Vanishing of Glen and Bessie Hyde Facebook to solve the mystery. high on Everest, along with a few artifacts that in the Grand Canyon A woman called in that morning to could support the theory that the two men report a low-flying, ominous-looking object Glen and Bessie Hyde were newlyweds summited in 1924 but died on the descent. hoping both to set a speed record for running the with a trail of condensation over U.S. Highway Irvine’s body, which should have his camera 87 and Verhelle Road. strapped to it, has not been found — so Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and "Some thought it was a chupacabra make Bessie the first documented woman to run speculation continues. flying a UFO," Zavesky said. it. They disappeared sometime after November 1928, after they visited pioneering Grand On Facebook, others claimed the object 4. Everett Ruess Canyon photographer Emery Kolb’s studio on was a military drone; some thought it was In 2009, remains of a body found in the their hike out of the canyon to resupply. A spooky or creepy. southern Utah desert almost gave us an answer month after they were last seen, they hadn’t Vehicles began pulling off the road to to what happened to Everett Ruess — who was returned to their Idaho home, and a search avoid what they thought would be a crash something of the Chris McCandless (Into the turned up their boat, adrift with their supplies landing. Wild) of the Greatest Generation, an idealistic still in it. Rumors, speculation, stories, "A couple times a year, we'll get young adventurer who explored the Sierra and investigations, books, and a novel followed. But something like this that turns out to be really the desert, and disappeared. But McCandless’s no answers. funny," Zavesky said. body was found — Ruess’s was not. One theory Turns out, the menacing object was a has Ruess marrying a Navajo woman and 8. Donner Party Cannibalism small, black agriculture helicopter with spray settling somewhere in the desert, never making Unlike the members of the 1972 Andes booms attached for spraying mesquite and himself known. In his last letter to his brother in plane crash, who had no qualms about admitting weesatche trees, Zavesky said. 1934, Ruess wrote: “I have not tired of the that when things got desperate up in the "The condensation tail she saw was wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the spray being applied," he said. []