Solo Female Hiker Missing in Washington
By Rocky Thompson on March 10th, 2010
Friends are searching for 24-year-old female hiker Kate Heuther, who’s been missing since Thursday on the Pacific Crest Trail. They have her dog in tow while searching along the PCT, where she told her landlord via text message she’d be hiking last week. It’s especially troubling because another lone female hiker in the area where Heuther disappeared reported that a male had exposed himself to her. That woman fled and called police. Heuther’s birthday was a couple days back, and people are hoping she took off on a solo trip for her 24th. They found a credit card receipt with her name on it on the trail, and they point to this as suspicious since the woman would never have littered.
Hope they find her safe–its been a number of days now. I spent a lot of days when I was under-employed hiking all around there in 2009. Fiance has gone there for a run too at times..
Best of luck to S&R
Wow. I wonder if things might have gone better for these women if they had exercised their constitutional right to carry a firearm. But, hey, who am I kidding, there are no REAL dangers for hikers. They are just frightened of their own imaginations or overcompensating for insecurities right? Things like this almost never happen to normal people (hope you can detect the sarcasm).
Follow up to the former post: Why didn’t she just call 911?
“Guns in National Parks ” ? Here is one good reason…
I’m sorry what good would a gun have done this girl? You still don’t know what happened to her.
Please don’t make a case for advocating gun rights until you know the facts behind the story, and using a story such as this one to promote your agneda is rude and cheap.
I hope the for the best for her.
Of course, we all hope for the best, but you know exactly what I’m talking about: “It’s especially troubling because another lone female hiker in the area where Heuther disappeared reported that a male had exposed himself to her.” Can you figure it out?
m, there are some of us who enjoy hiking because it gives us the chance to get away from our regular lives. maybe i have a different thought process than you, but it seems like carrying a gun would defeat that entire purpose by accepting that all the dangers and realities of that other life can intrude on the trail. i still believe that people are good, so i will never carry a gun with me while hiking. that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be allowed to carry one, that’s completely your choice. but it’s my choice to not carry one too.
i hope S&R finds her soon. crossing my fingers for her and her family.
Well Matt, I certainly can respect your take on that. I can also agree and say that the ethos of your philosophy is a thing of beauty. I’m not going to get everyone all stirred up to pass laws that force you to carry a gun either. Because that would be ridiculous. That’s how I see it when it’s the other way around too.
Bad news:
http://www.nj.com/news/local/index.ssf/2010/03/washington_mans_hunch_led_him.html
For whatever it’s worth, I’m a female with a concealed carried license who packs a .45 when I’m hiking alone (been on several 100+ mile hikes). This is to deter danger from any animal, be it 4-legged or 2-legged. That said, I am also not advocating that anyone who doesn’t want to carry should be forced to or feel like they should have to carry. I personally choose to do so to give myself an extra advantage if I should happen to need it. On the other hand, hiking solo can be dangerous for all other kinds of reasons - falls, etc. In fact just this past weekend I got my ankle caught and somewhat twisted in between two roots (I’m fine) - don’t have a clue how I did it - and if I’d been alone this time I’d have been in real trouble. In this case, obviously the gun wouldn’t have done me a lick of good. There are all kinds of dangers out there in the wilderness and you are absolutely correct when you say we accept them when we go out there. However most of us take the 10 essentials with us (and ALL of us should!), and those are “just in case” things that will aid us in survival if the need arises. Most of the time it doesn’t. I just consider my .45 to be the 11th essential thing I take and consider it a tool of survival that hopefully I will not need to use - like the emergency shelter in the 10 essentials.
THAT SAID - since this thread was originally not supposed to have anything to do with pro- or anti-guns-while-hiking, whatever happened with this story? Was this poor girl ever found?