I still have a lot of reading to do to see if this has been mentioned... however with a back problem and a child, I don't see walking this distance in that kind of terrain even reasonable. Has the possibility of the truck being moved from where the bodies were found, to the location the truck was actually found, been discussed? This could explain the distance the family would have had to walked, the cell phones being located in the truck after taking photographs of the little one and how the dog ended up in the truck as well. The murderer could have removed phones from the family's possession after killing them, moved the truck and locked the dog up to prevent them from being quickly found. Just an idea..
That's one possibility....here's one more along those lines.
Take a look at the picture of the truck as it was found. The photo from the front on the truck.
It appears as though the drivers side door is much cleaner than the mud spattered passenger side door. Yet there is some mud at the bottom of the door.
This looks to me like the driver side door was wiped clean and then driven back down the mountain to where it was left locked up.
Look at the other tracks on the road beneath the truck in the photo. These tracks are beneath and some are too close to the vehicle to have been made by the police investigating.
What if they were made by the abductors' vehicles?
I see two sets of tracks from two other vehicles besides the family's truck.
If you look closely you can see one set of tire tracks very narrow in width that go far to the left side of the road as you look at the photo.
Another set of tracks go to the right and are wider than the first set but not as wide as the white truck tires.
Then it looks like a spin rut was made by the second vehicle just about where the front tire on the white truck is sitting. And the first set of tracks come back to the middle of the road as if the first vehicle pulled over to the left going up the mountain and then backed up to the center of the road at some point after that.
This location on the road is a place that would be hard to get around another vehicle due to the rocks on the left and the washed out area on the right.
My theory....I think someone that knew the father went out there to confront him. Two vehicles went up behind the truck...one a compact size car or mini van with narrow tires and low profile enough to bottom out on the mud in the center of the road leaving scrape marks in the mud and gravel. The second was possibly a two wheel drive small pickup truck ..something more capable of dealing with the road conditions than the first vehicle but light enough to leave the spin out track.
The first car pulled over to the left and let the second vehicle go around...then the first backed up and blocked the road directly in front of where the white truck was found.
The occupants of the second vehicle proceeded up the mountain concerned that the father would recognize them and bolt back down the mountain. That is why they blocked the road and why i believe the father knew at least one of them.
A confrontation must have led to the perps handling the drivers door of the truck thus making it necessary to wipe down the entire door before driving the truck down to their waiting car.
I think the father was subdued and transported down the mountain by two perps in vehicle two while perp 3 drove the family's truck down to his waiting car. There may be some kind of forensic evidence in the way of fibers or hair in the family's truck to confirm this.