JO definitely was into mushrooms. His Likes on Facebook indicate this (likes "Magic Mushrooms" for instance.) His liked movies include DMT: The Spirit Molecule which "investigates dimethyltryptamine (DMT), an endogenous psychoactive compound, which exists in humans and numerous species of plants and animals."
On his Soundcloud (
https://soundcloud.com/keyblade-master/comments), he comments "ayeee, i prefer jiu jitsu ��, added to my mountain playlist ����" and "������❄I am expecting the mountains to split in half when I bump this on my hiking trip." These comments were made 8 and 10 months ago, respectively. (Edit: the little mushroom icons do not copy/paste; that's what some of those ? mark icons were on Soundcloud).
Not clear if RN was also into mushrooms. She had a twitter post in early July that references pot and was following a lot of "stoner" topics.
https://twitter.com/rach0de/media?lang=en.
She did attend an electronic dance music concert in May of last year (LED) and back on New Year's Eve 2015. Hallucinogens are often associated with this genre of music.
If they went hiking while tripping that could have greatly impaired their judgement and ability to find the trail if they had wandered off it. Maybe it's as simple as that.
However, I still am surprised these two went on this excursion together, especially for her birthday. They weren't dating yet they are going to spend a couple nights together? Maybe I'm just a prude-hah!
To me, JO seemed like a loner from his social media. I didn't see any photos of him with friends. The only photos of him with others that I found were from vape industry trade shows he was attending.
JO's Facebook likes are mostly related to anime, cosplay, Asian girls and Kingdom Hearts, almost to an excessive degree IMO. We also know that he purchased a .44 last year per his Soundcloud comments: "fuego, how fitting i just bought a 44 Blackhawk 1981����" and "funny i just got a .44 the other day, fire bro these lyrics all remind me of exactly how i feel".
I would think RN would be quite the catch for JO. She was attractive (he liked Asians per his FB) and they may have had shared interests. If they had dated in the past, but were now just friends, what if he now wanted to be more than friends and she was not into it?
And what role, if any, does Javier play in this with the trip JO and Javier made to the Joshua Tree area two weeks prior to JO and RN's disappearance?