Warwick7
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Verdy verdy inderesding!!!!I've caught up to the beginning of this #3 thread, but I have (as of now) 42 more pages to read through to completely catch up from the very beginning. My thoughts from what I've read so far as a cyclist and someone who lives in a rural Colorado community relatively near Monarch Pass:
1) If she was a SM user, I would be very surprised if she didn't have tracking apps active and wearables logging her location on all connected devices. I'm not the only one who regularly rides with Strava, Map My Ride, and/or Apple Workout all tracking at the same time. If she had a wearable like a watch vs a bike-attached tracker like a Garmin, chances are one of those apps would have continued tracking her movement. I know my Strava will Auto-pause a workout if I stop moving fast on my bike, but so long as I'm moving, it keeps tracking (for instance if I hop off my bike and hike it a bit). Most wearables these days (at least ones that a cyclist would be wearing IMO) are waterproof. Thus, she would have been tracked at least for a while even had she ended up down a creek. So, were these the personal items found? I know my watch and phone tracks me via GPS without cell service through the mountains near Monarch; on MTB rides, road rides, while hiking up a 12er, snowshoeing, skiing, etc.
2) It's highly unlikely she in any form came over Monarch to the west: there are live CDOT cameras on Monarch Pass, and Gunnison County has been closed to non-Gunnison residents (from what I've heard, they've been strictly enforcing too). Hwy 50 goes straight through the heart of Gunnison.
3) The trails have been odd, popular areas despite the travel bans have been swamped by out-of-towners. However, some trails in more remote areas have been absolutely dead with no one for miles. It's really hard to say what her trails were looking like, but from the location and based on what I've been seeing from a few hundred miles away, her trails would have been pretty darn empty. Salida locals would be sticking to their closer-in trails and non-locals often don't know of these more remote trails.
4) I went MTBing by myself about three weeks ago and txt'd a local friend where I was going to ride and to notify LE if I wasn't back by 5pm. Why her instead of family? Well, she's local, if I needed help I could call her, I can also tell her the recreation area and trails and assure she will know the general area and be able to communicate said to LE. I then went boondocking for a weekend by myself and told my neighbor that I'd be back on Sunday. Why? Well, they've got eyes on my house my family doesn't. They know the area I said I was going to and could notify and communicate that to LE better than family could. Both of these are routine events and I'm not calling my family every day when I hit a trail or the road or go skiing or ......., but I'll be with people or people will know where I am.