Found Deceased Spain - Esther Dingley, from UK, missing in the Pyrenees, November 2020 #4

[RedHaus]

But aren’t Plan d’Estan and La Besurta nearer the trailhead than the Hosp is? I don’t get why she’d double back along the road to start from there, when she’d already driven past it to get where she wanted. What am I missing?

Hi CMC... using your own map from upthread, in which you show the close proximity of the two Cabanes / Refuges (Plan d'Estan and La Besurta), I added in the locations of where I believe Ballarin dropped ED off - at the trail head of Plan de l'Estany (not to be confused with the refuge of Plan d'Estan!). I hope this helps!

 

[Grouse]

Hi CMC... using your own map from upthread, in which you show the close proximity of the two Cabanes / Refuges (Plan d'Estan and La Besurta), I added in the locations of where I believe Ballarin dropped ED off - at the trail head of Plan de l'Estany (not to be confused with the refuge of Plan d'Estan!). I hope this helps!

View attachment 282194

Yes I think you may have nailed it.

 

[RedHaus]

She coulda just gone down the wrong trail by mistake?

Interesting idea, RickshawFan... what if on 21/11 ED thought she was trekking towards the Port de Glere as her initial map plan she sent to DC implies she would do? But instead, she ended up on the Plan de L'Estany trail that took her to the summit trail of the pic de Sauvegarde. So she climbed to the col and then descended for the night.

Speculation of course, but at this point, the logic behind the various movements of dear ED on 21/11-22/11 seem odd and unpredictable as I keep saying today....

 

[RickshawFan]

This is what I was thinking too. The only question mark is the 10:30 start and 2.5 hour ascent. It doesn’t look on the map that it would take that long, so I wonder if she looked around (checked out the two refugees at PdE and LB, maybe looked longingly at Maladeta glacier).

What time was it she texted Dan saying she had hitched and was “half way there”? It must have been before she lost signal at the end of the road.

So, here's my next layer of speculation.
When ED was at the Cabane de Besurtas, she decided to try for the glacier on 11/22. It didn't work out for some reason.
Somewhere in the foray to the glacier or on the way back or at lunch or the stay in the Cabane, she met someone who was also interested in going up to the glacier. If they went together, they could look out for each other.
This might have been a plan, a thought, an idea, whatever, but ED was tossing it around in her head.
She climbed back up to the Pic undecided about a whole lot of anything, really wanting to go to the glacier and having a kind of half-baked back up plan to the Glère or something, she didn't even really know.
While she was on the Pic, she saw the glacier right in front of her, things came together for her, and she decided on the fly to try to reconnect with the person she met at the Cabane and make it up the glacier.
Then for some reason the "connection" didn't work out.... either the person wasn't at the Cabane any more, or they set off together and got separated, and she had an accident or..... This doesn't have to be foul play, although that's possible, too. It could just be things weren't firmed up with the other person and/or didn't work out. ED could even have made it onto the glacier on the 23rd but lost touch with her "friend", and then had an accident.
Since the Cabane didn't have phone service, ED wouldn't have been able to communicate with anyone there, even though she had service on the Pic. So the idea to go to the glacier with this unknown "friend" could have been very vague.

 

[stmarysmead]

So impressed by the ideas presented today by so many of you, especially Red Haus...who set so much good thinking in motion. It just shows that we may only have the same old material to peruse, but there can always be something we are missing....something that stimulates new ways of looking at those same things.

 

[RickshawFan]

I'm putting this post in as a bookmark to come back to. I believe if we're looking for trails nearish the Cabane de Besurtas and/or the glacier, there would be a likely one right HERE.

E.g. this trail The Pic d'Aneto from la Besurta.

Oooh... I like this one, because it mentions some of the issues in the climb.

I believe this author is referring to the Cabaña when he says Refuge.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Hi CMC... using your own map from upthread, in which you show the close proximity of the two Cabanes / Refuges (Plan d'Estan and La Besurta), I added in the locations of where I believe Ballarin dropped ED off - at the trail head of Plan de l'Estany (not to be confused with the refuge of Plan d'Estan!). I hope this helps!

View attachment 282194

BINGO!! Thank you, who’d’ve thunk the two Plan d’Estans were so far apart!

So at 10ish on 21st she leaves the van (with a bit of encouragement from Dan) hitches two lifts, latterly with Ballarin. Gets dropped off by him at the trailhead and summits Sauv a couple of hours later, possibly stayed up there for a while, before heading back down to La Besurta for the night.

Why she didn’t stay at the nearer PdE refuge is a bit of a mystery though. And what she did the next morning - 22nd - could be key to all of this.

 

[Grouse]

<snipped for focus>
Why she didn’t stay at the nearer PdE refuge is a bit of a mystery though.

I wondered up thread - she may have been unimpressed with it, and with Besurta being only about 800m away, gone to check that out and liked it better. Also might depend on what actual route she came down. Would she have gone back all the way along the trail to the hospice and then all the way back along the road or come down a more direct route? Surely there is a more direct route between the Port de V and Besurta, and maybe that route came out nearer to Besurta than PdE? If there isn't it might explain why she got up there so late on 22nd.

I have some mapping software that's great for this type of thing but I don't have any maps for the this area.

ETA: @RedHaus in your post #515 in the second map is the arrow you've drawn on from the Pic to Besurta an actual trail?

 

[RedHaus]

And what she did the next morning - 22nd - could be key to all of this.

Snipped for focus

Absolutely... that is a long time unaccounted for and not addressed by the dossier or in the published texts from ED to DC later that day.

And I agree, knowing that answer would be a key piece of data to this investigation. Maybe folks have hunches or suggestions, like RickshawFan's idea about the glacier.

 

[RedHaus]

I wondered up thread - she may have been unimpressed with it, and with Besurta being only about 800m away, gone to check that out and liked it better. Also might depend on what actual route she came down. Would she have gone back all the way along the trail to the hospice and then all the way back along the road or come down a more direct route? Surely there is a more direct route between the Port de V and Besurta, and maybe that route came out nearer to Besurta than PdE? If there isn't it might explain why she got up there so late on 22nd. I have some mapping software that's great for this type of thing but I don't have any maps for the this area.

And somewhere along the way, I have it in my mind there is a trail from Cabane de la Besurta to the summit trail for pic de Sauvegarde. I have come to believe there are two trails that get you to that summit trail from Banesque: from Cabane de la Besurta and the Plan de l'Estany... so she may have gone up one and down the other.

But I can't recall how I got to believe there was such a trail from Cabane de la Besurta... I'll poke around when I get a chance... need to get to other things today!

 

[Grouse]

And somewhere along the way, I have it in my mind there is a trail from Cabane de la Besurta to the summit trail for pic de Sauvegarde. I have come to believe there are two trails that get you to that summit trail from Banesque: from Cabane de la Besurta and the Plan de l'Estany... so she may have gone up one and down the other.

But I can't recall how I got to believe there was such a trail from Cabane de la Besurta... I'll poke around when I get a chance... need to get to other things today!

Thanks, that also answers my question I added in the ETA. Will let you get on with your day now

 

[RedHaus]

OK, before I close down for now... try this one on... I think this map shows those two trailheads (Pdl'E and CdlB) with the summit trail for pic de Sauvegarde, n'est-ce pas?

Trace de trail : Cabane de la Besurta - Ibon de Villamuerta - Forau d'Aigualluts

 

[stmarysmead]

8/11 - Goes hiking to Pic Turbon with the people she met during the ‘30/10 - 2/11’ hike.
9 / 11 – 11/11 – Remains in Egea and goes day hiking solo. On the evening of 11th she drives to
Benasque following an invitation to go hiking with a girl she met on Pic Turbon.
12/11 – 13/11 – Overnight trip from Benasque with the girl she met on Pic Turbon.’

From the dossier...

On the 8th of Nov...Esther goes hiking with some people she’d just met a few days before. On that hike, she meets another stranger on the Pic Turbon, and she makes plans for an overnight trip with this woman a few days later. IMO Esther trusts and bonds very quickly.

To facilitate that meetup which is over a day away, it seems she does a day hike and then drives to Benasque the next day. That is not a casual plan. Esther wanted this company.

That woman is the one quoted in the DM article who claims Esther said her relationship was in a break. This is the same woman who found Esther unprepared as to food for the trek. The dates quoted match.

I’m wondering if after summiting the Pic on the 21st, Esther made another new friend and planned to meet there again at that specified...and later...time on the 22nd. Esther was willing before to adjust her own plans in order to have a friend to hike with.

Or Esther might have met this person on the 21st and they traveled to the Cabane together and spent the day hiking in the region. And then had she been persuaded to change the plan she quoted to Dan in order to continue to have company the company of this friend?

I wonder if Dan always knew about the friends she was making as she made them...or not until after the fact...

 

[RickshawFan]

Did we post this already? It has the trails Pic-Port-Hospital-Besurtas all on one page. It's hard for me to visualize how all these trails are laid out. This one has good photos.

La Besurta. Portillón de Vénasque. Pico Salvaguardia. Llanos del Hospital.

 

[RedHaus]

Did we post this already? It has the trails Pic-Port-Hospital-Besurtas all on one page. It's hard for me to visualize how all these trails are laid out.

La Besurta. Portillón de Vénasque. Pico Salvaguardia. Llanos del Hospital.

There you go, @Grouse, RickshawFan found the perfect map to show the orientation of the pic de Sauvegarde between the two trail heads we've been talking about.

 

[RickshawFan]

Grouse, you are a genius with this trail map website!

See how, from the Pic, you can see climbers on the glacier almost in front of your nose? This photo: Wikiloc | Picture of La Besurta. Portillón de Vénasque. Pico Salvaguardia. Llanos del Hospital. (3/6)

IMO this would have been so enticing to ED. It looks so do-able.
Note: this is a July entry.

The sign says it's 1'45" to the Port from the Cabaña de B. IMO it would have taken ED an hour to get down.

 

[RickshawFan]

I'm putting this post in as a bookmark to come back to. I believe if we're looking for trails nearish the Cabane de Besurtas and/or the glacier, there would be a likely one right HERE.

E.g. this trail The Pic d'Aneto from la Besurta.

Oooh... I like this one, because it mentions some of the issues in the climb.

I believe this author is referring to the Cabaña when he says Refuge.

I'm re-upping this to clarify that there is a Cabane de la Besurtas and a Refugio de la Renclusa. The latter is part way up (easy hike) on the trail from the Cabane/Cabaña to the Glacier.

 

[IrisElizabeth]

If only to save battery while out of range, she could have just turned the phone off. But she didn’t do that: she was in airplane mode.
If you are on a pay-as-you-go plan, you can only keep incoming calls from racking up minutes if you put the phone on airplane mode. If you merely turn it off, people can leave voicemails and use up your minutes.
Ergo, I think that was the reason for the airplane mode. It wasn’t about battery life or being out of range.

That's not how pay as you go works in the UK and rest of Europe though - we don't pay/use our minutes up when someone calls us. I understand this is that this is the case in the US and other countries though. I often turn my phone to airplane mode when I know I'm not near a signal as otherwise your phone is constantly searching to connect and this runs down the battery fast.

 

[RickshawFan]

Snipped for focus

Absolutely... that is a long time unaccounted for and not addressed by the dossier or in the published texts from ED to DC later that day.

And I agree, knowing that answer would be a key piece of data to this investigation. Maybe folks have hunches or suggestions, like RickshawFan's idea about the glacier.

The more I thought about it.... On the morning of the 22nd She could have headed up to the glacier as far as the Refugio de la Renclusa. This is an easy hike. Then maybe turned around undecided when it got more difficult.
My fear is when she turned around and headed back up the Pic, she saw people creeping across the glacier, and thought "aha! it looks very doable. Forget the Glère thing, I'm going to give the glacier another go."
I also think ED might have meet someone at the Cabane that cemented the idea in her head.

 

[RickshawFan]

That's not how pay as you go works in the UK and rest of Europe though - we don't pay/use our minutes up when someone calls us. I understand this is that this is the case in the US and other countries though. I often turn my phone to airplane mode when I know I'm not near a signal as otherwise your phone is constantly searching to connect and this runs down the battery fast.

I think you missed the part about how my pay-as-you-go phone is a UK phone I use in the UK only?