Found Deceased Spain - Esther Dingley, from UK, missing in the Pyrenees, November 2020 #5

[Hatty]

Everyone makes hugely valid and well thought out points. I have no experience in mountain hiking as clearly so many of you do. My thoughts are that SAR would presumably have concentrated their efforts on the Port de Glere trail and surrounding area if it had been covered in snow and looked particularly hazardous. Dan seemed to suggest that Esther’s route was clear and I believe he walked it after she did, not long after she went missing.

Maybe hypothermia was a factor and also as far as we know she didn’t have much food. The bottom line is that anyone, however experienced, can trip and if she got a bit dizzy due to being inadequately nourished, she could easily have fallen. I only hope that if she did fall, that she died quickly and didn’t suffer. She must have been unable to make a phone call, either due to being incapacitated, immediately dead, lack of signal, or being separated from her rucksack in a fall. JMO.

 

[ZaZara]

Esther Dingley's mother offers DNA to establish whether Pyrenees bones are her daughter's


Spanish police are reported to believe that a heavy snow shower in the area where Ms Dingley vanished may have covered her body if she had slipped and fallen.

 

[ZaZara]

Missing British hiker could have fallen in snow says expert after remains including skull are found

According to Guilhem Garrigues, the keeper of the Venasque refuge on the French side of the border where the British hiker had planned to spend the night, Ms Dingley could have fallen in snow.

He explained that the paths she was believed to have taken were clear on the Spanish face of the mountains, but could have remained covered in snow around the Puerto de la Glera pass, where the slopes are normally shaded and which could have taken her by surprise.

The keeper – who handles hosting, maintenance and cooking duties at the refuge – added police had resumed searches for Ms Dingley two weeks ago after the winter snows melted and that officers told him they believed it likely her remains would be discovered by the public by chance.

Mr Garrigues told the Times newspaper: ‘The hike is easy in the summer and there are about 20 people who do it every day. But in the winter it changes completely. It’s steep and anyone can make a mistake and slip, or be unbalanced by a gust of wind.’


BBM


Original report in The Times from Press Reader:

Spoiler: Missing hiker could have fallen in snow, says refuge keeper

Missing hiker could have fallen in snow, says refuge keeper

• The Times
• 26 Jul 2021
• Adam Sage Paris Billy Kenber

Esther Dingley, the British backpacker who disappeared in the Pyrenees in November, may have fallen after being caught out by a snow-covered mountain path, according to the keeper of a local refuge.

Possible human remains including a skull and another bone have been sent for comparison with Dingley’s dental records and a DNA sample from her mother after being discovered close to her last known location.

The remains were spotted by Spanish and French hikers on the approach to the Port de la Glère pass last week and have been sent to a laboratory in Toulouse.

Dingley, 37, had been planning to cross back into Spain through the pass after spending a day hiking on the French side of the border. Guilhem Garrigues, the keeper of the Vénasque refuge on the French side of the border, where Dingley had been planning to spend the night, said he knew of no other disappearances in the Port de la Glère area in recent years.

He said that the paths that Dingley was believed to have taken were clear on the Spanish face of the Pyrenees when she set out in November. Around the Port de la Glère, however, the slopes are shaddo ed from the sun, and the snow, which had fallen a few weeks earlier, could have remained on the ground, surprising the British hiker.

“The hike is easy in the summer and there are about 20 people who it every day,” he said. “But in the winter it changes completely. It’s steep and anyone can make a mistake and slip, or be unbalanced by a gust of wind.”

Garrigues said police had resumed searches for Dingley a fortnight ago after the winter snows melted. Officers had told him they believed it likely her remains would be discovered by the public by chance, perhaps by hunters.

French officers were said to have scoured the site and found no trace of Dingley’s clothes or belongings.

Her mother, Ria Bryant, 74, who moved to the Pyrenees in June to help to look for her, told The Sunday Times that it was “upsetting that it’s not clear and definitive”.

Dingley’s last known contact was a WhatsApp call with Dan Colegate, her partner, on November 22 from the summit of the Pic de Sauvegarde on the border between France and Spain. She took a selfie of herself on the peak. The couple, both Oxford University graduates, had been travelling around Europe in a camper van for years after leaving their careers and home in Durham. They had decided on the change of lifestyle after Colegate almost died following surgery in 2014.

Dingley had planned to spend the night in the nearby Vénasque refuge, which is unstaffed at that time of year. LBT Global, a missing persons charity that has been supporting Colegate, said in January that her plans for the following day involved hiking on the French side of the border before “returning to Spain via the Port de la Glère crossing”.

The charity said it was supporting Dingley’s family and that confirmation of whether the possible human remains were a match would take “days or even weeks”.

 

[otto]

Everyone makes hugely valid and well thought out points. I have no experience in mountain hiking as clearly so many of you do. My thoughts are that SAR would presumably have concentrated their efforts on the Port de Glere trail and surrounding area if it had been covered in snow and looked particularly hazardous. Dan seemed to suggest that Esther’s route was clear and I believe he walked it after she did, not long after she went missing.

Maybe hypothermia was a factor and also as far as we know she didn’t have much food. The bottom line is that anyone, however experienced, can trip and if she got a bit dizzy due to being inadequately nourished, she could easily have fallen. I only hope that if she did fall, that she died quickly and didn’t suffer. She must have been unable to make a phone call, either due to being incapacitated, immediately dead, lack of signal, or being separated from her rucksack in a fall. JMO.

From the dossier ... perhaps a light dusting of snow was all that was needed to obscure Esther.

"The search for Esther commenced at first light on Thursday 26th November, the morning after she was due to return to the motorhome in Benasque, with search teams deployed in both France and Spain, some walking with dogs and some in helicopters flying over the area. These are highly trained, highly proficient experts who have been working in this specific area of the mountains for many years. They know the terrain and locations that are likely to cause difficult for hikers.

For the first two days of the search, visibility on Pic de Sauvegarde was hampered slightly by a light dusting of snow and some cloud, although nothing that prevented the search teams ascending the routes from both sides of the mountain and the helicopters could still see most of the mountainside.

From Saturday 27th – Tuesday 1st December, the sunny weather returned, the light dusting of snow mostly melted and visibility was excellent. In addition to continued search teams retracing Esther’s planned route and other nearby trails, helicopter search teams continued to fly up and down the slopes."
​

p.17
https://42cc80b7-be3b-41e3-a85b-18b...d/4addd9_d8c55b489c6f445b96d6324dd882f5a1.pdf

 

[Hexe]

This is a bit gruesome, but we know that the skull and hair were found together. If there was a lot of movement due to wind, snow, melt and so on, would the hair be with the skull?

It seems to me that for the hair and skull to be found together, 9 months after she vanished, they did not move very far after death.

Osterby Man, A.D. 1-100
Osterby, Germany 1948
Only his decapitated head was found, wrapped in a deerskin cape. He was likely killed by a blow to his left temple before he was decapitated. His hair, reddened by chemicals in the peat, is tied in an elaborate hairstyle called a Swabian knot. The Roman historian Tacitus, who lived in Osterby Man's era, describes the hairstyle as typical of the Suebi tribe of Germany."​

NOVA | The Perfect Corpse | Bog Bodies of the Iron Age image 9 | PBS

Nobody says the skull found has a head full of hair. Yes, it is possible that after spending winter in the Pyrenean snows there still were some strands of hair attached.

 

[mrjitty]

The lee must be on the Spain side. The wind was on the France side. Very dangerous.
ED wouldn’t have had to fall. She could easily have got hypothermic. Recall she was in yoga tights. Those are super thin and offer no protection from wind.

Yep

People always seem to think it has to be below zero to get into trouble.

The reality is, you can easily get exposure and die in temperatures well above zero if you don't have the right kit - i.e. shelter, clothing, food, fuel, water.

 

[mrjitty]

It's very typical for remains not to be found, even very near trails. They may not show up (and even then serendipitously) until years later.

RSBM

Exactly.

i think the public misunderstand the amount of ground involved to cover. Even with newish tech like drones, finding missing people is not easy if they have gone off the trails and wandered around a bit.

 

[Officer Dibble]

Has anyone considered natural causes? I knew someone of very similar age who sadly suffered a catastrophic brain aneurysm at night, at home, alone. If she had been out hiking it could still have happened. She was found to have fallen too. So just supposing this possibly happened to Esther then she could still have fallen in the process. JMO MOO.

 

[stmarysmead]

Everyone makes hugely valid and well thought out points. I have no experience in mountain hiking as clearly so many of you do. My thoughts are that SAR would presumably have concentrated their efforts on the Port de Glere trail and surrounding area if it had been covered in snow and looked particularly hazardous. Dan seemed to suggest that Esther’s route was clear and I believe he walked it after she did, not long after she went missing.

Maybe hypothermia was a factor and also as far as we know she didn’t have much food. The bottom line is that anyone, however experienced, can trip and if she got a bit dizzy due to being inadequately nourished, she could easily have fallen. I only hope that if she did fall, that she died quickly and didn’t suffer. She must have been unable to make a phone call, either due to being incapacitated, immediately dead, lack of signal, or being separated from her rucksack in a fall. JMO.

We are thinking along the same lines. If ED spent the night as planned at the Refuge…would she have reached the Port de Glere sometime the next day? That was Monday IIRC…and the search did not begin until Thursday.

I also hope she wasn’t there for days, conscious, incapacitated, but with no means of communication. It’s just awful for strangers to contemplate…I can only imagine how devastating that would be for Dan and her family. If this had to end this way, I had hoped it would be with proof of a fast and easy death in the mountains she loved..and nothing more for the family to bear.

 

[ZaZara]

Disparition d'Esther Dingley : des os a priori humains, déplacés par des animaux, retrouvés dans les Pyrénées | Actu Toulouse

Spanish hikers raised the alarm on Friday afternoon after discovering what they believed to be the remains of a body near the spot where Esther Dingley last made contact with her partner. The Spanish Civil Guard initially attended the scene, but later alerted the French Gendarmerie, after discovering that the location was just across the border.

"This is indeed in the sector that Esther Dingley was supposed to walk when she disappeared", Jean-Marc Bordinaro told Actu Toulouse. The second-in-command of the Saint-Gaudens gendarmerie company is cautious about these "a priori human" bones found on the spot, which are "being examined". He specifies the context in which they were discovered:

"The hikers saw this at an altitude of about 2,200 metres, on the French side of the Port de la Gléré, a few hundred metres from the Spanish side."

This area is close to the summit where the young Englishwoman, who was hiking alone, last made contact with her partner of 20 years, Dan Colegate, at around 4pm on 22 November 2020. She sent a selfie to her partner and has not been heard from since. The area was thoroughly combed by the police during the various search operations on site.

Although they were discovered at an altitude covered by snow for a good part of the winter, these bones were not there a few weeks ago.

According to the first findings of the investigation, they have "certainly been in a cavity", and have probably been "moved recently by animals."



BBM

 

[RedHaus]

Although they were discovered at an altitude covered by snow for a good part of the winter, these bones were not there a few weeks ago. According to the first findings of the investigation, they have "certainly been in a cavity", and have probably been "moved recently by animals."

BBM

@ZaZara, thank you. You have a terrific knack at finding news.

This is a striking statement and I am sure anyone who reads it will have the same questions - what does "been in a cavity" mean - cave, crevasse, hole dug in the ground, covered with rocks or scree? And how would that be known - coloration, amount of decay, amount of tissue?

Are there any forensics experts among us? If so please chime in!

 

[Kazibar]

The difficulty just isn't easing - One Woman Walks

I read this account of an extremely experienced lone female hiker in the Pyrenees last November. As the refugio man said, things can change very suddenly in the mountains. On one turn of a path everything is snow free and sunny, the next it can be an iced mess.

 

[RickshawFan]

She should have turned back, but if the hike is 8 hours (per Dan) and she assumed she could do it in 6 hours, she might have had a late start to the day. Perhaps she started the hike at 10AM. That would place her in a dangerous location at 4PM. Turning back as the shadow of the mountain stretched over the trail might have left her in a location where there was really no safe option.

Downhill instead of up.

 

[Tortoise]

BBM

@ZaZara, thank you. You have a terrific knack at finding news.

This is a striking statement and I am sure anyone who reads it will have the same questions - what does "been in a cavity" mean - cave, crevasse, hole dug in the ground? And how would that be known - coloration, amount of decay?

Are there any forensics experts among us? If so please chime in!

Not an expert but I would like to make a guess that this means wherever she had been was quite sheltered, and they can tell by the erosion of soft tissue. If she had been buried in thick snow I think it would have preserved her. As I say just a guess. Although hair would be attached to scalp, so that contradicts that theory.

 

[RickshawFan]

Everyone makes hugely valid and well thought out points. I have no experience in mountain hiking as clearly so many of you do. My thoughts are that SAR would presumably have concentrated their efforts on the Port de Glere trail and surrounding area if it had been covered in snow and looked particularly hazardous. Dan seemed to suggest that Esther’s route was clear and I believe he walked it after she did, not long after she went missing.

Maybe hypothermia was a factor and also as far as we know she didn’t have much food. The bottom line is that anyone, however experienced, can trip and if she got a bit dizzy due to being inadequately nourished, she could easily have fallen. I only hope that if she did fall, that she died quickly and didn’t suffer. She must have been unable to make a phone call, either due to being incapacitated, immediately dead, lack of signal, or being separated from her rucksack in a fall. JMO.

As I have mentioned previously, it’s very often the case that remains don’t turn up in a search. Spain LE made this clear a long time ago. I think we have to trust their statements about how mountains frequently don’t give up the missing. Though tragic, this is nature.
It would not be expected that DC would be successful in a search. Among other reasons, this is why it’s important to let SAR do their thing and follow standard grid-search protocols. SAR coverage is thorough and systematic.

 

[RickshawFan]

Not an expert but I would like to make a guess that this means wherever she had been was quite sheltered, and they can tell by the erosion of soft tissue. If she had been buried in thick snow I think it would have preserved her. As I say just a guess. Although hair would be attached to scalp, so that contradicts that theory.

I think it’s not at all impossible that the hair remained because the skull was buried in snow. Frozen in a snowpile would make it unavailable to creatures. Every time it snowed, more would have piled on. At snowmelt, the remains might have rolled where they ended up, been carried down the hill in snow melt, or been pushed by moving snow.
More of a question would be why the hair wasn’t removed for nesting this spring, though the slopes had snow on them well into June. Perhaps there was a snow drift right there.

 

[RickshawFan]

The difficulty just isn't easing - One Woman Walks

I read this account of an extremely experienced lone female hiker in the Pyrenees last November. As the refugio man said, things can change very suddenly in the mountains. On one turn of a path everything is snow free and sunny, the next it can be an iced mess.

Wow, what a find this blog is, and she’s such a good writer. Note: she’s running into all this unpredictable weather a full month before ED is out hiking, and likewise along the French-Spanish border, and she has lots of experience solo hiking. She also goes into the hazards of hiking while COVID.
Note, too: the difficulties aren’t about the terrain or the ability to put one foot in front of the other. They are about unpredictable conditions, the difficulty of finding shelter (and she has a tent, not a tarptent, so this would have given quite a bit of protection).
Note especially: the soles of lightweight hiking boots wear out relatively quickly and become slick. They offer no purchase. The ankles get really sloppy, too. Both of these issues can be a catastrophic if you get damp or icy surfaces. They get like bedroom slippers.

 

[Zoomy]

Wow, what a find this blog is, and she’s such a good writer. Note: she’s running into all this unpredictable weather a full month before ED is out hiking, and likewise along the French-Spanish border, and she has lots of experience solo hiking. She also goes into the hazards of hiking while COVID.
Note, too: the difficulties aren’t about the terrain or the ability to put one foot in front of the other. They are about unpredictable conditions, the difficulty of finding shelter (and she has a tent, not a tarptent, so this would have given quite a bit of protection).
Note especially: the soles of lightweight hiking boots wear out relatively quickly and become slick. They offer no purchase. The ankles get really sloppy, too. Both of these issues can be a catastrophic if you get damp or icy surfaces. They get like bedroom slippers.

Such a good point about the shoes @RickshawFan.

Something that always stood out to me, was that Esther was wearing shoes not boots. In her blog she bought a pair of La Sportiva walking shoes in April 2020, she wanted the boots but the store only had the shoes in stock. I went as far as to check out the reviews for the shoes, and it said the grip wasn't the best, and they wore out and became slippy fairly quickly. I'm pretty sure she was wearing these same shoes in photos I've seen of her last trip, and by then they would have been fairly worn on the soles after her recent 60 day trip with Dan.

 

[RickshawFan]

The difficulty just isn't easing - One Woman Walks

I read this account of an extremely experienced lone female hiker in the Pyrenees last November. As the refugio man said, things can change very suddenly in the mountains. On one turn of a path everything is snow free and sunny, the next it can be an iced mess.

This woman talks my language! If you look at her thought process, this is someone who is experienced. Again, it’s not about whether you’re fit enough to move your legs, but how you think and how you deal with the unpredictable.
Her kit list speaks to that experience as well. It’s stacked for emergency and the conditions. See how many layers of bedding she has? A bivvy and a tent?

 

[Herat]

Such a good point about the shoes @RickshawFan.

Something that always stood out to me, was that Esther was wearing shoes not boots. In her blog she bought a pair of La Sportiva walking shoes in April 2020, she wanted the boots but the store only had the shoes in stock. I went as far as to check out the reviews for the shoes, and it said the grip wasn't the best, and they wore out and became slippy fairly quickly. I'm pretty sure she was wearing these same shoes in photos I've seen of her last trip, and by then they would have been fairly worn on the soles after her recent 60 day trip with Dan.

These don't go over the ankle and I don't see that she carried gaiters, so any snow over her ankle is going to get her legs and feet wet. The soles are a light plastic composite with what appears to be a hiking pattern, but not true lug soles and I agree that snow and ice would render them slippery, despite the minispikes.

The shoes are not winter hiking boots and minispikes are not crampons. The photos of the descent from Port de la Glere has rocky areas where a line of wire is present to hold on to. This area, especially would be daunting with light gear and areas of new or untrodden snow , or perhaps a difficult path to follow. It sounds like the remains were found 200 m from the peak, so the person whose remains these are seems likely to have suffered some accident in the most difficult part of this trek.

The lightness of her gear seems to be fine for light weather conditions, but not prepared for snow, ice, wind. Alone, in an area where no one is supposed to be because of the quarantines. No one around to see her tracks or evidence of a fall or slip.