Today's story is about a hidden message that was found on the side of a mountain and how its contents changed the lives of three people forever.
This episode is the remastered audio from This Trail is a Death Trap, which is a very popular video on my YouTube channel.
There are distressing sequences in the story, As such, listener discretion is advised.
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It begins here.
From the director of It comes It.
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Okay, let's get into today's story.
24-year-old Gina Allen, and her brand new boyfriend, 28-year-old Brandon Day, could not believe their luck.
For the past 48 hours, they had been stranded in the rugged wilderness of the San Jacinto mountain range in California.
When they looked down into this ravine and they saw a campsite.
There was a tarp that had been strung up between two, And so they ran over to it, hoping that the owner of this campsite would be in there and they could help them get out of these mountains.
But when they got to the campsite, there wasn't anyone there.
But from the looks of it, it looked like someone had been living in this site fairly recently.
Underneath this makeshift roof, from this tarp, was a sleeping pad, there was a warm sweater, there was shoes, there was a disposable razor, some kitchen utensils and there was a yellow backpack.
Without any hesitation, Brandon and Gina, who were totally famished and they're exhausted and they're desperate, they just start rifling through the different things in camp, hoping to find some things that will help save their life, like a cell phone or a radio, or even just a lighter or some matches or some food.
And so Brandon focused on all the items that are just kind of laying out under the tarp.
And Gina focused on the contents of the yellow backpack.
And so Gina, she opens up this backpack and she starts pulling out all these maps that are inside.
And she notices on the margins of these maps in the white space there is handwriting and it's done in pen and it looks like it's been written fairly recently.
Now at first, she didn't read any of the notes that were on these margins.
She was just kind of pulling them out and stacking them on the ground next to her and continuing to rummage through this bag.
But at some point, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed on the top map that was sitting on the ground next to her there was a particular note at the top of the page that as soon as she saw it she stopped what she was doing.
She turned and looked at it.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
And in fact, she didn't want to get her hopes up, but she slowly reached over.
She picked the map up and she put it right in front of her face.
And as soon as she was reading it, she just started laughing.
She was so happy.
She was so relieved.
She yelled to Brandon to come over and look at this.
And so Brandon stopped what he was doing.
He turned around and he bent down and he looked exactly where she was looking.
And when he read what she had read, he started laughing too.
They were saved.
There, at the top of this map, there was a note that was dated the same date as the day they were there, May 8th.
And so they knew whoever had written this had written it at least in the last couple of hours, because it was May 8th.
And so they had to be around here somewhere.
And so, Gina and Brandon, they stand up and they start yelling out for the owner of this camp to please come out and help them.
But in their excitement, Brandon and Gina had overlooked a critical detail in this note.
And it would turn out that critical detail would change their lives and the life of the man who owned this camp forever.
Before Brandon and Gina ever began their doomed hike into the San Jacinto mountain range, another man, one which neither of them knew was gearing up for a hike of his own that would take him through the San Jacinto mountain range.
His name was John Donovan and on April 19 2005, which was the day he would begin this journey, he was 59 years old.
John had absolutely no family.
He was born an only child and by the time he was 10 years old he had been orphaned and basically had to raise himself from that point onward.
By the time John was in his 20s, he had moved to Virginia where he had taken a job as a social worker.
And despite making a fairly decent salary, he refused to spend any more money than he absolutely had to.
It was a habit he had developed as an orphan child trying to make ends meet with virtually no money whatsoever.
And as an adult, that habit just never left him.
So as a result, for his entire life, all the way up until he left for that hike in 2005, he never had anything nice.
He basically wore the exact same outfit virtually every single day.
He never owned a car.
He never owned a phone.
He never owned a computer.
And when it came to where he chose to live, He would always live in the most absurdly cheap dwellings possible, which included, at one point, living in a partially burned down, abandoned savings bank with no heat.
John was a proud Irish Catholic.
He drank lots of whiskey, he swore like a sailor and he had no problem speaking his mind, no matter who he was talking to.
While he was a lovely person once you got to meet him, his unorthodox lifestyle and his at times gruff exterior made it pretty difficult for him to make friends for most of his life.
But when he was in his 40s, he wanted to lose some weight, and so he decided to join a hiking club.
And to his surprise, the other members of this hiking club adored him.
They thought he was hysterical and he made being out on the trails so much more fun and enjoyable.
And before long, all these members of this club became John's family that he never had.
And so John would go on every single trip this hiking club went on, no matter what.
That was the most important thing to him in his life.
When it came to hiking though, John was a bit of an anomaly.
Even though he would hike sometimes over 4000 miles in any given year, he would still routinely get lost on trails.
He had been on dozens and dozens of times.
But despite being totally self-aware of this fatal flaw in his hiking abilities, John rarely did anything to compensate for it.
For example, he didn't bring with him on most hikes a compass, which would be the first thing you would think to bring with you to stay oriented.
Also, because he refused to buy a phone, he didn't have that to aid him either if he ever got lost.
In fact, John rarely brought much of anything on any hike.
He went on because John is what you would call a ultralight backpacker, which basically meant you would only pack the absolute bare essentials and, in John's case, sometimes less than the absolute bare essentials.
And despite his friends trying repeatedly to get him to pack more equipment so he was more prepared, he would always say no, he knows what he's doing and everything is good.
And the truth is, John always did manage to get from point A to point B on all of his hikes, some of which included extremely difficult hikes, like the time he hiked the 500 mile long Colorado Trail or the time he hiked the 2175 mile long Appalachian Trail.
Now John would tell you that was all skill, but his friends would say John was extremely lucky.
He would get lost and then at the last second he would find the trail again, or he would lose some piece of critical equipment and then just someone on the trail would happen to walk by that had an extra set of whatever it was that John needed.
And then one time, when John was in Poland on a hike, he slipped on this icy embankment where earlier that day two other hikers had slipped and fallen to their deaths.
And John has now slipped on this same embankment.
He's careening down the sides.
He's flailing.
He can't stop himself.
And then the drawstring on his pants gets caught up in a tree and that arrests his fall and it saves his life.
And so, from that point on, John would only wear those pants when he went hiking, and he called them his lucky pants.
In the spring of 2005, John and one of his very close hiking friends named Ken Baker, who was roughly his age, decided they were going to hike the 2650 mile long Pacific Crest Trail.
This trail spanned the entire west coast of the United States.
It starts in Southern California, right on the border of Mexico, and it goes all the way up to the very northern end of Washington state, right on the border of Canada.
It takes the average hiker, if they're going to do this entire trail in one go, about five months, unless there's bad weather conditions that impede them along the way.
John had been excitedly planning this epically long hike for the better part of the last year.
He'd actually typed out six pages on his typewriter of this itinerary that planned out every single detail of this hike, down to how many ounces of coffee he would need at every stop along the way.
John was especially excited about this particular hike because it was going to be the very first hike he would be doing after his retirement from being a social worker.
And apparently John had huge plans for his retirement.
He wanted to travel all over the United States.
He wanted to go to Australia.
Australia, to China, to Russia.
He basically wanted to hike at least six months a year, every single year, until he was too old or too weak to continue to do so.
But just a A couple of days before John and Ken were supposed to fly out to California to begin the Pacific Crest Trail, Ken told John that he thought they should actually postpone the start of this trip by about three weeks.
He said Southern California had experienced their snowiest winter in decades, and so it would make sense to wait a little bit of extra time to make sure all the snow had melted and that they didn't get caught in any sort of late snowstorm.
Now, John was totally not having this.
He had spent so much time thinking about this trip.
He was so excited about it that he just couldn't wait any longer.
And so he told Ken, I'm sorry, I'm going on the current timeline, whether I go alone or not.
And so on April 19th, 2005, John made his way to his office where he was a social worker.
His coworkers threw him a very small retirement party and he literally left the office, went straight to the airport and he flew to Southern California all alone.
When he got there, he took a chance and reached out to one of his other hiking friends, a 48 year old tool salesman named Lynn Padgett, and asked him you know hey, I know you live in the area.
Would you be interested in coming on at least part of the Pacific Crest Trail with me?
I'm going to start here in the next couple of days.
And John was extremely excited when Lyd said, you know what?
Sure, I'd love to come along with you.
And the two of them made their way over to Campo California, which is right on the border of Mexico.
And they began their hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.
But after going only about 100 miles, Lin's feet started swelling so badly that he could not go any farther.
And so from that point onward, John would be alone.
San Jacinto Mountain Range is the first major mountain range that the northbound Pacific Crest Trail hikers will encounter.
And statistically it's actually the most dangerous portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, as 15 of all the fatalities that occur along this huge trail occur in the San Jacinto Mountain Range.
It's a very steep mountain with a rapid rise in elevation from the desert floor all the way up to over 10000 feet, which means in the summer, even when it's extremely hot down around the base of this mountain, it will probably be windy and snowing at the top.
John reached the base of the San Jacinto mountain range on May 2nd and, as he began his slow climb up, all of the hikers he was encountering were all talking about the same thing.
There was apparently some big snowstorm that was due to hit the San Jacinto mountain range in the next couple of days.
And so all of these hikers were actually evacuating the mountain to go to this little town to wait out the storm.
Everyone's fear was they would get caught on Fuller Ridge when the storm hit.
Fuller ridge is towards the top of the san jacinto mountain range and it's probably the most dangerous part of the entire mountain range.
It's basically this totally exposed, very steep section where, if you lose your footing, there's nothing to stop you from tumbling down to your death.
But when John heard this, he wasn't fazed at all.
He was not about to evacuate because of some storm.
He was just going to continue up this mountain, go over Fuller's Ridge and carry on along the Pacific Crest Trail.
And so for the rest of the day he just continued up the mountain and eventually made camp about halfway up.
He actually stopped near two other hikers that were also going to push through despite this storm.
It was a 46 year old nurse from Canada named Connie Davis and her son, 20 year old Alex.
And they were both very experienced high altitude climbers and they had all the right gear and they were very well prepared.
And so that night, after both parties had set up their camp, they struck up a friendly conversation during which John made some dismissive comments about Connie's parenting style.
That really agitated her, although it didn't seem like John really noticed he had upset her.
And so, needless to say, the next morning, Connie and her son had packed up and were long gone by the time John was waking up.
So John just got up.
He looked at the sky it was still clear, although he did see some gray clouds rolling in, so he could sense that yes, a storm really is on the way.
But he decided he was still just going to continue on towards Fuller Ridge.
So he put his backpack on and he began walking up the trail.
And a little while later, when he was nearing Fuller Ridge but was still several miles away, three very well-equipped hikers that he had not seen before came charging down the path towards him.
And John stopped them and he said, hey, you know, how is it up there?
What's the weather like?
What's Fuller Ridge like?
And they kind of looked at John and sized him up, looking up and down.
And they saw that he's got light clothes on.
He's got sneakers on.
He doesn't have trekking poles.
He just looks totally ill-prepared for what he's walking into.
And they said to him, you know, I don't think it's a good idea for you to continue on here.
This storm is going to hit any time now and we're not going to Fuller Ridge.
We're actually turning around and leaving because of the storm and we have all the right gear.
I mean, you should really consider turning around and leaving.
But these three hikers would say there was just no way they were going to change John's mind.
He was totally dead set on carrying on to Fuller Ridge.
And so the three men that had told him not to go eventually just said, okay, you know, good luck.
And they carried on down the trail and John continued up.
But despite John's earlier confidence in his plan to go to Fuller Ridge and continue through San Jacinto Mountains, when the snow actually started to fall sometime in the mid-afternoon, John started to have doubts about his plans.
There was already a lot of snow on the ground where he was from previous snowstorms and that was making it hard to see the trail as it was.
And now, with all this additional snow starting to dump down, he was worried it was going to totally cover up the trail and he would lose it.
And since he knew he kind of had a penchant for getting lost on trails, This was a real concern, but he was still very stubborn.
And so despite these second thoughts, he just continued on along.
And so after a while he got to within maybe one or two miles of Fuller Ridge, when he spotted up ahead of him two other hikers that seemed to be going in that direction.
And so he ran up to them and he yelled for them to stop.
And at this point the snow is really starting to come down and the trail is completely wiped out and he can barely see in front of him.
And these two hikers, they stop.
And so he runs up to them, and when he gets up close he can see it's actually Connie Davis and her son Alex from the night before.
And so Connie is obviously not thrilled to see John again.
But when he explained that he was having a really hard time staying on the trail and you know, could he just tag along with them?
Connie said, you know what?
That's just fine.
We're happy to have you.
But she explained to him she was not going up to Fuller Ridge.
Instead, she was taking a more circuitous route that would bypass the ridge.
It would take a lot longer, but it would be safer given the weather conditions.
John assured her that that was totally fine.
He would just trail along with them.
And then at some point he would break off on his own and he would go up to Fuller Ridge and they could go their separate way.
And so Connie, her son and John begin walking along together.
Now Connie and Alex.
They had crampons on their shoes which are basically like metal cleats and allow you to very easily grip the snow and ice.
They had trekking poles.
They had all the right warm gear.
And so they're easily moving along through these weather conditions.
Meanwhile, John didn't have trekking poles or any high-speed equipment.
He did have crampons that he tried to put onto his shoes, but because he had sneakers that were not lined up to this type of crampon, they didn't really fit right, and so it caused him to constantly stumble and fall on the ground.
And so that's how it went for a while until Connie and Alex reached this critical point.
It was at this creek where they needed to go down and around, which would take them away from Fuller Ridge.
And if John was going to continue like he said he would, up to Fuller Ridge, that would be the point where he would break off from them and go up the mountain towards this ridge.
And so Connie and Alex wait at the stream.
They're turned around and they're looking back down the trail at John, who's fallen way behind at this point.
And as they're looking at him, they're thinking this is going to take a long time for him to finally catch up to us.
And so Connie, who really wasn't all that keen and hanging around John that much longer anyways, she figured, you know what.
John has made his intentions completely clear.
He said he is going up to Fuller Ridge.
He is an adult.
He is healthy.
He can do whatever. he wants.
And so she yelled and waved to John and signaled that she and her son were going to go down this creek and this way to Fuller Ridge.
So best of luck to you.
And then Connie and Alex disappeared around the corner.
Once John's hiking partners had gone, John got up to that creek and he was gonna try to go up to Fuller Ridge.
But by that point, the snow was practically blinding.
And so at this point, John decided, you know what?
I do need to turn around and go back down the mountain and evacuate to that town where everybody else had gone to to avoid the storm.
And so John turns around and starts trying to backtrack along this trail back down the mountain.
But the trail is gone.
The snow has completely whited it out and there's no other hikers anywhere nearby.
And even if there were, he wouldn't be able to see them.
And so for several hours, while it was still light out, John did his best to navigate down the mountain.
And then when the sun went down, he really had no idea where he was.
And so, instead of trying to stay on this trail that at this point he really didn't think he was on, he looked out away from the mountain and way down below he saw this big, bright cluster of lights.
Even through the falling snow, he could clearly see those were lights of a city.
And so he decided he would use that as kind of like his North Star And he would just continuously walk downhill towards those lights.
And so for several hours, he just began walking towards these lights, narrowly avoiding huge drop-offs and climbing over boulders and avoiding trees and animals.
And finally, he got to this very critical point in his journey down to these lights.
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Today he reached this area called Long Valley, where he had a decision to make.
He could either continue down the mountain, which would require jumping down into this ravine that once he did, he would not be able to climb back out again it was too steep or he could turn around and hike way back up the mountain and go some other direction.
But at this point, he had really no idea what direction was the best direction.
All he knew is he needed to go down the mountain because his situation was getting worse and worse by the second.
If he didn't find shelter soon, he might get hypothermia and just die out here, and so he decided he would jump down into this ravine, and so he laid on his stomach, he lowered himself down over the edge and he dropped down into the valley below.
Once he stood up, he just continued walking down the mountain, and at some point he spotted a stream that he began to follow along.
And as he followed this ravine which was taking him straight down the mountain, he noticed the ravine walls.
These huge walls on either side of him seemed to get closer and closer to him, like this ravine was kind of coming to a point.
And then after a while he noticed up ahead the stream just kind of disappeared.
And so he walked a little bit farther and then he came to an abrupt stop.
The water had disappeared because it had flown off a 100-foot cliff that he was now standing in front of.
He had come to the edge of this huge waterfall and there was absolutely no way to lower himself down over it.
It was an absolute fall to the death if he attempted to go down this waterfall.
And so he looked to his left, and he looked to his right, and these huge canyon walls that had followed him all the way to this edge, from when he dropped down, they were sheer cliffs.
There was no way to climb those.
And his initial drop into this ravine was unclimbable.
He knew that going in.
And so he was boxed in.
He was trapped and he likely knew that it would be at least a week or more before anybody figured out that he was even missing.
And so, totally disheartened, John left the edge of this cliff, this waterfall, and walked back up to a relatively flat area farther up the ravine, and he began to set up camp.
He pulled out his green tarp, he put some line between two trees, he made a makeshift roof, he laid out his bed mat underneath and then he climbed underneath the tarp and he settled in for a long night.
The next morning, when the sun came up, John attempted to make a fire, but none of the wood he was finding was dry enough, so all of his fires just kind of smoldered but didn't really catch.
He had a mirror, a signal mirror, and he was prepared to flag down any aircraft that flew overhead.
But no aircraft did so he didn't flag anyone down.
And so, by the end of that night, he was back under his tarp, having made no progress, settling in for another freezing cold, sleepless night.
The next morning, when the sun finally came up again, John was totally disheartened and he decided to start jotting notes down on the margins of his map, which was the only place he had space to write.
He figured he would keep a sort of diary.
That way, if he didn't get out of here, someone would figure out what happened to him.
And so his first entry was that day, May 5th, and he wrote that his friend Ken was right.
He should have postponed this trip by three weeks and avoided the bad weather.
Ken was the smart one.
And also in this May 5th entry, he took an inventory of his food supply.
He said he only had 12 cheese crackers left.
And then on May 8th, John wrote a note that said, This was the message that Gina and Brandon discovered when they stumbled on this campsite.
But the significance of this note was not literally what he wrote but rather when he wrote it.
On May 6th, and his girlfriend, Gina Allen, were in Palm Springs for a business convention.
Brandon was a financial advisor and so he was out here for business and Gina was his guest.
So she was really just vacationing.
And so towards the end of the convention, when Brandon had some free time, he and Gina decided to leave the hotel and go on a hike somewhere.
And so they actually linked up with a tour group that was leaving the hotel, that was heading over to this tram station, where they were going to take a tram car all the way up to the top of the San Jacinto mountain range.
A tram car is basically like a ski lift, except once you ride it to the top of the mountain, you don't do any skiing, you just do sightseeing.
And so, Brandon and Gina, they get to this tram car, they hop inside, they get to the top and it's totally amazing, beautiful view.
There's snow at the top and they're told they have about 20 or 30 minutes before their group is going to take the tram car back down again.
And so Brandon and Gina decide to kind of venture off away from the main group and have some alone time before they leave again.
And as they kind of venture off, they start to hear what sounds like a waterfall.
And so the two of them are kind of looking around asking if they can see it or if they know where it is, and they don't.
And so they say, hey, do you want to just leave the trail and walk towards this waterfall?
It can't be far.
It sounds like it's only maybe a couple of minutes away.
We'll take some pictures.
We'll come back and then we'll catch the tram back down again.
And so they decide this is a great idea.
They leave the path and they start walking towards the sound of this waterfall.
But after walking for a pretty significant distance, they realize the sound of this waterfall is not getting any closer.
It seems to actually just be getting farther and farther away, and what they didn't know was happening was the sound of the waterfall was actually echoing off the walls of this mountain.
It was basically playing a trick on them.
The acoustics made it seem like it was really close but really it wasn't.
It was pretty far away.
And so by the time they finally did locate this waterfall, they knew they had ventured fairly far off the main trail and they really needed to hustle to get back up to the tram station to meet their group and catch that last car out.
And so they took a couple of pictures of this waterfall and then quickly turned around and began booking it back towards the station.
But on their return trip, which they believed they were going in the right direction, they started hearing the sound of voices coming from the tram station, but they were coming from a different direction.
And so Gina and Brandon stopped and they're thinking, you know, I think.
We got to go this way.
But clearly that's the sound of the other people in our group coming from that direction.
And so they decide to follow the sound of the voices.
But just like the sound of the waterfall, the sound of the voices were not coming from that direction.
That was just an echo bouncing off the walls.
It was basically a trick. the mountain was playing on Brandon and Gina.
And so they start walking in the wrong direction.
And after walking for quite a while and not getting anywhere near the tram station, the voices just finally stop.
And they look at their watches and they realize they missed the cutoff.
They missed the last tram.
All those tourists they were with, they've left.
They are now alone somewhere out in the middle of the mountains.
But they did not panic.
They figured, you know what?
We'll just make our way to the tram station and we'll either catch the next tram or maybe there's a payphone or something up there we can use, and we'll figure it out.
Now, it's important to mention that Brandon and Gina did not expect to spend very much time out in the elements.
They expected to get on a tram, stay at the top of this tram station with a bunch of other tourists where there was a restaurant and a bar, and then they were going to ride that tram car back down and be back at their hotel before dinnertime.
As such, they didn't bring any supplies.
They didn't even have their cell phones.
They had left those in the hotel room because they wanted to make sure they were focused on each other.
And so all they had were the clothes on their back, which were very light.
They had tank tops and some sweatpants on.
They each had a very light jacket as well.
And they had a wallet and some chapstick.
They had no water, they had no food.
And so Brandon and Gina, they begin walking around in search of this tram station.
And for several hours, despite their best efforts, they don't find it.
And then before long, the sun is going down and the temperature is dropping rapidly.
And so eventually, after it becomes too dark to continue to move around, the couple winds up going into a cave where they huddle up all night, barely avoiding becoming hypothermic the next day when the sun comes up they haven't slept at all.
They climb out of their cave and they continue walking around the mountain in hopes they find this tram station.
But eventually they get to one of the higher points of the area they were in and they have a pretty good vantage point around them, and when they start looking out they don't see the tram station.
They don't see anything but wilderness in all directions.
So they decided their best bet was just to walk straight down the mountain and try to just walk off the mountain.
And they figured as they began walking down the mountain that the tour guide had probably recognized they were short two people the day before And so certainly a search had been launched and there were people looking for them, and probably they would be found long before they ever had to actually walk off this mountain.
But little did they know their tour guide that had brought them onto the tram and then brought that group down.
They had recognized they were short, two people.
But they assumed those two people must have just taken an earlier tram and so nothing was reported.
Nobody was looking for them.
And so all day, Brandon and Gina made their way down this very steep mountain, falling half the time, smashing into rocks and trees and getting cut up on manzanita bushes.
It was just this awful experience.
And by the time the sun was going down, they had no sense of how close they were to the bottom.
They didn't have a good viewpoint.
They were just kind of trapped inside of the wilderness.
So once again they huddled up for the entire night.
This time they didn't have a cave to protect them from the wind, and so it was just another absolutely miserable night.
And so finally, the sun comes up on the third day and Brandon and Gina, they're up and they are moving straight down this hill.
They want to get out of there as soon as they can, and after smashing into more boulders and more trees and getting more banged up, they finally arrive at the same drop off down into a ravine in Long Valley that John had gotten to.
And so they're standing over this ravine debating whether they should make the leap and jump down into this ravine, even though it means they can't climb out again.
As they're looking around, they're figuring, you know what, we don't really have a better choice.
We don't really have the energy to climb all the way up and try to go a different way.
And we don't even know if those ways are more advantageous.
And so, just like John, they turn around onto their stomachs, they grip the top of this, drop off and then slip down into the ravine.
Once they stand back up, they start walking down this ravine and they spot a river and They run over to the river and they drink as much water as they possibly can.
It's a huge morale booster.
And then they get back up again and they're continuing walking down the stream when, off in the distance, they notice a green tarp strung up between trees.
It was John's campsite.
And so, Brandon and Gina, they run over to this campsite and they eventually come across John's notes on the margins of his maps.
But after standing up and yelling out for this owner to please come out here and help us.
We need your help.
We're lost.
And then no one came out of the woods.
No one heard them.
No one responded.
Brandon went back to the note and he looked at it again, and that's when he noticed it.
The note had been written on May 8th.
However, it had been written on May 8th, 2005.
The year that Brandon and Gina were reading it was 2006.
So this note was one year old.
John had just happened to get lost and write a note on the exact same calendar day that Gina and Brandon arrived at his campsite and discovered the note.
In their initial excitement and joy that they might get saved, they did not pick up on that year discrepancy.
The couple began looking more closely at all of the gear underneath the tarp and they noticed all of the metal objects like the forks and spoons and the pots and the pans.
They were all starting to rust and some of the other objects, like the shoes, looked like they had been sitting in the same spot for a really long time.
They both started to get a really bad feeling about this campsite, like something terrible had happened there.
Gina emptied the yellow backpacks contents onto the ground and that's when they found a wallet.
They opened it up and they pulled out an id card and it was john donovan's id card.
So now they knew who had written the note and who owned this camp.
Afterwards, gina and brandon laid out all of the maps to see if there were other messages that they had not read yet, and there were.
There were two other additional messages after the may 8th message.
On May 11th, John said he was celebrating his 60th birthday and that unfortunately, he was down to his last two cheese crackers.
And then in his final message on May 14th, John wrote, headed down to Creek for water.
Goodbye.
Love you all.
Devastated.
The couple knew what they were reading were almost certainly John's last words and his body was most likely somewhere around here.
And then it dawned on the couple that if John, who seemed like an experienced hiker, who had all this gear, if he had gotten trapped and died out here, then how did they stand any chance with no experience and no equipment?
And so, not knowing what else to do, Gina just rounded up all of John's things, she stuffed them into his yellow backpack and then she shouldered the pack, and then she and Brandon just walked away from John's campsite and continued walking downhill, hoping that up ahead there was not going to be some gorge, like John had mentioned in his May 8th note.
But unfortunately, after walking for a little while, they reached that cliff with the 100-foot drop, with the waterfall going off the side of it, and they realized that they were trapped, same as John.
There was nothing they could do, sat down, they didn't look at each other and they just sat there wondering what was going to happen next.
And they both were thinking, you know, this could be the place where I die.
At some point Gina kind of snapped out of her trance and she took John's backpack and she began rifling through it, pulling everything out all over again.
And Brandon asked her, you know, what are you doing?
And she said, well, you know, maybe there's something in here that we missed.
Maybe there's a secret pocket or something in here that could help us.
And so she rifles through this bag.
And sure enough, she finds inside of a small pocket.
In the bottom of the bag was another bag, a little plastic bag.
And inside of it were matches and they were still dry.
And so immediately the couple pull them out and they start to round up logs to try to make a fire.
And as soon as they light it, it doesn't catch, because all the logs in the area that were on the ground were wet from previous snowstorms and rainstorms.
And so all night they tried lighting these fires, but they all just kind of smoldered out.
And so eventually, after the sun went down, Gina and Brandon, who were totally disheartened, they went back up to John's campsite and they went under his tarp and they huddled together for another freezing, cold night.
The next morning, Brandon woke up because he actually did fall asleep and Gina was still sleeping.
And so Brandon decided to just leave the tarp and go out and get a breath of fresh air.
He knew they were in a terrible position, but he just wanted to clear his head.
So he stood up and he could barely stand.
He was so achy and tired and he was so hungry and he decided he would just walk down to the edge of this cliff and look out into the valley to see if maybe there was a way down.
And so he walked along the river, stopping periodically to get a sip of water, until he got to the very edge.
And when he got there he looked down and he saw something that he had not seen the day before.
There in a pool of water all the way down, 100 feet down was a body lying face down in a pool of water.
And that body belonged to John Donner.
Brandon was too far away to actually confirm if that really was John, but he instantly knew.
But instead of being scared or saddened or depressed by the sight, It kind of invigorated Brandon and reminded him that if he doesn't act, he and Gina were going to die too.
And so Brandon decided he wasn't going to set some small campfire to try to signal someone.
He was going to try to light the entire forest on fire, and so he walked back up to the campsite and he got the matches out from the backpack and then he walked into the forest a ways that was right near the river and near their campsite and he found this tree that was obviously dead And he walked around gathering as much dry wood as he could and he propped it up against this dead tree and then he put as much kindling as he possibly could into this hole in the trunk of this dead tree.
And after doing all this prep work, he got his mattress out and he lit some of the kindling.
And to his surprise, the tree caught on fire almost immediately.
In fact, it burned so quickly and so big that Brandon had to run away so that he didn't catch on fire.
And before long all these trees are catching on fire and he had to run all the way back to the campsite and wake Gina up.
So he grabs Gina, they get up and they run all the way over to the edge of the waterfall and they turn and they're just watching half an acre just completely erupt in flames.
And all this black smoke is billowing up into the sky.
And then, about an hour later, after the fire had eventually just kind of died out on its own, Gina and Brandon heard the distant rumblings of a helicopter.
They had seen the smoke and they were coming to rescue them.
Gina and Brandon would be airlifted out of the ravine and would make full recoveries.
John Donovan's body would be recovered three weeks later.
His cause of death could not be determined.
Some say that final note he left on May 14th where he said he was going down to the creek to get water and then said goodbye, I love you all.
That that was sort of a suicide note that he actually threw himself off that cliff to end his suffering.
Others say he just walked down to the edge of this waterfall and was trying to get a drink of water from the creek when he slipped and then fell over the edge to his death.
But we'll never know for sure.
What we do know for sure is that in 2005, when john donovan was still alive and missing, had he been rescued, he would have left the valley with all of his supplies, including those matches, which would have meant in 2006, when brandon and gina found themselves in that ravine, there wouldn't have been a way to start that fire, and so they would have died.
In fact the helicopter pilot that did come up and rescue Brandon and Gina, he would say there was nobody planning to search that area.
This was not an area they believed Brandon and Gina would be.
And so it really was only because of that fire that those two lived.
As such, the couple said they owe their lives entirely to John Donovan and his unbelievable sacrifice.
On July 11th, 2006, a funeral was held for John in Virginia.
Eighty people showed up for it.
Most of them were his hiking friends from his club.
After the service was over, they all kind of poured out onto the cemetery lawn around John's gravesite.
And as the bagpipes played, Amazing Grace Lynn Padgett, the man who had done the first 100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail with John before his feet swelled up and he had to leave, he walked around the crowd handing out red Solo cups filled with a tiny bit of John's favorite whiskey.
And then, after making sure all of the adults had their drinks, Lin went to the head of his very good friend's grave and he delivered a beautiful eulogy.
In it.
He tells the crowd that he thinks of John all the time.
He misses him terribly, and at night he has the same dream.
He's walking down this trail next to a stream and then the stream bends off to the side.
And as soon as he walks around the bend, he sees this green tarp and he knows it's going to be John.
And so he yells, hey, comrade, hey, comrade.
And as he's walking over to the tarp, he realizes John isn't there.
All it is is a tarp, a pack and some shoes on a rock.
As for Brandon and Gina, they did stay a couple after the ordeal, but they would ultimately break up two years later.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.
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