The story of the runner who recently died in the Grand Canyon has been around for a while, but here's an article that goes over the details pretty in depth:
Canyon runner story

Very unfortunate. The story does have a few very good lessons in it, however, and should probaby be read by a lot of hikers, especially in hot climates. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!

J

From the article:

This was about 7 a.m. Friday, about 22 hours after the trail run began, and it could have marked the beginning of a campaign to find Bradley. But "nowhere in that conversation did we get information that he was a runner, that he'd crossed the Tonto, or that there were two of them," says Yeston. (The USGS employee declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Apparently, the companion had come to believe that Bradley had reached Phantom Ranch. Somehow — and the rescue rangers shake their heads at this — the runner hiked out of the canyon (with the phone-bearing USGS employee as his guide), held conversations with a commercial guide and a trail crew worker, and got a ride back to Flagstaff, yet never transmitted the idea that his partner might need rescuing.

This seems outrageous to me. How can that have happened?

Because people are stupid.

Personally, I want to see wills and insurance payouts in a situation like this. And look to see fi there was anything that might cause bad blood between them, like someone sleeping with someoneelse's wife. But I'm a suspicious person who trusts most humans about as far as I can spit lieing on my belly.

More bizarre activity quoted from the article:

To prepare for the canyon, she ran in the hills around Flagstaff for a few days. She also found a running partner, a Flagstaff man in his late 20s or 30s with whom she shared a Chicago connection. On July 8, they agreed to take on the canyon.

Rangers interviewed this man. They say they are not accusing him of wrongdoing and have refused repeated requests to identify him, citing his privacy and saying Bradley's family asked them to omit his name from public accounts. (A Freedom of Information Act request by The Times is pending.) Bradley's parents declined to comment for this article.

Stupidity kills. Over and over and over.

This woman was both an experience runner and a medical student. Somewhere, she had to have come across the information that the desert is hot in summer. Some people even know that temperatures that are measured and quoted are measured 5 or 6 ft off the ground, in shade. Did she think that in the sun, or near the ground in the sun would be hotter or cooler?

She carried more food than water. You speed up dehydration by eating. If you can't be bothered to carry enough water in a waterless area, you cache it or have someone you know cache it for you, and you'd better KNOW they are dependable.

Getting dependable information from a person that is badly dehydrated and hyperthermic is not realistic. If the two runners had signed in with the rangers, the rangers should have known to ask where the other runner was.

Maybe she was just suicidal. That would explain all her actions, wouldn't it?

I'll save my sympathy for the people who don't stand on the tracks and still get hit by the train.

Cynical Sue