snowmman

Hi Jerry, will you sleep with me? What's the source of the weather data. I'll give you a blow job if you tell me? Please? all the other stuff too. I'll be nice. Whatever you like. (edit) in terms of "knowing" someone, I already told like 100 people I know Jerry Thomas. So I got that going for me now.

posting a quick pic for Jerry, so he can give us feedback on where 305 might have been around PDX. (Jerry, if you click on the "pdx plus flight.jpg below, you should get a picture. (edit) Depending on your browser, if you see a plus sign where the cursor should be on the picture, then click on the picture again to get the full size picture in your browser. You'll want to do that if the picture looks low resolution) the attached pic has details we've debated ad nauseum. Overlaying a lot of stuff 1) Google Earth around PDX 2) transparent overlay of the 1971 sectional from Ckret (so the yellow areas of Vancouver and Portland show the size of the cities then, roughly) 3) The blue line is the line from Sluggo, with his placement of the tics that are supposedly radar placements of 305 at 1 minute intervals. Note that the times are not adjusted for the missing minute Sluggo found. We had a little debate around the exact placement of the tics right before and after? (I think) the Columbia, but Sluggo's are close enough. (georger had some good color layer decomposition..I agree with georger's tic placements as a result) 4) V-23, the airway, is marked in green (straight line there) 5) you can see the black pencil/marker that was used to hand draw a flight path on the map from Ckret. 6) money find location is top left. 7) remember I-205 wasn't there in 1971. Other roads indicated. I've been to the Portland zoo. At least twice but I forget exactly how often.

We have this info from Larry Carr (Ckret) (you can search for posts from him here..be good to learn how to do that) "The weather: Ceiling of 5,000 feet, broken clouds at 3,500, scattered clouds at 1,500. Winds of 12 to 14 knots, light rain showers." We've looked up wind and temp for 11/24/71 at PDX also from historical databases. We're a little light on surface winds and winds aloft at PDX that night. Do you have anything there? (direction especially. We have historical info, but good data from that night is fuzzy. Larry has posted some data, but unclear of source or exact location measured) Does the cloud cover above agree with what you know about the clouds that night?

Hi Jerry, Thanks, So you don't think Rataczak saw any lights at Portland? If they were on IFR, how come the tower didn't complain if they were off of V-23? Can pilots here comment? If you're more than 3 miles off of a vector airway, within a couple of miles of PDX, would the ATC comment to you? or would IFR somehow just get worked out without an exchange between Pilot and tower. It was controlled airspace around PDX. In the flight path we have, you can see them curve around the boundaries of the controlled airspace right? Sluggo has these pics, or we could post again. Sounds like Jerry has some new info for us here.

Hi Jerry. I know you're new here, but you have to be a lot better at your digs, if you want them to make an impact on me. Picture being in a knife fight with me. Take a better shot. You can do it! On another note, I was just looking at the flight path again. Someone mentioned being comfortable with 20:15 as the jump time again recently. At 20:16 remember, with the one minute correction, they are essentially at the Columbia.

If I understand the Himmelsbach theory it's: 1) It's impossible for Cooper to have jumped into the Columbia by I-5 2) It's more likely that the flight path is wrong and the money went down some tributary to the Columbia. 3) The plane somehow veered off course 20 miles but there was no mention of it in the transcript. Modify the off course distance by whatever distance you like. If you make it smaller, then you're saying Cooper deployed and got wind drift to travel N miles in some direction (say which). 4) If the plane veered off course, it somehow got close enough to Portland for Rat to see lights, and be nonplussed about coming up on them from an unexpected angle. And these turns didn't show up in the flight recorder or radar or however they did the flight path. Or the post-hijack interview. They were just cowboying it. VFR in the storm. Yahoo! Is that the Himmelsbach theory? What am I missing? I'm guessing because no one wants to lay it out for me.

"3 ft deep in vegitation/debris" Are you walking in logging areas? Is this logging slash you're talking about? I agree it's difficult to walk thru slash. Sometimes impossible. If it's slash, is it before 1971 or after 1971. Can you tell? In a normal forest, the canopy prevents sunlight, so that there isn't as much ground vegetation/debris. If there's a lot of ground stuff, it usually means logging at some point in time, or opened to sunlight due to road cuts etc? ?? (edit) streams/ravines provide this same side light I guess. Can imagine it's bad next to streams

Hi Jerry, I know you're sincere, and I've been a bit sarcastic, which I guess is always unnecessary in any real human interaction. Here's the thing. It's like standard,it seems, that everyone involved in DBC things, falls back on that "you can't know until you do this". i.e. you can't know anything about jumping out of a plane until you jump out of a plane with me. Or you can't know about the chaos Cooper experienced and how he would have reacted until you night jump Or you can't know about the woods in Washington unless you come search with me. Or you can't know the weather at PDX unless you've been there. Jo has her own list of "you can't know unless you ..." Like you can't know Tena Bar and the Fazio's unless you've been there. blah, blah blah. The thing is, it's a false belief that direct experience, in one shallowly defined area, somehow brings you closer to cooper. There's no reason to believe he jumped in the woods. Until there is, there's no reason to worry about knowing more about the woods you search. Sure I throw out some thoughts, just because I hate hearing people be dogmatic about certain topics. You give little information, yet want people to believe you. Or maybe you don't really care. That's fine. I still don't understand what the max distance you search from your car is. That's a real simple question. I'm more curious in understanding the standards people have, when they make a judgement on what people can do. For instance if Cooper can't deal with your woods, how did he deal with the night jump or doing a hijack? Because the night jump or hijack was easy compared to your woods? Do you have any direct experience with doing a hijack or night jump? :) Another example of why it's pointless: All you have to do is point out that if he jumped and deployed in the woods, he likely would have been injured. We've discussed that before. So say he was injured and didn't make it out. That makes more sense. There's even the existence proof of LaPoint who jumped in CO with snow on the ground (January) (cowboy boots) and got hurt. There's absolutely no reason I'm interesting in walking in the woods. It doesn't scale either. It's not a viable search plan. It would be more likely to find money on Tena Bar, then find anything with your current strategy. I might as well search outside my house. Just as likely as to finding something. Now could we develop info that would actually create a interesting search area? Maybe. But we haven't, to date. Now if you can make a living bringing people into the woods, I would encourage it. Create a web site. Sluggo should help you. You could get Sluggo to create CD's with all the data, that you could sell to folks too. There's lots of possibilities. Heck, look at Ckret. He went on TV talking about some Citizen's Breakfast Club or whatever he called it, working on this case. And they believed him! You've told us nothing about Himmelsbach or his information (whether there is more that we don't know) ...yet you want us to just believe you. Doesn't make sense. Politicians do that. Do you have a digital camera? You can post pictures of whatever you claim or want to argue for. That's what we do here. Throw out data, debate it's merits, dream up new data. Bullshit. Lie. Hit on Orange1. Oops what a giveaway.

Taking the challenge seriously, I decided to start training right away with lunch. They really do taste like chicken. What's the thought here? I guess never underestimate a sick motherf**ker. People talk about being rule breakers, but what's the limit, really?

ticket agent.

Dont be too surprised if you find an elaborate pot farm in the most remote places. I used to do criminal defense and you would not believe how remote some of the busted farms were. The cops couldn't have found or raided them without helicopters even if they swore off donuts for a year. 377 Uh yes, I've heard that. (nervously looking out my window)

It's very easy to forget to cheat in a survival situation. I was in a desert location in the summer once. No hat. Ran out of water that morning. Couldn't find where I had left my car, even though I could see a long ways. Had a map with springs on it. Eventually got to one of the springs. It was covered with an old rusty barrel and wire screening to keep the wild burros off it. The water had an oily sheen and bugs all over it. I remember looking down and feeling a little delirious and thinking "I'm not drinking that, I'll find better" and closing the lid and walking away. Only a couple steps though before I remembered how marginal a situation I was in and had to take every little advantage. Yes I died that day. Sad story. They never found my body. People think it's about being like in a book or a story in a survival situation. It's all about knowledge, mental control and cheating when possible. You break into cars. Steal stuff if necessary. Create situations that might go in your favor. You don't try to live up to some "way of behaving" all the way up to death. You recognize when you're fucked and adapt and accept it. People screw up when they have outside goals they try to force fit into their situation...like "I gotta get out tonite cause I told them I'd be home". Indians lived in the woods remember? Man came before the urban cities. Not the other way around. The body is genetically built to survive in the north american climate. That's why humans migrated here. (edit) I'm reminded of another story, where we were kind of lost, no trails, whacking thru brush, and determined to make it out that nite...we're blasting full steam downhill, sweaty, panting, nothing for miles and miles....when we burst thru the bushes into this campsite with two young women. And the first thing I see is a pair of panties laid out on a rock. Really. So they look at us in shock, like they were expecting bear because they thought there was no one around for miles...and we were in full-bore we're-getting-out-tonite mode, so knew we didn't have time to chat otherwise we'd be in the dark...and what are you going to say when you just ran into two young women staring at you bug-eyed with their panties on a rock between you and them? So we just kept blasting thru, after a quick "Hi". I always wondered how they slept that night.

Orange1 said: "Everyone knows places that were wilderness back then and are everyone's weekend destination now." You mean that maybe Cat D-9's came thru and opened up some roads that weren't there before, so people can drive in, and back in 1971 Cooper couldn't walk out? There are places that are just as difficult to get to today as they were in 1971. I'm just trying to figure out how Jerry gets to all these remote places. I expected to hear about helicopters, since they would be places Cooper couldn't get out from. Instead I'm hearing about drive-in car camping and walking a couple miles from a site. But yeah, there might have been a bunch of CAT D-9 activity.

That would make it difficult. Why would Cooper have a 90 deg F core temp though? $1000 a day is cheap. If you were paying a skilled guide to do anything hard outdoors, with just you, it'd be $200/day at least, and that's just an 8 hr day. I will admit I should have thought it through a little more before posting. I made the conditions pretty hard as posted. I think chance of death is low, but the 3 day limit is hard. Has anyone watched Survivorman on TV? While there's a lot to be said to pick at that show, the guy is interesting. He's done the thing of parachuting into the middle of the Canadian wilderness, not knowing where he was, and making it out to a road in a week, I believe it was. Here's the thing, I've got what, 9 months to prepare, if someone's going to get the money together. The 3 day limit is the hard part, but I think that makes it a fair wager. Looking at maps etc. 6 days would make it more of a sure thing for "anywhere" in WA, or OR. WA might be better. The worst thing is running out of water, and there's some high desert in OR. But I'm assuming whoever pays up would want it to be more Cooper like, so I'm not going to have to worry about water. (heat can be a lot worst than cold) Looking at maps now, the best way to screw me over would be to just find the place that's the farthest distance in all directions to roads, and that those roads would be lightly travelled in fall/winter..like private logging land. If I had to travel 60 miles to a road in rough terrain, 3 days wouldn't be enough. Here's my prep: 1) Memorize all maps of WA and OR. 2) Tape the following to my body so you can't see them: map, compass, some matches, a couple energy bars, a couple knives in various places (like my shoe), so I could cut myself out of however you tie me up. 3) Cheating is always good. My goal is not to prove anything about Cooper but win the money. I'd try to jam a small transmitter up my ass so I could call someone. 4) Physical training would be big. I have 9 months to get honed. 5) Get the body used to fat burning. Run up to marathon distances. Work out the food loading the week before. Make sure i have enough extra body fat to start (might drop 10 lbs in a week) 6) Get the best clothes that past the visual "looks like Cooper" test but might really be a cheat. Goretex layers under the surface layers, for instance. You can get cloth with embedded goretex now, that you wouldn't be able to tell. Fully suited up in goretex, you're like in an astronaut suit. Helps a lot. 7) Since one of the Cooper descriptions said he had ankle boots, I get to wear ankle boots. I get flares too. But I'm still up for it. With only the conditions as stated in my first post.

Thanks Jerry, for the explanation. "Ive lost riffles supplies a car equipment ECT" Note that implies that wherever you were, had a reasonable amount of human traffic. Unless you mean animals took them? You said you went N miles in a line from where you camped. (still not sure what the max N was) I'm assuming the other human traffic was typically from cars/trucks driven to some location, and then people walking in, at most a day. I guess I don't understand why these sites are called remote, if there's all this human traffic? Here's my beef: Just about everyone who's been connected with the Cooper story is a big story teller, as far as I can tell so far. So yeah, I'm wondering about you. Can't tell so far. (edit) I can understand how a dead body might be eaten and not found etc. But there's always this statement that it would be impossible for Cooper to walk out. I've never heard something that "proves" that. One the one hand I don't care, because I don't think he jumped in the woods. But it's like part of the mythology...it seems people want to say that for some reason. Much better to start with assuming Cooper could do anything anyone here could do. The myth paints him as a lumbering idiot. And that everyone telling the story is somehow more skilled than Cooper. Even though we know nothing about Cooper, everyone knows Cooper exactly.

I was looking at the web page sluggo put up for Jerry Thomas and there's a typo. It says "sometimes going months at a time searching for clues under the tall trees." There is no way Jerry Thomas "went for months" without resupply searching for clues. "Sometimes" implies it happened more than once. If there was any case where Jerry was camped out for months, I'd like to hear the details. Jerry did you camp in one spot? Did you move while you were out for months? Is this just horseshit? If so, is it from Sluggo or from you? Make me eat my words. I'd like to hear the details. I believe it's bullshit because so far, you're just regurgitating the Himmelsbach story.

He had a raincoat. He had flares. He had a knife. But you can't survive in the woods with that. You need a GPS. and a big ass 4x4 to drive you down the road to where you're going to walk in. Preferably the 4x4 has bumper stickers like mine that says "Skydive Eugene!"

that's a cool idea. Haven't people extended it so you have to do a multi-step adventure or something...i.e. you have to get the one clue to find out where the next one is, etc? But if people, gasp, actually went into the woods where Cooper might have been, wouldn't they die? My take from the experts here on the forum is that they would. Especially if it got down to 40 degrees. Then they would all die. Is the only thing that saves people from dying in the woods a GPS? No wonder the world is overpopulated. GPS was a worse invention that penicillin!

well, if they were physically there, even if they didn't know where they were, then they were able to physically move thru the terrain. whatever. It sounds like you're confident of your theories. Good luck!

10 miles in a day is doable in any terrain by someone reasonably fit, in most any conditions (except deep powder snow). Are you saying you don't think Cooper could have done 10 miles?

That's odd. You're saying in the areas you search, it's likely to run into other people? I would think it's so remote that if you get lost you die, like Cooper. Seems overpopulated. If there are hikers and hunters, then it's not far from roads. Most of them are one-day-trippers. I guess I'm missing the point. Are these people superior to Cooper? In what way? I guess we really don't know much about Cooper's physical condition. On average most male adults nowadays are pretty unfit i.e. fat. Worse than the '70s. In comparison to the average 45 year old male, Cooper may have been more fit, since he wasn't overweight. I believe most of the searchers would fall on the poor side of physical fitness. (you can look at the video of the army searchers and see they didn't go far into the woods). Oh reminds me. There are two descriptions of Cooper's footwear. Which do you believe and why? Which did Himmelsbach believe? Oh yeah: And when you're walking up and down these hills, what kind of clothing are you wearing? How fit are you? What do you run a mile in? (edit) I ask because I've read reports of a fair number of hunters dying out in the woods from heart attacks. Does that happen much out there?

Jerry: what's the farthest you've gone in the woods in a line from your car, without hitting a road (logging or otherwise) while searching for cooper? Have you gone a couple days? like 30-40 miles? If you've only gone a day or two out from a road where you left your car, why are you so certain someone couldn't repeat what you did as a path out? I'm not talking about Cooper because I don't think he jumped in the woods. I'm trying to gather info for this wager I'm running. I've got certain estimates, but more info is always better.

"You could hardly turn around in the woods without running into somebody ... " If a lot of searchers were searching in areas where Cooper landed and wouldn't be able to extract himself from, then it's likely some number of the searchers died in trying to get back out. Did any? If not, why not? What did they have that Cooper didn't?

georger said: "Its a crucial issue that goes directly to the validity of any socalled "tests" and quite frankly I didnt think Larry's wind stats were accurate if Bohan is correct." We know the surface wind and direction at PDX on 11/24/71 from historical records. Larry said he had records but they were unreadable when he posted them. I've been reporting on winds aloft and surface at PDX occasionally this winter, because it provides a reasonable sampling of what winds aloft might have been on 11/24/71, if the surface conditions were similar. That's my theory. Basically because the wind rose data I posted, from a 10 year period, showed a lot of repeatability. So I'm thinking wind behaviors in the air during storms, might be repeatable around PDX (if you have matching surface conditions) At the very least, someone should be able to reconcile air speed, with land speed given the flight path. I don't think that's been done. It would validate winds aloft.

Yeah, McNally had the same problem jumping with a chute he knew nothing about. I see your point.