It has now been confirmed that a young man and a middle-aged man who disappeared into San Bernardino County’s wilderness last year and this year perished in unrelated circumstances of misadventure.
Trammell Evans, a 26-year-old from Florida, who went into the Black Rock area of Joshua Tree National Park April 30, 2023 for an ill-advised solo trek to clear his mind and body and exorcise some personal demons, did not reach, the point where he had arranged to be picked up on May 5.
An effort to find him, including trying to spot him from the air using helicopters, airplanes, and drones, while on the ground bloodhounds, volunteers and members of the sheriff’s department’s search and rescue team ensued, but was unsuccessful.
Evans was an experienced hiker with some familiarity with Joshua Tree National Park. Hope that he might belatedly arrive at the designated spot faded, with some of those closest to him suspecting the worst and yet others believing he had used the hike in the vast 1,234 square mile National Monument as a type of ruse to disappear and take on a new identity to evade certain realities of his own life that had become too complicated and self-suffocating.
On January 25, human remains were found near Covington Flats, not too far from Black Rock.
On January 14, 55-year-old Christian Alan Petrie, was last seen near his home in Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains. His family noted his absence later that day, but had not involved authorities until the sheriff’s department was called on January 20.
On January 23, during a search and rescue effort, sheriff’s personnel came across Petrie’s lifeless body in…