Otherhand

https://www.otherhand.org/ - An interesting blog by a Southern Californian native who recount's search and rescue missions as well as other historical and scientific research. The best read it the The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans - https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

I think a lot of this type of writing shifted to Twitter and Instagram, but I agree this microblogging is not the same... it lacks the immersiveness of a good long story. On the other hand it has never been easier to set up your own blog with services like Netlify, Jekyll, Pelican etc. I recently started my own blog in this way, however it requires some coding skills... I know it’s a shameless plug, but here it is: https://haltakov.net/blog To not be too selfish, let me also share one of my favorite blogs of a guy telling amazing stories about his hikes and adventures (unfortunately, he hasn’t written in a while): https://www.otherhand.org

My favorite personal site: http://www.otherhand.org/ And the best part: search for the death valley Germans. http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-… Warning: you're about to spend a few hours of your life.

Pairs great with the tale of the Death Valley Germans: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

The quest he mentions as inspiration - Tom Mahood's "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans" - is a fascinating read and worth your time. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the… I first read it seven years ago and similar to the author, it inspired me to join my local Search & Rescue team which has been incredibly rewarding. I highly recommend doing that to anyone who wants to combine a love of the outdoors, specialized skills, serving the community, and helping people in their worst moments. (And doesn't mind getting up at 3am in pouring rain and going out and pushing through dense underbrush for hours!)

German tourists...who did make it out alive. Recalling a family of German tourists in America, who sadly did not - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Germans (And if you've not read the tale, and have some spare time, this is a classic - https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the… )

Seems ironic. Real ironic was the day the LA (Los Angeles) DWP (Department of Water and Power) declared drought water restrictions on a day we got so much rain we almost had Lake San Fernando Valley. The Sepulveda Dam Recreation area did, indeed, flood. One of those "why do we have all these dams with no water in LA" moments. As to folks perishing in DV due to heat, this is an extraordinary story worth the time. The "Death Valley Germans" https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the… (What is it with Germans and Death Valley in the summer? It's a Thing. I take it that it doesn't get hot in Germany?)

This? https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/searching-for-bi… Bombcar, my good HN buddy, it'd be great if you included the link rather than a few keywords. I've never heard of any of these people before. Additionally, lots of people won't bother to search and won't ever see the cool, interesting thing. Unless that's your intent.. ;) <3

How is the creek visible at night? I'd like to see pictures as well. This is the kind of niche writing blogs are/were great for, for some reason reading this reminded me of the bluefire/otherhand site. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

It's a good read. Can be found here [0]. [0]: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

You also get people with rental cars who just aren't familiar with the area at all. One would think that people would have the sense not to try to drive the Sierras on a back road in the winter--much less a major snowstorm. But if you live in the Southeast US, maybe not. See also Death Valley Germans. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the… (And that wasn't even GPS-related.) I do sense though that people who grew up with GPS are more likely to follow it blindly and not do any other sort of route planning than people who are older. And I confess that I'm much less religious about carrying maps around than I used to be.

you might enjoy this story (many pages): https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/b… the whole site is fantastic, check out his other adventures.

A good read about being unprepared for the desert is "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans" which is an amateur's search for answers on how a German family of tourists abandoned their van in Death Valley and then disappeared. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

See also: the writing of Tom Mahood [1], some of the best and most authoritative I've ever seen on the subject. He also tears into Bob Lazar which is a nice bonus. [1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/l…

This reminded me of this real life story of trying to find a German family that got lost in Death Valley. It's a tragic story but I found very interesting how this person tries to piece together what happened. It's a long but worthwhile read. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

I think there's probably something to the UFO phenomenon. However I'm convinced Bob Lazar is a fraud. It's a tricky case because certain parts of his story are verifiable, like that he worked at Los Alamos and that his friends did see a moving light in the sky. The best explanation I've seen is here: http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/lo… http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/bl… The explanation is he worked on particle accelerators as a mechanic (not a physicist), and they were shooting particle beams into the sky. However since this is all likely classified he would be forced to stick to his UFO story.

This is a great read. If I were closer to the area I'd definitely have spent some time trying to recreate the investigation and check out the site. Also, got to plug the story of the search for the lost German tourists in Death Valley[1]. I feel like his writing in that series really gets you in the head of the lost, and is morbidly fascinating. [1] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-…

One recent example is Reddit trying to "catch" the Bostom marathon bombers, where Redditors went through the security cams, "identified" a university student as the culprit, which led to immediate harassment of the student's family, and all the self-congratulation you could stomach until the subreddit was deleted, since that student was innocent. But if you want to read a great, long story of a private sleuthing gone well, I can recommend "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans" (set aside a few hours for the read): http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-…

A really amazing, honest, and straightforward account from the grad student in the lab. http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/physics/graduate-studies-in-physics…

You might need to follow some of the older links (e.g. [1]) but there's a very clear and specific statement of what he's explaining: this is what he claims Bob Lazar observed at the so-called Area 51 (Groom Lake). He claims Lazar knew exactly what it was but decided to show his friends and tell them it was UFOs. Now he is stuck with that lie because if he ever tells the truth, he could be prosecuted. That's the theory anyway - I'm not saying any of that is correct but it strikes me as by far the most plausible theory I've heard. Applying this theory to the tic tac thingy was something I just thought of, not something the author of that website ever claimed (to my knowledge). The problem I have with statements like "they're too big/expensive/non-portable for that" is that we already know that we're dealing with something that we can't explain. In other words: at least one of our beliefs about the state of some kind of technology is very wrong. One thing I keep hearing about these objects is that they move instantly, as if they have no mass. Well, then, they probably have no mass - that's the simplest explanation. [1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/l…

It really is an amazing national park. The vastness of it all is stunning--you have Batwater Basin at -282' elevation and Telescope peak at 11k. My partner and I hiked Wildrose Peak 9k (+2200) because Telescope had too much snow on it. The size of the park really hits home when you see that 2-inches on the NPS map takes you 1.5hrs by car. Our rental car was punished pretty hard by the roads, but held up like a champ. There was no way we were getting to the roads that DVG were lost on. The morbid streak in me wanted to find the bush described in [1], but we had to give up after an hour or so. There is something about tying a place to a story. Will definitely be back to explore the park more. If you are tenting, reserve your site early, because there are only a couple camp areas that aren't engulfed by pull-behinds and their generators running 24/7. [1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/searching-for-no…

> Am I in the minority in thinking that if someone wants to go out into the wilderness with little or no preparation for months at a time, that it's no one else's business? You are in the minority, and it is absolutely someone else's business. At least it's their job to ensure that you're safe. It doesn't even have to be for months at a time, just a simple wrong way turn in a national park on their way someplace else: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the… (Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12019567) While that's a long story (and well worth reading), it illustrates how even the simplest things going wrong could lead to an entire family dying, within walking distance of paved roads, certainly less remote than Alaska. There were multiple SAR teams/missions that put their own lives at risk, even when it wasn't their job, that took responsibility to find out what happened. Anyone who wants to "go out into the wilderness" has to remember that, it isn't just their own life at stake.

I'm pretty skeptical of Lazar. See this article for an investigative counterpoint of many of his claims: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/l… > A last item for your consideration to assess Lazar’s veracity is his academic background. He claims Masters degrees from BOTH Caltech and MIT in subjects they don’t offer and during time periods he couldn’t have physically been at either campus. In response to questions at the “Ultimate UFO Seminar” in Rachael, NV in May of 1993, Lazar was so kind as to offer up the names of two of his instructors at Caltech and MIT, a “Dr. Duxler” as well as “Hohsfield”. He even spelled them. Stan Friedman told me he went searching for Duxler and no such person ever taught at Caltech or MIT. However he did find a William Duxler who taught Math and Physics at the previously mentioned Pierce College and confirmed to Friedman that Lazar had taken at least one of his courses in the 1970s. > As for finding Hohsfield, Friedman rolled snake eyes, beyond confirming no one by that name ever taught at Caltech or MIT. However did you know that in this amazing 21st Century you can buy reprints of all sorts of old high school yearbooks? Like, for example, the 1976 yearbook for W. Tresper Clarke High School? And if one were to do so, one would find that there was a Technical and Vocational teacher there by the name of Frederick Hohsfield. Looks like he was teaching…

His story is full of holes. He claims that he has a master’a degree in physics, but cannot produce a diploma, his master’s thesis of the names of any classmates or professors. Furthermore, he has never demonstrated that level of knowledge of physics and the things that he does say are bizarre at best. There’s no evidence that The facility that he allegedly worked exists. There isn’t any trace of roads or any infrastructure for it. The location that he gives is right on the edge of the restricted airspace surrounding Area 51, which seems odd for a super secret facility. There are a bunch of little things. In one interview he mentions seeing an alien through a window in a door. His escort guard tells him not to look. Somehow the government is able to secretly reverse engineer alien technology, but can’t spring for some curtains? To put it simply, there’s no evidence to support it. He has never been able to produce a sample of any extraterrestrial material nor has he shown that he has any knowledge that is beyond current physics. Personally, I’m fond of [this idea](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/lo… Basically that Bob Lazar schmoozed his way into a job at Area 51 due to a chance meeting with Edward Teller. He brought people to watch a classified test (of experimental, but completely terrestrial technology) and got into deep shit over it.

Interesting to see Bob Lazar brought up explicitly here. I really like Otherhand's take on the situation. Very tenuous but interesting theory. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/b…

Obligatory link to The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

Maybe for some tourists it's the extreme heat and dryness that defines what's unique about the desert experience? Beats me. Even that well-known search & rescue story of the "Death Valley Germans" dated their van rental from July [0]: > The vehicle, owned by Dollar Rent a Car, had been rented to a group of four German tourists in Los Angeles on July 8, 1996. > The vehicle had been due back to the rental agency in Los Angeles on July 26, but had never been returned. [0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the… Edit: if you didn't know this story, I'm so sorry about your next N unproductive hours.

But try to be aware of what you're signing up for: Death Valley Germans [0] [0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans always comes up in these threads. I've read through it a couple times over the years, and probably will again at some point. https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the…

I found this perspective on the Bob Lazar story to be extremely compelling: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/l… Spoiler: he's basically full of crap. And the "UFOs" were particle beams meant to spoof radar systems.