Man rescued after two days in wilderness 'had been left behind by family after birthday party'

Daily Mail​

4 days ago

A 42-year-old man who had been left behind in wilderness near a lake known to visitors as 'Dead Body Soup' by his family at a birthday party was rescued after two days on his own.
The unidentified man was left behind at the Lake Mead reservoir which stretches across Arizona and Nevada and often sees travelers lost to the park's strikingly blue waters.
From 2013 to 2023, the park officially averaged about 21 deaths a year, far surpassing those at the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, which rank as the second and third deadliest parks with an average of 13 and 11 fatalities each year, respectively.
But the real number is likely way higher as some people are never reported missing and it can take decades for a corpse to be found in the water, washed up on shore or spotted in the wilderness.
Sure enough, officials with the Mohave County Sheriff's Office were searching for a different person in the park on July 29 when a nearby fisherman dialed 911.
The fisherman told officers that he'd heard someone crying for help and begging for any water nearby.
Deputies found their initial missing person and then contacted the National Park Service.
The man was last seen at the park two nights earlier at a party with his family, who ultimately left him behind after he could not be found.
The unidentified man was left behind at the Lake Mead reservoir which stretches across Arizona and Nevada and often sees travelers lost to the park's strikingly blue waters
The sheriff's office said that they had 'left a few supplies behind for him before leaving the area.'
However, they did not report him as missing until noon the next day, hours after they'd last seen him.
As they got to the Kingman Wash area where they'd initially been called from, fishermen echoed the 911 call in saying they'd hear a man crying for help.
Eventually, rescuers found the man on a steep hill just west of Kingman Wash.
When they recovered him, the man had no food or water and wasn't wearing a shirt.
They immediately replenished him with some water and electrolytes before taking him in for medical treatment.
'It remains unclear why Mohave County was not initially notified of the missing person report filed with NPS the day before,' said the sheriff's office in a statement.
The sheriff also thanked the rescuers and search teams for their efforts.
The lost man has yet to be publicly identified nor has a reason been given for his disappearance or the slow report of his going missing.
The lake is actually a reservoir – the largest in the US, formed after the federal government built Hoover Dam on the Colorado River about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
Now part of the National Park Service, the Lake Mead National Recreation Area includes lakes Mead and Mohave, along with 1.5 million acres of mountains, canyons, valleys and shoreline in Southern Nevada and Northwestern Arizona.
The Daily Mail reported in May that the bodies of bankrupt gamblers, cuckolded spouses, depressed teens and terminally ill patients have been found in its water and along its shoreline.
Several people have also jumped to their deaths from Hoover Dam and off a bridge next to it that's 1,500 feet from the lake.
Scientists, water planners, politicians, climate activists and student groups from around the world make trips to Lake Mead, snapping pictures of the ring as glaring proof of climate change and visible evidence of urgent flaws in Western water policy.
sunk in the lake in the 1940s.