Last year on my PCT hike I was just pass the 10 fwy when I encountered a group of men with rifles and handguns in a pickup truck. I waved as they drove by and they shouted "F- OFF HIPPY" as I walked by. Hoping that I would not see them again. I did in fact see them as I rounded the next corner. They unloaded their weapons and began to fire in my direction. Mind you they weren't firing "at" me, just in my direction, using a large berm behind me as a backstop. Knowing that they were just trying to scare me (but fearful that would accidentally hit me) I continued walking to 30 or so feet towards cover and concealment where I would no longer be a target (accidental or otherwise). Once out of their sight, I began to move quickly and frequently looked back to see if I was being followed ( I wasn't).


Another, even more hair raising story (again on the PCT), I stopped to camp for the night near Silverwood Lake. As the sun was setting a car stopped up on the highway, approximately 100 yards above where I was camped. The car waited until the sun had completely set and several men the exited the car, which then quickly left the scene with it's lights off. Then men (I think there were 3 of them) descended down the steep hill side towards my position with flashlights. I quietly moved behind a rock where I could watch them but not be easily spotted. They were still probably 50 yards away, and I couldn't see much more than their flashlight beams, and could hear their voices, but was unable to hear what they were saying. Several times they shined their light on the rock that I was hiding behind, but I was pretty sure they had no idea I was there, but rather they were just scanning the area.

After an hour or so they made their way to the top of the hill, and flashed their lights on the surrounding hillsides, 5 minutes later the car returned for them and they left.

It was a restless night, and in the morning I considered walking up the place where the men had been the previous night. In the light however, it was clear that it was too steep for me to access from my position. I continued on the trail, which wrapped around the lake, and after 2 hours of hiking I was somewhat near to the road where I was the previous night.

I then saw a park ranger who I flagged down. I explained my story to him, and I think he thought I was bat shit crazy, but I drew a map and wrote down all the notes I had taken including times, and everything else.

I checked the news online for that area and never read anything, so who the hell knows what the guys were doing out there.

Ok, so all that said, every other experience has been nothing but positive, even these two negatives happened within walking distance of civilization, I've been beaten and stabbed in the city, had my house broken in to, car stolen, etc. I'll take the wilderness any day.

Ms. Dynomite scribed: "jeebus, where do you live? ;) like, Creepy Pickup... "

No, no! Those incidents happened miles and years apart.

Although we're speaking of the safety dilemma women often face when going solo (as per the initial post and the female hiker), I must add that children and the elderly are also vulnerable to the twisted male predatory types, it's just rarer for them to be out solo.

This young lady was 24 years old. We have one daughter who is 24 years old and another who is 26... I can't begin to fathom the pain the family of the hiker is now going through....

Man, I need to go to a happy place right now! This whole thing is dragging me down!

To each his own. I carry. Mike should probably not.

Just wondering...what is it about backpacking that makes it a bad thing? I can see why maybe taking it to the PTA meeting might be an issue... but is it guns in general or being in wilderness?

No. You can be rational about it.

www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/0...ie/index.html

When attorney-turned-movie producer Samuel Rael decided he wanted to make a film about a serial killer in 1995, it was former legal client Gary Michael Hilton who he says came up with the plot.


Gary Hilton, left, and Samuel Rael in an undated photo given to CNN by Rael.

Rael's adviser was the same Gary Hilton who confessed in January to killing 24-year-old Meredith Emerson in the North Georgia mountains and is the prime suspect in the killings of a Florida woman and a North Carolina couple.

Rael claims Hilton thought it would be a good idea to have the killer be out in the woods.

"Go ahead and let some beautiful women out in the woods, and then they could be hunted down like prey," Rael says Hilton told him. Watch Rael tell his disturbing account »

Rael was shocked when he discovered that Hilton had been arrested and had confessed to Emerson's murder. Quickly, investigators hinted that Hilton might be a serial killer, linking him to three murders in two other states.

In all three, the bodies were dumped in the woods.

"He was a criminal," Rael said. "And he'd be the first to admit it. He might have been a sociopath, but he was a happy one and an animated one. One who, quite frankly, I never would have thought in a million years. ... Well, he had criminal instincts, but he was not a violent person. I was wrong about that."

The movie Rael and Hilton worked on was released straight to video. It was called "Deadly Run."

"I don't know if I came up with the 'run' and he came up with the 'deadly,' but somehow, as with all the film, he collaborated and helped me figure out what to do," Rael says.

It was Hilton, according to Rael, who found one of the film's prime shooting locations: a cabin in the mountains of North Georgia near the town of Cleveland. In the movie, the killer held women captive in the cabin.

Emerson's mutilated body was discovered in the woods 13 years later, 30 miles southwest of that location. She had been held captive for three days before Hilton killed her.

Hilton led investigators to where he had dumped her body, reportedly in exchange for prosecutors taking the death penalty off the table.

The similarities are haunting to Rael.

"To me, it's almost word for word. That's what was really scary about it," the filmmaker says.

Rael met Hilton in the mid-80s. Hilton hired Rael as his attorney when he was busted for trespassing on Atlanta city property. He was one of Rael's first legal clients.

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Rael says he defended him on several charges over the years, including arson and false solicitation of charitable donations. The pair began to socialize more, Rael says, as he helped Hilton through his many legal battles.

Then in 1995, when Rael decided he wanted to make movies, his friend and client seemed to have plenty of ideas.

"He was involved as a consultant from the beginning to the middle to the end and associated with the film," Rael said.

Hilton picked the cast and other movie workers.

Rael thought of Hilton as extremely creative. "I saw him as a really interesting guy with a screw loose. I knew that, too."

Hilton never received credits on the film because he wanted to be paid, Rael says. It was a low-budget feature, and Rael said he didn't pay many of the people who helped.

Rael recalled Hilton as a dog lover and outdoorsman.

"Gary almost lived outdoors," he said. "He'd come around to my house and take a shower."

At the time, Hilton was living in a storage space in Atlanta. Several pictures taken by Rael show a smiling Hilton, dressed in hiking clothes, appearing tan and fit.

Before a recent jail visit, Rael hadn't seen Hilton since 1995.

He says there wasn't a fallout between them: "I went on my way, he went on his."

The filmmaker said that two days after Hilton's arrest, he visited his former client in the Dawson County jail in Georgia. Hilton was surrounded by investigators, and Rael says they didn't do much more than exchange pleasantries.

"He said 'hello' and thanked me for coming by, and that was about it," Rael said.

He wonders about Hilton's behavior when they were friends but quickly dismisses thoughts of murder during that time.

"I sincerely doubt he was capable of doing anything like that when I knew him," he said.

Rael says the chilling similarities between his movie and reality have not gone unnoticed. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation wants to talk to him, he said.

GBI spokesman John Bankhead said authorities have not been able to reach Rael to question him about their relationship and Hilton's connection with the movie.

Bankhead says they'd like to find out if any of Hilton's suggestions for the film directly match what happened in any of the cases in Georgia, North Carolina or Florida. He said Hilton, at this point, is not a suspect in any unresolved cases during the time the film was made.

Hilton was indicted February 28 for killing Cheryl Dunlap in Florida in 2007.

Prosecutors say the 46-year-old was kidnapped and her body was dumped in a national forest near Tallahassee.

Investigators also suspect Hilton in the October slaying of Irene Bryant and the presumed death of her husband, John, in Transylvania County, North Carolina, said Sheriff David Mahoney. Hilton has yet to be charged in that case.


Mahoney also said Hilton is not currently considered a suspect on any unresolved cases during the time the film was made.

Repeated calls to Hilton's attorney were not returned.