Unprepared hikers enter Superstitions at own risk
Jul 30, 2012, 10:12 AM | Updated: 10:13 am
PHOENIX — A Valley survival expert said the Superstition Mountains continue to be a death trap for unprepared hikers.
“It really is Arizona’s own Bermuda Triangle. I would say if anybody goes in there, you cannot carry enough water to survive for five days,” said Preston Westmoreland.
Since July 2009 there have been five deaths and one person remains missing. An Apache Junction man died earlier this month in the Superstitions.
“This last gentleman, Kenny Clark, was found just a mile from the trailhead and they had searchers searching 268 square miles.”
The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has sent search-and-rescue teams into the mountains 22 times since last July.
Westmoreland said the danger does not lie in a curse, as some believe, but in the size of the Superstitions
and hikers’ underestimating the dangers.
“People start hiking down and then realize it’s a reverse mountain and they have to hike up. Then they have to be rescued because they can’t make it.”
