Missing 411

Hikers vanishing near boulder fields and water, in patterns the parks won't discuss.

Paulides' pattern criteria are specific: boulder fields, water, berries, dogs that won't track, clothes found folded, the found-alive who can't or won't say. The Park Service testified it keeps no central database of the missing, which is either bureaucratic underfunding or the point. Statisticians say wilderness plus small children plus hypothermia explains the clusters. The families who've read the files stopped finding that sentence comforting.