#also i love ur wording of grian being forcibly subjected to nap that's Exactly what happened lol

[quaranmine]

Your word-of-god on my theory is driving me UP THE WALL!

Ok, so let me make a timeline here, let me know if I'm wrong at any point.

He leaves his campsite on the 12th for a day hike, taking minimal supplies with him. He gets hopelessly lost and takes temporary shelter under some low-hanging tree limbs for the night.

He finds the mountainside where he fell early on the 13th and, with a pair of binoculars, can see the creek in the distance. Let's say the rangers and medical examiner were correct, and he was heading to the creek because, at this point, he's probably in the early stages of dehydration (his presumed cause of death)

He tries to climb down safely, and we all know how that went. He makes it as far as he can on a broken leg and possibly numerous superficial injuries that wouldn't have been evident a year later for obvious reasons. He takes shelter under the overhang and... never leaves.

Grian reports Mumbo missing on the 16th when he misses checking in.

Grian leaves Colorado and subsequently arrives in Cody, WY to join the search on the 17th and is immediately forcibly subjected to a nap.

At this point, Mumbo has been under that overhang for the better part of five days. If he was already dehydrated, even mildly, before he even fell, and especially if he lost a medically significant amount of blood from any abrasions or lacerations suffered during the fall...

There is a significant probability that Mumbo was already dead by the time Grian joined the search.

Grian never had a chance of finding him alive, did he?

Damn...

OOOO

Okay so your timeline is a bit different than mine. But I'd like to note—my idea of what happened to Mumbo in general is actually pretty vague. It was one of those things where it didn't actually matter much to the plot since it would never fully be known. Also it made me sad to think about LMAO (imagine that.) Actually though? I had a draft of chapter 11 where when Grian was unknowingly retracing Mumbo's steps, it would be intercut with italics/otherwise clearly formatted Mumbo moments. So that you could see both of their stories converge. I scrapped it because I disliked the ~3 paragraphs I'd written for Mumbo and never came back to it.

So, the dates for this can be whatever you want (12th or 13th) since the specifics don't matter much. I think the main difference is that I didn't have Mumbo getting lost as the first step, I had it as the second. This means that I had Mumbo leaving the trail intentionally to get water, and getting lost on the way. In my scenario yes, the rangers were right about him heading to the creek.

I mainly had this idea because of my experiences with backpacking in Big Bend. Namely, it's just....very, very, very hard to bring enough water on a trip like that. So people bring water filters. When hiking the South Rim in Big Bend, you can refill your bottles at Boot Spring (though you shouldn't rely on it having water since it's the desert.) I have done this before. (Pictured: my dad lol)

I figured that Mumbo probably needed to refill his water (Grian stated he left no bottles at camp, not just that they were empty, so he would've brought comparatively a lot for a day hike. So maybe he planned on refilling them later in the day.) I figured that maybe he just....didn't want to completely overshoot his camp to go back to the creek he crossed a day or two before. Maybe he thought his off-trail route was shorter. Maybe he was confident he could find the trail again. It doesn't matter, all that matters is it brought him to the place where he fell. Or maybe, related to what you said—maybe he made this somewhat silly decision because he was already dehydrated.

From that point on, I think the rest of your timeline matches with mine. You are right that they wouldn't be able to tell any other superficial injuries a year later. Actually, I've got no idea if they would be able to tell it was dehyrdation that did it after that long. That's MY idea of what happened. But probably it would have been more accurate for the rangers to file it under a general blanket of exposure/infection from injuries/dehydration.

I can't say if Mumbo was dead or not by the time Grian joined the search. You're 100% correct that it's very possible. The only reason I don't confirm is that I don't know the timeline myself, nor does the timeline really matter that much, since even if he was alive when the search started, it would've only taken a day or two more before he wasn't. And since he wasn't in the search radius....You are right that Grian never had a chance.

But I think it's less sad that way, honestly. Devastating still of course. I just think it's worse to linger for weeks when nobody is looking in the right place.