Sadness, closure for family

Snow-capped mountains glowed pink in the sunset sky as family and mountain visitors watched. The sound of cracking branches and the drone of the tow truck’s engine narrated the scene in the fading light. From several hundred feet down in a canyon in mile 40 of Angeles Crest Highway, the mangled wreckage of a vehicle slowly emerged from a dense stand of trees.

The driver had purposely launched the vehicle, at high speed, off of a turnout and into the steep terrain below some two years ago. Several notes, indicative of her intention, had been found shortly after her disappearance.

It had, according to family members, not been her first attempt at suicide.

The vehicle was discovered by a hiker on January 17 who was exploring the thick grove of trees several hundred feet below the turnout. It was upside down and submerged in branches. No reflective surface faced upward, and the grey-black underside of the vehicle blended seamlessly with the grey-black vegetation, burned in the Station Fire, in which it lay. Countless forest visitors stop here to take pictures. Commercials are often filmed in the turnouts along the highway. It is regularly patrolled by helicopter. It was difficult to see the vehicle even as it was being removed.

The woman’s remains were found within the vehicle, which was cable-lifted from the canyon by Crescenta Valley Towing, and brought to rest in a turnout, just as darkness engulfed the mountain.