Mystery surrounds hiker found bloodied, incoherent on California trail with no memory of what happened

A first-time backpacker was found bloodied, wet, shaking — and possibly slashed — on the ground of a California hiking trail, but has no recollection of how he ended up in the dire situation.Sashank Upadhyayula, 34, was discovered laid out in the tall grass at the edge of the Lost Coast Trail last Tuesday by a group of six teenage campers and their counselors, the Lost Coast Outpost reported.

He was covered in blood, shivering violently and laying in soaked blue jeans when the teenage boys spotted him at around 9 a.m.last Monday.

The teens’ adult counselors with Lost Coast Camp immediately began tending to Upadhyayula and issued a distress alert via satellite phone to get medical help.The counselors — Solomon Reinman, 26, and Jack Davis, 28, who are both wilderness first-aid certified — cut open his jacket and bandaged his wounds, and wrapped him in a sleeping bag and tarp, the outlet reported.

Then the teens — who had gotten a crash course in wilderness first aid the day before — set up a camping stove and heated up water to fill up bottles.They placed the hot water bottles next to Upadhyayula to get his body temperature up at the instruction of the camp program director Maria Vollmar, who ran over after receiving the emergency alert.“The campers were all just really, really helpful and steady and kind,” Vollmar told the local publication.

“Sol and Jack just really did an amazing job helping this man.”Upadhyayula’s rescuers said he was largely incoherent when they got to him.He told them it was his first time backpacking and he went out alone.

He also told them he thought he had been attacked but couldn’t remember what happened.A helicopter arrived about 90 minutes after the call for help was sent out and Upadhyayula was transferred to a local hospital, where he was treated for hypothermia and his wounds.

Paul Sever, an employee of the Bureau of Land Management, said what exactly happened to the solo backpacker is “a bit of a mys...