Hiker dies on journey to honor his dad
Man was visiting scenic West when he was found dead in Utah
It was supposed to be an emotional trip shared between a father and a dutiful son. James Hendricks set off from his Austin, Texas, home in mid-July and headed west. He was carrying the ashes of his father, Neil, and he planned to scatter them on a mountaintop in Nevada at the end of the trip.
In a series of Facebook posts titled “Travels with Neil: A Final Journey with My Father,” Hendricks, 66, shared photos as he stopped at lookouts and national parks along the way. He brought his father’s ashes with him as he climbed Guadalupe Peak in Texas. They were with him as he looked over the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
On July 28, Hendricks posted an update as he neared Moab, Utah, where he planned to hike Arches National Park. He said he would start at the crack of dawn to beat the traffic. It was the last log he would make in his journey to honor his father, who died in 2018. Hendricks was reported missing Aug. 1 by the motel at which he was staying. Park rangers found him dead later that day near the park’s Sand Dune Arch Trail, the National Park Service announced.
Hendricks’s death, which was reported by the San Antonio news outlet MySA, struck his close family of six siblings hard. They were due to gather in New York to scatter the ashes of another sibling in the family who had died, a trip Hendricks had also organized. “This feels like a bad movie,” sister Lisa Hendricks told The Washington Post.
Hendricks was openhearted and charismatic, family members said. He made friends through his work as a carpenter, helping neighbors with repairs and home construction projects, said Ruth Hendricks Brough, another one of Hendricks’ sisters. His network grew into a wider circle of friends who ranged from people he met contra dancing in Austin to followers on Facebook, where he indulged in a passion for nature by posting photos of his cat and exotic flowers he cultivated in a patio garden.
“Everything in the universe was alive to him,” Hendricks Brough said. “Even fossils and rocks, everything was alive.”
Lisa Hendricks, 72, said James Hendricks’ close relationship with their father — who gave him the childhood nickname “Squirrel” — was a testament to his kindness. The siblings had a turbulent childhood after Neil Hendricks left their mother, Lisa Hendricks said. But James Hendricks still devoted much of his time to caring for their parents in their old age.
James Hendricks, who was an experienced hiker, had been planning a final journey with his father’s ashes for years before the coronavirus pandemic postponed his trip, Lisa Hendricks said. In the meantime, an unlikely discovery gave the family another occasion to mourn: Authorities in Nevada contacted the family in February and said they believed they had found the remains of another one of their siblings, Ron Hendricks, who went missing in a snowstorm in Lake Tahoe, Calif., in 1992.
James Hendricks arranged a DNA test to confirm the remains belonged to his brother, Lisa Hendricks said. The family planned to gather in Ithaca, N.Y., where Ron Hendricks had earned his doctorate, to scatter his ashes in October.
Before then, James Hendricks insisted on hitting the road with his father. “We were about to get closure with Ronnie ... and now we’re dealing with Jimmy,” Lisa Hendricks said.
In his Facebook posts, James Hendricks gushed about the various parks and landmarks he stopped by on his drive west, with a whimsy that captured the carpenter’s personality, Lisa Hendricks said. He marveled at alpine flowers in Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park and a rolling sky of stars near Guadalupe Peak in Texas.
James Hendricks was planning to finish his trip in Reno, Nev., where his father had lived for several decades, said Hendricks Brough, 68. He also planned to hike in Lake Tahoe, where Ron Hendricks’ remains had been discovered.
Instead, his journey ended in Utah. Security footage from the motel James Hendricks was staying at showed him leaving in his van around 6:30 a.m. July 29, Hendricks Brough said. She added, he looked exhausted on the footage and stopped to steady himself.
Temperatures in Moab rose quickly that day and topped 100 degrees that afternoon, according to Weather Underground.
James Hendricks was found off-trail near the Sand Dune Arch Trail at Arches National Park — a 30-minute hike to a sandstone arch deemed “easy” by the National Park Service — but Hendricks Brough said he may have been attempting a more strenuous trail that connects to it. James Hendricks’ water bottle was empty.
ark rangers speculated he could have become dehydrated and disoriented from the summer heat, Hendricks Brough said, which may have been exacerbated by a diuretic James Hendricks was taking for his blood pressure. A spokesperson for Arches National Parks said Tuesday the National Park Service did not have an update on Hendricks’ cause of death.