Alex Stevens
New York officials say the hiker whose body was found near Wallface Mountain in the Adirondacks on Monday survived for two weeks in the wilderness before dying of pneumonia.
Alex Stevens, 28, of Hopewell, New Jersey, had been last seen on September 2 at a trailhead near Wallface. Authorities began searching for him on September 9 after friends reported him missing.
According to an article on AdirondackEnterprise.com, the coroner and medical examiner says Stevens died from bronchial pneumonia resulting from a lack of food, a constant wet environment and the cold. The coroner said these factors all contributed to mucus building up in Stevens’s lungs and bronchi, eventually killing him after two weeks in the wilderness, and roughly three days before his body was found.
While Stevens was in the wilderness, nighttime temperatures fluctuated between 28 and 52 degrees, with rainfall of more than half an inch on some days.