KallMeKris

And a subsequent trip Mahoud made in March of 2010 turned up German health insurance cards in Cornelia's and Max's names.

and a set of European house keys in the surrounding terrain.

And Interpol's missing persons database still carries active entries for Georg Rimkus and Max Meyer.

This is not because there is any serious question what actually happened to them or any real uncertainty about where they had ended up, but it's just a bureaucratic reality of forensic identification because without a confirmed DNA match, the cases cannot be formally closed.

But we know almost for certain that four people died in that desert.

Egbert, Cornelia, Max, and Georg.

But even with all that information, there's still the question as to how exactly they got there.

How did they end up nine miles from a van?

And how did the van end up where they were going?

And with Mahoud's help, we have a pretty good idea.

And the answer starts two weeks earlier on a mountain road in the Panamint Range.

Because the pass Cornelia wrote about in the guest log is known as Mengel Pass.

And Mengel Pass, as any park ranger or experienced desert traveler could have told them, is not a road.

It is one of Death Valley's most technical demanding four-wheel drive routes, a trail through boulder fields, loose rock, and steep grades that require high clearance and low range four-wheel drive, and an experienced driver who knows exactly what they are getting into.

And the trail climbing toward it from the valley side earns its difficult rating through sheer accumulated hostility.

And the surface is a mixture of loose rock, embedded boulders, deep ruts, and sections of exposed bedrock where the trail narrows to a width that requires precise tire placement.

And the grade in certain sections is steep enough that a vehicle without low range four wheel drive and meaningful ground clearance will simply lose traction and stop or begin sliding backward.

An experienced driver in a V8 Land Rover Defender with locking differentials, a two-speed transfer case, and tires aired down to 25 PSI has written that crossing the pass required all of that firepower.

And Tom Mahoud put it simply, saying, quote, a Plymouth Voyager could not surmount Mengel Pass.

The vehicle had 5.3 inches of ground clearance, highway tires, a front-wheel drive automatic transmission,