Sorry to disturb the sheeplike passivity, Estes Park, but

I walked the route today from where the vehicle was located to where Ms. Fowler's body was recovered (roughly, I'm not exactly sure where the group of fishermen were in the Big Thompson when the body was recovered).

Did you hike/walk down to the bottom of where the car potentially landed near the "Welcome to Estes Park" sign?  I'm not a race car driver, but that is a tight window to get between the sign and the guard rail at high speed, which I think would have been necessary in order to get over the first group of boulders.  I don't see how the car survived intact, or how Ms. Fowler (if she was driving) survived the plunge, unless she had a seatbelt on (or was ejected early on) and the airbags deployed.  Did you see the plastic car part about 10 feet up in the tree branch?  Did you see the car battery near where all the activity appeared to be taking place to prepare the car to get it towed out of there?  I have to think the car battery was removed as a precaution prior to towing, rather than getting thrown from under the hood as the car was careening down the hill, landing in an undisturbed spot.

The reason I'm puzzled from a distance is, to get from there to the Big Thompson is a bit of a hike, and a hike you would actively want to take, rather than find help by going back to the road, or following any of the two dirt roads you would have to cross on your way to the Big Thompson (crossing the dirt road to Crocker Ranch and the dirt road offshoot of Mall Road).  I crossed six different fences on the way to the Big Thompson - either Ms. Fowler was disoriented or not, had partial impairment of sight/hearing or not, but you can't just avoid the barbwire fences.  I'm likely taller than she was - I could straddle them somewhat easily where there weren't places to go under, I suppose she could have walked along them until a simpler crossing point presented itself, but I can't imagine any path to the river that didn't involve having to find a way to get over some of them.

I don't know the working theory without foul play versus with foul play.  I'm not a genius, just someone who wonders how this happened without someone seeing her prior to entering the water, especially if the rumors of her not being dressed for the weather are true, and in fact (as some people claim, but not having talked to any of the fishing group who recovered her, since I'm not a reporter) stripped down to her undergarments.  I would think she would have had to be wearing shoes to make this hike.  It's downhill for the most part, there are game trails or washes she could have followed, but on a cold day with snow on the ground, I don't see how she would have been able to avoid rocks or sticks or things that would have left her feet noticeably marked up or wounded.  And if the working theory is "no foul play and acting on her own", either she is disoriented after the crash and just stumbles into the water (after crossing six fences, and being far enough away from any houses on the way to avoid being seen), or she purposefully enters the water (as if the car crash didn't end her life, so now she has to have a plan B).  There are parts of the Big Thompson down near Mall Road that are not the main channel, so she would have had to walk through those to get into the main channel.  And again, why attempt to cross the river if she is attempting to survive and report the car accident - because she saw buildings across the Big Thompson and thought she could walk to them?

If there was foul play, with someone else involved, is she running from them after the car crash (but that would then require two people not being seen during daylight hours going through semi-residential neighborhoods or open meadows near two high-traffic roads (on most days, I get that it was snowing that day))?  Is she dumped into the Big Thompson from close to where a car could drive?  There aren't really any places that wouldn't be visible from either Mall Road or Highway 34, so someone would really have to be reckless/lucky to dump a body in the Big Thompson below the dam without being seen, then hide the car and somehow get it off Highway 36 where it wouldn't be spotted for days (or take it out that particular day when it was found, and somehow get it off the road without being injured).

There is one Facebook thread which started all this confusion, well before the newspaper accounts, on the evening of finding the body in the river, when a woman claimed her husband coming back from work had seen the body floating in the water, and had gone down to provide assistance, and was pretty shook up.  The comments connected to this thread were "she's dead/no she's alive/no she's dead" until finally, the next day, it became clear that she had passed away.  I have heard that this story was later "recanted" after the fishing group stepped forward and said they were the group responsible for recovering the body.  When Ms. Fowler's family came to Estes Park a few days later, they spoke with friends of mine at a house that was mentioned in the initial post as being near the activity.  My friends were surprised that the family didn't have any answers, and had been forced to come to Estes Park to try finding these answers.  They said the father or brother said Ms. Fowler had undergone a surgery, which confuses me even more, since it would seem less than ideal to perform a surgery within a few hours after recovering a near-lifeless body from the river unless Ms. Fowler was bleeding into her head or lungs or abdomen, or the medical team discovered some other complication they felt she was stable enough to treat surgically under anesthesia, or they had no other choice.

As I neared the Big Thompson today, I disturbed three mother elk and their babies.  I doubt if they were there when Ms. Fowler entered the water, but I wished so badly they could have been, some glimpse of beauty to calm whatever troubled her, or whatever evil had been done to her.  The numinous intersects our earthly world so infrequently, but the Big Thompson meadow in a certain light, mountain iris bent to the sun, offers a fleeting view.

In any event, I'm going to post the latest update after my hike today on Estes Park's alternative news source http://www.epgarbage.blogspot.com

because it is clear the Trail-Gazette is through covering this except for whatever press releases cross the wire.  There are folks here in Estes Park, including me, who are willing to accept "no foul play" once every effort has been undertaken and every theory heard without judgement and every path from the car to the water followed to make sure there was no foul play, folks who don't think this event should be written off as "no foul play" simply because that's the easiest way out, and too problematic or messy or upsetting to explain otherwise, because Estes Park is a tourist town and we don't want to scare folks.