Woman dies after sweltering hike with man she’d just met
A hiker who cut short a trek through an Arizona mountain with a man she’d just met was found dead hours later amid sweltering temperatures, according to reports.
The body of the woman, identified in reports as Angela Tramonte, 31, was discovered Friday off the Echo Canyon Trail near a home on the northeast side of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, the Phoenix Fire Department said.
Rescue teams responded to the 2,706-foot peak after Tramonte “turned around halfway” up the trail and did not return to a parking lot.
A man hiking with Tramonte had called cops about four hours earlier to report that she turned around about halfway into their trip because she was overheated, the Arizona Republic reported.
But the woman wasn’t at the parking lot, where all of her belongings were discovered still inside a car, Phoenix Fire Department Capt. Ron McDade told the newspaper.
Tramonte, who lived in Saugus, Massachusetts, was later found unresponsive and pronounced dead despite attempts to revive her, McDade said.
CBS Boston reported Sunday that Tramonte was visiting Phoenix for the first time after meeting a man on Instagram.
That man – who works as a police officer, according to Tramonte’s friends – wanted to keep going, so the pair split up. Some of the woman’s friends are now questioning the circumstances surrounding her death, according to the report.
“If somebody’s walking up a mountain and you’re seeing her in distress and she’s not feeling well and she’s exhausted – why wouldn’t you walk her back down?” Tramonte’s friend Stacey Gerardi said. “Why would you continue to walk back up? It doesn’t make sense.”
Gerardi said she wanted “justice” in her friend’s unexpected death just one day after she arrived in Arizona.
“Not even 24 hours and she’s dead,” Gerardi said. “We want justice. We want answers. We need to keep pushing. That was my sister. We had 25 years of friendship.”
Foul play is not expected in Tramonte’s death, a spokeswoman for Phoenix police told the Arizona Republic. Her cause of death will be determined by a medical examiner.
Investigators said the woman appeared to not have water with her when she was found and was possibly trying to get help as temps in Phoenix reached 104 degrees Friday, the Boston Globe reported.
“But at that point in time, [she] could have conceivably been in the early stages of heat exhaustion and heatstroke, where you become delirious, and unfortunately, your faculties are not about you,” McDade told the Globe.
The woman’s companion, meanwhile, told authorities he was experienced on the mountain, having hiked it previously “from the top to the bottom” – even during summer months.
“It’s very unforgiving, is the word I like to use,” McDade said of Camelback. “This mountain doesn’t care who you are, or how great of a hiker or an experienced hiker you are. The mountain, in a situation like that, usually wins.”
McDade told KPNX it’s never a good idea to split up while hiking.
“If you start as a group, you should end as a group,” McDade told the station.
An online fundraiser set up in Tramonte’s memory said she went to Arizona after talking to a man online for two months.
“Halfway up the mountain, Angela told this man, who is a police officer and first responder, that she was exhausted and couldn’t continue,” the website reads. “She supposedly walked back down the mountain ALONE to the car while this man continued on by himself. He clearly has no regard for her safety.”
