M Cave and the Unexplained Disappearance of Kenny Veach (2019) | Hacker News Reader

M Cave and the Unexplained Disappearance of Kenny Veach (2019)

nevadamagazine.com

22 pointsrossant8 comments

Man goes regularly hiking for days at a time on unmarked trails by himself into the desert with no emergency beacon. Occam's razor would suggest that him going missing and his youtube comments from a couple months prior are just unrelated.

Someone claiming to be his girlfriend showed up in the comments as well saying he was suicidal. Probably the most elegant explanation.

As far as the M Cave weirdness - people say all sorts of stuff on social media for attention. As they say, "Pics, or it didn't happen".

I was expecting that someone found the cave and had an explanation for the vibration he felt - such as sound waves from wind going through the opening.

IIRC There was some followup hikers that explored and found a cave/entrance near a military area which sort of looked like the described one, only that it had been caved in (which they couldn't judge if natural or man-made). Not sure about the 'validity' or if they just wanted to contribute to the story.

This video summary contains exactly that:

https://youtu.be/AazxDk1ODVo

And actually - it has 2 "M Cave" candidates which people have visited since. One - probably the wrong cave (high up, when M Cave was ground level). The other one, I feel it's a tall order that it's been "filled in". While strange, the M-Shaped cave found mostly filled with different colored sedimentary rock, it doesn't resemble any kind of man-made mortar/concrete/etc.

The military's style is to just pour high PSI concrete into a mold and call it a day, not to try to emulate natural sedimentary rock and half-ass block a cave in a way that a prybar can get past.

All in all - the real M Cave (if indeed there was one to begin with), it's appearance and approximate location is only known to someone who is not likely to ever be seen again.

This must have taken off as widely known YouTube lore, because within 5 seconds of the caver's greeting in the M Cave video, my 8 year old said, "Oh, are you looking up Kenny Veach?" My 12-year-old didn't know the name and came to look at the video, and he said, "Ahh, you mean snakebit McGee. Yeah, he's super interesting"

Sorry for the aside. Hope it's relatable.

One thing to keep in mind if thinking it should be easy to find this guy: The desert is big, looks a lot alike, and is more dynamic than people give it credit for. Earthquakes, floods, and other natural things can alter the landscape in subtle ways. Many high yield prospects were lost when prospectors could never find them again for such reasons, leading to many legends of "lost" mines.

I also think it's most likely that the man didn't want to be found, sadly. He wouldn't be the first.

A Horse With No Name? Carlos Castaneda had some weird trips in the desert

Reply on news.ycombinator.com