I like the headline on this one: "Rescued hiker’s lesson: Always go prepared"
This is a classic lost hiker event with one mistake compounding with others. She had a self-drawn map that was destroyed when it got wet, etc.
Originally published October 10, 2014 at 8:46 PM
Rescued hiker’s lesson: Always go prepared
A 21-year-old Seattle woman rescued Thursday after becoming lost on a day hike in the Cascades said she knows it was “a little bit dumb” to take off on a wilderness trail with only her two dogs, one bottle of water, some beef jerky, trail mix and no survival gear.
By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter
Paula Reuter realizes now that she was perhaps overconfident and “a little bit dumb” to take off on a wilderness trail Monday with her two dogs, just one bottle of water, some beef jerky, trail mix, a single can of dog food and no survival gear.
“Experienced backpackers all have a story about how they got lost when they were young and stupid,” she said. “This is mine.”
The 21-year-old Seattle woman thought she’d be able to whip around the 11-mile Mount Defiance Trail in the Cascades near Snoqualmie Pass in just a couple of hours and be home in plenty of time to cook some nice salmon for dinner.
But Reuter, the manager of a Pioneer Square restaurant, lost her bearings after the trail petered out and both she and one of her dogs, Gracie, a 5-year-old greyhound and border collie mix, fell into a stream they were crossing, she said.
By the time she realized she was not where she expected to be, it was getting dark.
She said she “dug into the dirt a little” and settled into the hollow with Gracie and Addie, a 10-year-old border collie, inside her hoodie with her.
“We were having a good time. They huddled in next to me, and it was pretty much OK,” she said.
When she woke Tuesday morning, she couldn’t see through the mist, and she felt more disoriented than ever.
She didn’t have a phone signal, and the GPS images on her phone were blurry — she could see lakes and some terrain — but no names. Her plan was to try to get back to Interstate 90 or Mason Lake, where she thought she could get her bearings, but she couldn’t find her way to either.
Around 3 p.m., she made a fire on top of some big rocks with a hollow underneath. She, Gracie and Addie — both of whom she adopted just six weeks ago — crawled into a little open area under the rocks and slept in the “nice little oven.”
Reuter was reported missing at about 7 p.m. Tuesday, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office. Her car was found near the Ira Spring Trailhead, and deputies and search-and-rescue teams began hunting for her Wednesday morning, sheriff’s spokesman Detective Jason Stanley said.
On Wednesday, she was looking at her “crappy phone map” and thinking that if she could just “get around the mountain” maybe she would get a signal or get back to Mason Lake. The map she had drawn with a Sharpie before she hit the trail had been ruined when she fell into the water.
She worried about her older dog and began carrying Addie off and on and trying to lead the dogs through the brush rather than over slippery rocks, she said.
“I was worried about them the whole time, but they were super troopers,” she said.
As that day ended, she said, she decided to sit down and think. Part of her wanted to keep trying to find her own way back, but part of her also knew it was probably smarter to make another signal fire and stay put.
She figured somebody, her boss probably, would have reported her missing by then.
“It was hard to stop and sit still and make a fire and keep it going. I’m kind of stubborn,” she said. But she found a big log stretched across the Pratt River and decided to build a fire in the middle of the downed tree.
“It was open enough that I thought someone could see it,” she said.
The next day, Thursday, she stayed where she was.
During the time she was lost, Reuter and the dogs drank from streams. The dogs ate beef jerky while she foraged for wild mushrooms. Reuter said she’s very familiar with them and has harvested porcinis, angels wings, orange jellies and puff balls many times.
“It was very comforting to see so many I knew,” she said.
Finally, on Thursday afternoon, she was spotted by a helicopter crew about six miles from where she’d parked her car.
Because the chopper was low on fuel, two rescuers were sent down while the copter left to refuel.
“They dropped down two guys, and they got us all suited up. The dogs were put in a harness and they had to be muzzled to go up in the helicopter,” she said. When she saw the rescuers’ satellite phones, she recalls, she said to herself, “Oh, I want that.”
When they landed at an airstrip, she could see her parents, who had flown up from Fresno, Calif., and her Seattle friends, all of whom were awaiting her arrival.
Reuter was covered with scratches from wading through underbrush, but otherwise unharmed, the Sheriff’s Office said.
One of her friends took the dogs home and fed them a good meal, and later she and her parents went home.
Since then, her parents have been spoiling and babying her, she said. Her mom even mopped her floor.
Reuter said she is going to go hiking again, but she’s not going to be unprepared. She will have her survival gear, including a plastic tarp, dry tinder, more food, more layers of clothes and a good, waterproof map that shows the mountains, the ridgeline and the terrain. She’ll be taking the dogs, of course, and will probably go with another person as well.
“You might as well tell people I’m aware that it was kind of irresponsible and kind of dumb, but please also say that I definitely learned something,” she said.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024751368_losthikerxml.html
The Ten Essentials
These are the “Ten Essential Systems” that every hiker should carry. The Mountaineers developed its original Ten Essentials in the 1930s and updated the list into this “systems” approach in 2003:
• Navigation (map and compass)
• Sun protection (sunglasses and sunscreen)
• Insulation (extra clothing)
• Illumination (headlamp/flashlight)
• First-aid supplies
• Fire (waterproof matches/lighter/candles)
• Repair kit and tools, including knife
• Nutrition (extra food)
• Hydration (extra water)
• Emergency shelter
