An exciting evening last night
It didn’t start out exciting. Ron spent most of the afternoon cleaning up down tree limbs. He piled them down below the barn, where we like to have our larger bonfires.
So we are sitting there with a fire going, drinking beer, talking, and listening to music. Just a nice relaxing Saturday night.
Then I notice headlights shining across the field. Someone is at the house. Walk around the barn up towards the house and see that it’s a man in uniform knocking on our door.
My first thought was oh crud, there is a burn ban on and he’s here to give us a ticket. But no, the deputy sheriff walked down to meet me in the yard and said that some hikers were lost and from the GPS they were down the hill from us. Could he drive closer to that little valley? Sure.
He drives down and starts doing his siren, talking to the hikers on a cell phone. Can they hear that? Yes they can.
So he leaves with his flashlight, and I told him which way to go to find a path rather than a steep bluff.
Ron and I took the jump starter and our spot light to help things along a bit. Ron could hear them calling back and forth, and then pretty soon here came a girl scrambling up the side of the hill. It’s pitch black, no moon and pretty cold, too. I offered one of my jackets, but what she really wanted was a cigarette from Ron.
After a few minutes another girl came climbing up the hillside. She has a little puppy that she’s carrying. The deputy was close behind and we herded the girls around the pond to the deputies’ car. He gave them a bottle of water and moved stuff out of his backseat so they could get in the car.
It was 8 pm. I don’t know how long they’d been out there hiking, but they were definitely heading in the wrong direction! They’d started from Lincoln lake, which the entrance to is about 2 miles north. The lake itself is closer but it’s pretty dense woods down in that valley to be stumbling around in. Good thing they had a cell phone and could get a signal down in there… and really good that it had a gps signal. 21 year old kids, underdressed for hiking, and lost in the dark but they keep walking, sheesh!
The deputy could have shone his headlights and spotlight into the woods better, but he didn’t. The girls headed for our spotlight that they could see.
After they left, we sat around for a couple more hours talking about it. When you are lost, you aren’t supposed to keep walking… especially in the dark. That’s a good way to get hurt. If they had gone any further south from us they wouldn’t have been rescued as quickly, no good access from the road and no houses for a mile.
Anyhow, it’s not every day we get to be involved in a lost hiker rescue. :)
hugs,
Vyx
P.S. I took a photo of the valley, sort of… you can’t really see how deep it is because of the trees.
It’s about a 200 foot drop, rather steep in some places.
Wow! That was an exciting night.
All cell phones can be tracked these days. You have to go out of your way to turn it off.
those girls were very lucky (stupid or uneducated) but lucky. And what the heck r they doing out like that w/ a puppy. We have peeps here in the desert, & they get found dead.
PS ty for sharing =-)