A group of Eagle Scouts spending a week in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains located a lost 78-year-old man, per SFGATE.
The nine Eagle Scouts and their troop leader, who were visiting from Santa Monica, found Douglas Montgomery standing in the middle of a field in the Emigrant Wilderness without any hiking or camping equipment and appearing ill. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) later confirmed that Montgomery is an experienced adventurer and, coincidentally, spent 20 years as a scoutmaster himself.
Montgomery set out on a two week solo hiking expedition, something he’d embarked upon many times before, bu the ran into trouble early on in his journey. He became lost after losing his way, straying 15 miles away from his intended destination. At one point, he set down his backpack to get a better view of his surroundings. When he returned to the area where he thought he left his pack, it was gone. As a result, Montgomery spent several days without food, gear, water, or his GPS system. By the time he was found, Montgomery had been suffering from hypothermia for two days.
“We started very quickly realizing that he wasn’t all right,” scoutmaster Michael-James Hey recalled to the outlet. “He was looking really bedraggled. He’s got cuts all over his hands. He’s very unsteady on his feet, and he’s being polite, but he’s pretty out of it.”
Montgomery Utilized His Survival Instincts
Montgomery survived by covering himself in foliage, where he slept with scant protection from the elements. He subsisted only on water from nearby puddles, which was barely enough to keep him alive. When he was found, Hey said Montgomery was struggling to stand on his own. Hey was in a difficult position. “I pulled him down and got some food into him, got electrolytes into him, and started getting him to heat up,” Hey said. “And then I had to make this choice around, you know, do I call a rescue here? Is this something I can deal with myself?”
After Hey and his assistant troopmaster discovered that Montgomery had gone for several days without essential medication, they made the decision to alert rescue services. Three hours later, Todd Brethour, of the CHP’s Air Operations division, arrived in his helicopter and airlifted Montgomery to a nearby pack station, where his niece was waiting to pick him up. “He seemed in good spirits,” Brethour said. “He seemed, I think, consistent with somebody who had spent the night outdoors with minimal gear.”
It Was Good Experience for the Scouts
Hey was relieved that he and his troop found Montgomery when they did, but he also found the incident valuable experience for his burgeoning scouts. “They saw how useful that stuff really was when you get into trouble, all the preparation and having some navigation tools with you and knowing which way is north, and how it’s important to leave a plan,” he explained. “So all of those real fundamentals, a lot of them took those lessons to heart, because it just made it really visceral for them. And they got it, and they were like, ‘Wow, this is really incredible.’”
