This Boy Scout Troop Rescued A 78-Year-Old Backpacker Lost In The California Wilds
Boy Scouts and other similar organizations are all about teaching young people real skills that could come in handy one day, especially skills relating to the outdoors. Survival, camping, backpacking, they're taught all they should know about being outdoors, which includes what to do in an emergency.
That's why, when one Boy Scout troop needed to jump into action while on an excursion, they knew exactly what to do.
Into The Wilds
The Emigrant Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada mountain range is 113,000 acres of beautiful, yet tricky terrain that challenges even the most experienced hikers and backpackers. When Boy Scout Troop 26 of Santa Barbara, California arrived, they were prepared for a week in the wild lands, ready to band together and enjoy the trip.
What they didn't expect was to find someone else out there, someone who desperately needed their help.
An Unexpected Find
The troop stumbled upon an older man on day four of their excursion, and they were immediately worried about him.
The man, 78-year-old Douglas Montgomery, was on a two-week solo trip when he fell in a lake and everything got turned on its head. He lost his pack full of supplies and became lost himself once he resurfaced, having to rely on his own survival know-how to stay alive until he found help.
Extreme Survival
"I crammed myself between several lodgepole pines and covered myself with loam," Montgomery told the Santa Barbara Independent. “I kept myself busy all night tweaking the loam over parts of my body that were exposed to the air. I complained about the cold many times, yelling out of the darkness.”
Thankfully, he had all of this knowledge because he, too, was a Boy Scout. In fact, he was an Eagle Scout and a former Scoutmaster. He had walked the exact trail Troop 26 was on in the '60s with his own Troop 10.
A Miraculous Find
Montgomery had been without his pack for two days when Troop 26 found him wandering aimlessly through the woods.
"There were a lot of red flags. The biggest one was how confused he was," M-J Hey, Troop 26 scoutmaster, told Outdoor Life. "He was very polite, but he was quite disoriented. He was all over the place, so I knew something else was going on. And he just had on a pair of trousers and a thin shirt. That was it. That really gave me cause for thought."
Found Then Lost
Of course, they all leapt to help Montgomery, the scouts earning their first-aid merit badges by tending to his wounds.
"When we got to him, I asked him where he thought he was and he was a complete 15 miles off course," said Hey. “He did bump into hikers and they gave him directions but no help. More than anything, I was upset to hear that. He was anxious and concerned. He was in a bad spot.”
Immediate Action
Hey organized the rescue mission and assigned tasks to the scouts, who helped get Montgomery warm, hydrated, and fed. They transmitted a call for help, and three hours later a helicopter arrived to help get Montgomery out of the woods and into some proper medical care.
He made a full recovery and is back to traveling as he was before, though perhaps a little extra carefully now.
The Lesson Of A Lifetime
As for Troop 26, Hey recognizes that this was an immensely powerful experience for the young boys, and one that he knew would stick with them.
"We sat around the campfire that night and I was peppered with questions," Hey says. “I thought it was so lovely to be able to go through the entire thought process with the boys. What I saw, what my options were, why I made certain decisions. [...] What I wanted the scouts to get out of it was how they can really have a huge impact in the real world. I wanted to look after Montgomery and save him, but I also wanted the scouts to see how important their skills are. And they got the message in droves.”