Just after midnight on Saturday, July 6th, the Brigade received a request for ground teams to help locate a young woman overdue from a day hike to Hidden Lake in the Pecos Wilderness. Four Brigade members responded and arrived at incident base a couple of hours later. Around the same time, four members from the three Santa Fe SAR teams—Atalaya SAR, Santa Fe SAR Group, and Skyline SAR—also arrived.
The Incident Commander determined that the most effective use of resources would be to form three teams of three. One Brigade member teamed up with two members from Santa Fe. Chris Frankle captured his teammates searching their assigned area.
Meanwhile, the other three Brigade members—including one of our newest, on his very first mission—were assigned to cover trails leading away from the trailhead, in case the hiker had mistakenly taken a wrong turn. Most of our hiking took place in the dark, but by morning, we began to see how beautiful the wilderness truly was.
The hiker was eventually located by a Santa Fe team that had hiked toward her intended destination at Hidden Lake. She was camped at Trampas Lakes in good health, a little ways below. Her plan had always been to stay overnight, but a miscommunication led her family to call SAR when she didn’t return that evening.
Every mission reminds us why we do this work. I especially like hiking through nighttime wilderness and am glad when we can team up with fellow responders from other teams, it’s the shared dedication so that others may live.
