At first, his 12-year-old Charlie Hey didn’t think much about it when his Boy Scout unit passed an old man and stood on the edge of a trail deep in the immigration wilderness.
That man, Douglas Montgomery, 78, was wearing what he wore under Sierra conditions, and strangely, had no water.
Charlie said, “I thought, ‘Oh, he’s hiking.’
After a few steps behind the boy, Scout Master MJ Hey – Charlie’s Father – wasn’t shocked at least at first. “He doesn’t look like he’s in a big dilemma,” the elder Hey recalled.
But hey, I was trained in search and rescue, so he talked to Montgomery and asked some important questions. He recalled, “My partner, do you have a backpack?”
The Montgomery story is a long story. It landed in places like Vietnam and Alaska, and finally took a helicopter to take the safety of Montgomery, and finally sobered up in the rules of survival in the wilderness, but ultimately exciting lessons26.
Montgomery is experienced in the wilderness and is a former Boy Scout himself. But during this trek he lost his backpack and has since been at the mercy of elements, hunger, dehydrated and trembling. When the 26th unit arrived, he was in trouble while walking.
“It really hit the house,” Charlie said. “Wow, anyone can happen.”
“Yes,” Montgomery said in a recent interview. However, he added that the trip also contained one important thing, but it was an important thing for him. “I made myself lose my backpack,” he said. “I’m 78 years old, so I shouldn’t be there, but I really liked it and I didn’t give it up until it proved that I couldn’t do anything anymore.”
The nine boys of Unit 26 set off on August 2 and crossed a six-night trek north of Yosemite. On the fourth day, the boys were with five adults – when they met Montgomery, they headed to their campsite from a campground near Long Lake.
As Montgomery said, he had fallen into a lake, hurting his neck and soaked. He crawled into his sleeping bag without supper, because he knew it was more important than eating before it fell on a cold night. He said the next morning he had breakfast and took off his backpack with all his survival gear, including rescue devices, to scout his own way.
Then, somehow, he lost his backpack and walked the opposite direction he thought he was heading.
He spent a cold night on the element, cushioning himself with a pine needle.
“When the sun rises,” he said, realizing, “I can’t walk. The coldness of the night makes me walk. I have to wait for the sun to hit me before I can walk.”
“I’m getting colder,” he said. “When is that when is that [Troop 26] Here comes. ”
Montgomery said he thought he might be OK anyway. He returned to the trail, where there were plenty of people in the area to help him.
Hey? The situation in Montgomery is even more important.
Once he started talking to Montgomery, hey said, “All the flags started to rise for me.” Hey said, Montgomery was not “completely coherent”, miles from what he thought he was, and seemed unstable on his feet.
Hey it’s British, he spent his childhood training in the RAF and then moved to Santa Barbara after working in the oil industry. He said he soon determined that they needed to take the man out of the wilderness.
The question is how. He and three leaders sent the Boy from Unit 26 to the next campsite. He and the troops’ assistant scout Orin Rowe stayed behind to make plans.
They helped Montgomery settle on a rock in the sun, provided him with food and electrolytes donated by the Scouts from their supplies, and used their Garmin satellite system to summon help.
(This also triggered an alarm about Hey’s wife. Worrying that this would cause panic among the parents of Unit 26, Hey sent more messages via satellite to keep calm.)
Hey spoke with rescuers to give a closer look at Montgomery’s condition, including prescription drugs that have not been seen since losing his backpack. The California Highway Patrol dispatched a helicopter.
Hey and Montgomery traded the story as they waited.
Montgomery is also narrated in a story Santa Barbara IndependenceTell Hey, he was on a two-week personal backpacking trip when he lost his backpack and then how he felt about his position.
He lived the kind of life that convinced him to travel on a 9,000-foot high, a reasonable feat. As Hey and Hey and Santa Barbara Independent said, Montgomery is backpacking or cycling throughout South America, including Argentina and Chile, including India and Asia, including India and the Himalayas. He also conquered almost every mountain range on the west coast.
Suitable is that he was rescued by the boy scouts on the mountain and was very close to home. He was an Eagle Scout in his youth, and then a Boy Scout. “The troops in Berlinger 10,” he told Santa Barbara Independence. “We brought the Boy Scouts into the Immigration Wilderness for about 20 years.”
While Hey and Rowe and Montgomery were waiting for the rescue helicopter, the 26th team boys continued to Toejam Lake, where they set up camp. Charlie said they saw the helicopter low, landing, and flying away again with Montgomery. His niece met him when she landed near the highway. He recovered enough to go home to return to San Francisco.
Rowe and Hey arrived at Toejam Lake shortly after. That night, they sat by the campfire and talked about the outstanding life of the man they saved and the lessons learned from his plight.
“What’s scary is that he really needs help,” Charlie said.
Hey, he spent hours figuring out how to prepare for his reconnaissance unit, and he said he couldn’t design “better scenarios to make the training very intrinsic and real”.
“It’s a powerful lesson about the importance of preparing for dangers that can easily occur in the wilderness,” he said. “Whether in which case you are, you [should] There is always yours [survival] The key points in your body. ”
It’s also “they will carry a story in their lives.”
Montgomery said that, in his case, he was happy to meet Unit 26 because they rescued him and because he thought it was very important to teach young people “how to live in the wilderness.” Such lessons not only open up a magical world of mountain vision, but also teach civilization’s responsibility and self-esteem.
He said: “Thanks to the Force 26.”
