How we reported this story: Backpacker spoke with an incident commander for one of the teams that responded to a call in Cibola National Forest and went through public statements by the rescue outfits involved to paint the picture of a hiker’s narrow escape in New Mexico.
On October 10, Cibola Search and Rescue and Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council responded to a 3 a.m. call about a 69-year-old hiker who was missing on Mount Taylor in northwestern New Mexico.
Lauri Dodge, a Cibola SAR team member and the incident commander for the call, told Backpacker that the hiker had planned to dayhike on Mount Taylor but he lost cell service and got turned around.
The highest point in Cibola National Forest, summiting the 11,301-foot stratovolcano most commonly involves a 6.3-mile round-trip hike with 2,000 feet of elevation gain and 360-degree views on the top. The hike involves navigating dirt trails, conifer forests, meadows, and rocky outcroppings on the summit of the mountain.
Fortunately, his son had downloaded the Life 360 app on his dad’s phone prior to his trip, which allowed him to identify that something had gone wrong. His son called 911, prompting a rescue.
The app also provided rough data points for rescuers. In a Facebook post, Cibola Search and Rescue explained that Tyler Mobraten of Socorro SAR and Tayo Basquiat of Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council used a number of different skills to locate the stranded hiker, “They put every skill they had into finding the subject starting with putting radios on the same repeater, then hiking cross country in rugged high mountain terrain, finding tracks and using tracking skills, using sound sweeps which located the subject high up on a ridge.”
By the time that rescuers found the hiker, he was mildly hypothermic, and severely dehydrated. He was writing farewell messages to his family, thinking he wouldn’t make it through the night. “But he had the smarts to be able to stay put when he got lost,” said Dodge, which helped first responders locate him.
Rescue personnel evaluated the hiker, and warmed and rehydrated him before slowly descending the peak over the course of 3 hours to meet a UTV. The vehicle took the hiker to an ambulance, which transferred him to a helicopter for transport to the hospital. The hiker is back in his home state of Kansas, feeling sore but recovering.
In the wake of the incident, Dodge recommended that hikers leave their plans with a loved one and carry an emergency device or app like Life360 or a Garmin inReach.
“New Mexico has a lot of beautiful mountains to go explore, but they are very rugged and they’re very high, and a lot of them are very remote,” Dodge said “Therefore, we really want people to be aware of what they’re getting into if they decide to come hike our mountains.”
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