Santa Barbara Boy Scouts Rescue Former Scoutmaster Lost in the Sierra Nevada

Santa Barbara Boy Scouts Rescue Former Scoutmaster Lost in the Sierra Nevada -
Douglas Montgomery, 78, Was Stranded During Two-Week Solo Backpacking Trip that Became Test of Survival After He Lost His Pack

The Santa Barbara Independent https://share.google/nlM3ruqmEeyryxBZT


The Santa Barbara–based troop, Troop 26, was on day four of a seven-day backpacking trip through the Emigrant Wilderness, a part of Stanislaus National Forest that borders Yosemite National Park. Nine younger scouts, all around 12 years old, were accompanied by five adult leaders. They were carrying 40-pound packs, navigating through lakes and meadows, and practicing the same skills that generations of Scouts before them had been taught.

The man they found — standing alone in a high-altitude meadow near Long Lake — was not a stranger to those skills. His name is Douglas Montgomery. He’s 78. And he’s an Eagle Scout.

“I’m an Eagle Scout from Troop 10 in Burlingame,” Montgomery said in an interview with the Independent. “We took Scouts into the Emigrant Wilderness for about 20 years, starting in 1963. At one point, we had 95 Scouts in there.”

But this time, Montgomery wasn’t leading a trip. He was lost. He was on a 14-day backpacking trip that became a test of survival after he lost his pack. Without his backpack, he no longer had shelter, food, water, medication, or a way to communicate.

The solo trip was supposed to be two weeks. He’d hired a horse to take him to Upper Emigrant Meadow Lake and planned to hike out toward Kennedy Meadows on a trail he hadn’t taken in 50 years.

At some point along the trail, Montgomery says he set his pack down to scout ahead. Then he couldn’t find it again.