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September/October 2010 ADIRONDACK LIFE 37

L STDOZENS OF ADIRONDACK HIKERS AND

HUNTERS GO MISSING EVERY YEAR. MODERN TECHNOLOGY IS NO MATCH

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September/October 2010 ADIRONDACK LIFE 3938 ADIRONDACK LIFE September/October 2010

along with borders such as roads and streams, served as unoffi-cial guidelines. The next step was to scour areas where the sub -ject would most likely have gone missing, especially trails anddrainages, in search of clues that might direct the efforts.

“We hate circles when we’re searching,” George explained,peeling back layers of plastic. “We want to narrow it down to apiece of pie.” In both the Coloney and LaForest cases, though,not a single footprint, scrap of paper or piece of clothing wasfound. Both men—45 years old and relatively experienced in theoutdoors—had disappeared.

One year later, in June 2007, two fishermen in the West Cana-da Lake Wilderness found an abandoned tent 16 miles fromthe nearest trailhead just below Mud Lake. It was linked to IreneHorne—a wanderer and hitchhiker who had been in and out ofprison and was believed to be squatting in the region—and con-tained most of her personal belongings. The tent had collapsed.There were two to three years of leaf litter inside and small treesgrowing out of the top. There has been no sign of Horne since.

The Adirondacks was one of the first wilderness areasset aside in the United States. It was also one of the last to befully explored, the interior reaches remaining a kind of terra in -cognita until the mid-19th century. In his two-volume chroni-cle of the park, A History of the Adirondacks, Alfred C. Donald-son wrote, “Stanley had found Dr. Livingstone and familiarizedthe world with the depths of Africa before the average NewYorker knew anything definite about the wonderful wildernesslying almost at his back door.”

The earliest known map of the region, published in 1570 byAbraham Ortelius, father of the first modern atlas and geogra-pher to King Philip II of Spain, showed an area in New Francereferred to as “Avacal,” which covered much of what is now north-ern New York. Nearly 50 years later a map of the New Nether-lands described territory on each side of Lake Champlain as “Iro-coisen,” but showed little detail. Governor Pownall’s 1776 mapof the British colonies acknowledged that the region was large-ly uncharted. Written across the top of the map was the follow-ing: “This vast tract of land which is the Ancient Couchsachrage,one of the four Beaver Hunting Countries of the Six Nations, isnot yet surveyed.” Only with Claude Joseph Sauth ier’s map of1777, Donaldson noted, is it that a “faint dawn of definiteness… begins to break over the mys tery of the Great Wilderness.”

Not long after the Adirondacks had been mapped people werelosing their way in it. Charles Dudley Warner, an essayist andfriend of Mark Twain, wrote one of the earliest accounts of beinglost here. (The phrase “Everybody complains about the weath-er, but nobody does anything about it,” often attributed to Twain,is actually Warner’s, and perhaps it came from spending so manysummers in the Adirondacks.) In an es say titled “Lost in theWoods,” first published in The At lanticMonthly in February 1878, Warner de -scribed how he got turned around try-ing to return to Keene Valley from acamp on the Upper Au sable. Hoping todo some fishing along the way, Warnerveered off the cart road he was following

and made for the river. “So sure was I of my whereabouts,” hewrote, “that I did not note the bend of the river, nor look at mycompass.” There was thunder, rain, and the skies grew dark. War -ner eventually found his way to the road, about three miles fromwhere he thought he was. The experience clearly humbled himand even modified his view of nature and wilderness. “The soci-ety of the least human being is better than this gigantic indif-ference,” he wrote. “The ‘rapture on the lonely shore’ is agreeableonly when you know you can at any moment go home.” InWalden, Thoreau took a slightly more romantic view of gettinglost. He wrote, “Not till we are completely lost, or turnedaround,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with hiseyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastnessand strangeness of Nature.”

The majority of hikers who set out for some kind of wilder-ness experience in the Adirondacks do return home. Accordingto DEC spokesman David Winchell, the Adirondack/NorthCountry region has averaged 84 searches a year since 2006, near-ly all successful. In the cases of hikers who aren’t found, it is al -most always a result of late notification, among other variables.Coloney, LaForest and Boomhower had all been missing forseveral days before the DEC was notified. The first 48 hoursafter a hiker has gone missing are absolutely crucial. Rangersoften say that the best protection against perishing in the woodsis making sure that someone knows precisely where you’re goingand when you plan to return. Traveling with a map and com-pass (and knowing how to use them), proper clothing and uti-lizing trail registers are also simple ways to diminish the chancesof getting—and staying—lost.

A 10-day search, totaling more than 4,000 man-hours by a teamof 56 Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for-est rangers and assistant rangers, the New York State Police, theHamilton County Sheriff ’s Department and scores of volunteerswho combed an approximately 35-square-mile area, failed toturn up a single clue. A slightly heavyset man in his 40s, Coloneyhad told family and friends that he was planning an eight- to 10-day camping trip. An assistant ranger fishing on his day off passedColoney’s campsite near the Lost Ponds trailhead on June 14.When he returned two days later and saw that nothing hadchanged he notified his superiors. The search commenced onthe morning of June 17, a dispiritingly windy and rainy day.

The Moose River Plains, and particularly the area north ofthe Lost Ponds trailhead where rangers focused their search, ischallenging terrain. The brush and forest cover are so dense that,off trail, you can travel no faster than half a mile per hour. GregGeorge, a forest ranger with 26 years of experience in the cen-tral Adirondacks, said that searchers on opposite sides of Sum-ner Stream were unable to spot each other. Coloney’s youngerbrother Jay, who joined the search, said that pockets of sprucewere so thick that “he could have been lying five feet away andyou never would have seen him.” In addition to being the largestexpanse of backcountry easily accessible by motor vehicle in theAdirondacks, the Moose River Plains is bordered by wildernessareas on three sides, including the 168,920-acre West CanadaLake tract, which has been described by the DEC as “some ofthe remotest lands and waters” in the park.

They also seem to be some of the most bewildering. Overthe years, the area between Blue Mountain Lake, Indian Lakeand the West Canada Lake Wilderness Area has accounted fora disproportionately high number of missing hikers. In June1990 David Boomhower, a 38-year-old postal worker fromLatham, New York, set out to hike the Northville-Placid Trail.Recently divorced, the solo odyssey seemed to be a kind of testfor Boomhower, who traveled with very little food and equip-ment. Beset by hunger and fatigue early on, he apparently struckout along the Colvin Brook–Sucker Brook trail in search of helpand lost his way. Four months later, a hunter uncovered his bodynear Lewey Lake state campground.

In October 1992 George Woltjen, a 60-year-old hunter fromQueens, disappeared in the Pine Lake area northeast of IndianLake. Three and a half years later his remains turned up in the

Cedar River, less than a half-mile fromwhere he was last seen. Sometime there-after, forest ranger Thomas Eakin re called,DEC staff began to refer to that territoryas the Blumuda Triangle, or simply the tri-angle. “It’s just because over the years we’vehad so many searches that have been ex -

tended searches in that area,” he said. Two months before Coloney disappeared and about 20 miles

from where he was last seen, George LaForest, an avid fisher-man with a home in Stillwater and a camp near Indian Lake,went missing. His truck was found near his favorite fishing holewith his wallet, cell phone and worms inside. The weekendbefore the search began a torrential downpour raised the levelof the Cedar River four feet in 24 hours. “That rain washed outhis tracks before we even started looking,” forest ranger lieu-tenant Steve Preston told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise inMay 2006. Though LaForest was a two- to three-pack-a-daysmoker, not a single cigarette butt was found over the course ofthe two-week search that included dive teams and canine units.

Last December I drove out to the Indian Lake DEC head-quarters—a wireless dead-zone, rendering my cell phone goodfor little more than telling time—to meet with Greg Georgeand Thomas Eakin, senior rangers and search-and-rescue vet-erans. Eakin, with 35 years of experience in the Lake Pleasantarea, is as much a wilderness detective as he is a forest ranger,carefully reconstructing the lives of lost hikers. As the authorsof a study on lost-person behavior in Alberta, Canada, write, “Itis often the case that the geographical setting is well known tothe search manager, but the psychology of the lost person is not.”Although the detective novel has traditionally been an urbanform, its heroes unsentimental city dwellers, one can imagineEakin cast as a character in a Raymond Chandler tale.

In the Coloney search, Eakin painstakingly reconstructed thehiker’s whereabouts and movements stretching back a year to2005. On the second day of the search, a red kayak was foundon Sumner Stream with a map of a different area printed off theInternet. Searchers weren’t sure the boat was Coloney’s, but Eak -in traced it back to where he purchased it and when. Judgingfrom changes of clothes at the campsite, rangers were able to con -clude that Coloney went missing three or four days after he setup camp. “We really don’t know what happened from there,”Eakin told me.

At headquarters I saw a record of the search. On a topo-graphic map, layers of plastic indicated the area covered eachday. A dotted black line showed the 4.5-mile range withinwhich 85 percent of people in Coloney’s class would likely befound (80 percent of missing hikers turn up within a three-mile radius of their last known location). The 4.5-mile range,

JACK COLONEY WAS LAST SEENON JUNE 6, 2006. HE VANISHED SEVERAL DAYS LATERIN THE MOOSE RIVER PLAINSWILD FOREST, ONE OF THE MOSTREMOTE YET ACCESSIBLEREGIONS OF THE ADIRONDACKPARK.

Boomhower had beenmissing for severaldays before the De -

partment of Environ-mental Conservationwas notified, ham -

pering search efforts. PO

STER

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>>>>lost_buyck.qxd 1/16/13 9:09 AM Page 38


along with borders such as roads and streams, served as unoffi-cial guidelines. The next step was to scour areas where the sub -ject would most likely have gone missing, especially trails anddrainages, in search of clues that might direct the efforts.

“We hate circles when we’re searching,” George explained,peeling back layers of plastic. “We want to narrow it down to apiece of pie.” In both the Coloney and LaForest cases, though,not a single footprint, scrap of paper or piece of clothing wasfound. Both men—45 years old and relatively experienced in theoutdoors—had disappeared.

One year later, in June 2007, two fishermen in the West Cana-da Lake Wilderness found an abandoned tent 16 miles fromthe nearest trailhead just below Mud Lake. It was linked to IreneHorne—a wanderer and hitchhiker who had been in and out ofprison and was believed to be squatting in the region—and con-tained most of her personal belongings. The tent had collapsed.There were two to three years of leaf litter inside and small treesgrowing out of the top. There has been no sign of Horne since.

The Adirondacks was one of the first wilderness areasset aside in the United States. It was also one of the last to befully explored, the interior reaches remaining a kind of terra in -cognita until the mid-19th century. In his two-volume chroni-cle of the park, A History of the Adirondacks, Alfred C. Donald-son wrote, “Stanley had found Dr. Livingstone and familiarizedthe world with the depths of Africa before the average NewYorker knew anything definite about the wonderful wildernesslying almost at his back door.”

The earliest known map of the region, published in 1570 byAbraham Ortelius, father of the first modern atlas and geogra-pher to King Philip II of Spain, showed an area in New Francereferred to as “Avacal,” which covered much of what is now north-ern New York. Nearly 50 years later a map of the New Nether-lands described territory on each side of Lake Champlain as “Iro-coisen,” but showed little detail. Governor Pownall’s 1776 mapof the British colonies acknowledged that the region was large-ly uncharted. Written across the top of the map was the follow-ing: “This vast tract of land which is the Ancient Couchsachrage,one of the four Beaver Hunting Countries of the Six Nations, isnot yet surveyed.” Only with Claude Joseph Sauth ier’s map of1777, Donaldson noted, is it that a “faint dawn of definiteness… begins to break over the mys tery of the Great Wilderness.”

Not long after the Adirondacks had been mapped people werelosing their way in it. Charles Dudley Warner, an essayist andfriend of Mark Twain, wrote one of the earliest accounts of beinglost here. (The phrase “Everybody complains about the weath-er, but nobody does anything about it,” often attributed to Twain,is actually Warner’s, and perhaps it came from spending so manysummers in the Adirondacks.) In an es say titled “Lost in theWoods,” first published in The At lanticMonthly in February 1878, Warner de -scribed how he got turned around try-ing to return to Keene Valley from acamp on the Upper Au sable. Hoping todo some fishing along the way, Warnerveered off the cart road he was following

and made for the river. “So sure was I of my whereabouts,” hewrote, “that I did not note the bend of the river, nor look at mycompass.” There was thunder, rain, and the skies grew dark. War -ner eventually found his way to the road, about three miles fromwhere he thought he was. The experience clearly humbled himand even modified his view of nature and wilderness. “The soci-ety of the least human being is better than this gigantic indif-ference,” he wrote. “The ‘rapture on the lonely shore’ is agreeableonly when you know you can at any moment go home.” InWalden, Thoreau took a slightly more romantic view of gettinglost. He wrote, “Not till we are completely lost, or turnedaround,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with hiseyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastnessand strangeness of Nature.”

The majority of hikers who set out for some kind of wilder-ness experience in the Adirondacks do return home. Accordingto DEC spokesman David Winchell, the Adirondack/NorthCountry region has averaged 84 searches a year since 2006, near-ly all successful. In the cases of hikers who aren’t found, it is al -most always a result of late notification, among other variables.Coloney, LaForest and Boomhower had all been missing forseveral days before the DEC was notified. The first 48 hoursafter a hiker has gone missing are absolutely crucial. Rangersoften say that the best protection against perishing in the woodsis making sure that someone knows precisely where you’re goingand when you plan to return. Traveling with a map and com-pass (and knowing how to use them), proper clothing and uti-lizing trail registers are also simple ways to diminish the chancesof getting—and staying—lost.

A 10-day search, totaling more than 4,000 man-hours by a teamof 56 Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for-est rangers and assistant rangers, the New York State Police, theHamilton County Sheriff ’s Department and scores of volunteerswho combed an approximately 35-square-mile area, failed toturn up a single clue. A slightly heavyset man in his 40s, Coloneyhad told family and friends that he was planning an eight- to 10-day camping trip. An assistant ranger fishing on his day off passedColoney’s campsite near the Lost Ponds trailhead on June 14.When he returned two days later and saw that nothing hadchanged he notified his superiors. The search commenced onthe morning of June 17, a dispiritingly windy and rainy day.

The Moose River Plains, and particularly the area north ofthe Lost Ponds trailhead where rangers focused their search, ischallenging terrain. The brush and forest cover are so dense that,off trail, you can travel no faster than half a mile per hour. GregGeorge, a forest ranger with 26 years of experience in the cen-tral Adirondacks, said that searchers on opposite sides of Sum-ner Stream were unable to spot each other. Coloney’s youngerbrother Jay, who joined the search, said that pockets of sprucewere so thick that “he could have been lying five feet away andyou never would have seen him.” In addition to being the largestexpanse of backcountry easily accessible by motor vehicle in theAdirondacks, the Moose River Plains is bordered by wildernessareas on three sides, including the 168,920-acre West CanadaLake tract, which has been described by the DEC as “some ofthe remotest lands and waters” in the park.

They also seem to be some of the most bewildering. Overthe years, the area between Blue Mountain Lake, Indian Lakeand the West Canada Lake Wilderness Area has accounted fora disproportionately high number of missing hikers. In June1990 David Boomhower, a 38-year-old postal worker fromLatham, New York, set out to hike the Northville-Placid Trail.Recently divorced, the solo odyssey seemed to be a kind of testfor Boomhower, who traveled with very little food and equip-ment. Beset by hunger and fatigue early on, he apparently struckout along the Colvin Brook–Sucker Brook trail in search of helpand lost his way. Four months later, a hunter uncovered his bodynear Lewey Lake state campground.

In October 1992 George Woltjen, a 60-year-old hunter fromQueens, disappeared in the Pine Lake area northeast of IndianLake. Three and a half years later his remains turned up in the

Cedar River, less than a half-mile fromwhere he was last seen. Sometime there-after, forest ranger Thomas Eakin re called,DEC staff began to refer to that territoryas the Blumuda Triangle, or simply the tri-angle. “It’s just because over the years we’vehad so many searches that have been ex -

tended searches in that area,” he said. Two months before Coloney disappeared and about 20 miles

from where he was last seen, George LaForest, an avid fisher-man with a home in Stillwater and a camp near Indian Lake,went missing. His truck was found near his favorite fishing holewith his wallet, cell phone and worms inside. The weekendbefore the search began a torrential downpour raised the levelof the Cedar River four feet in 24 hours. “That rain washed outhis tracks before we even started looking,” forest ranger lieu-tenant Steve Preston told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise inMay 2006. Though LaForest was a two- to three-pack-a-daysmoker, not a single cigarette butt was found over the course ofthe two-week search that included dive teams and canine units.

Last December I drove out to the Indian Lake DEC head-quarters—a wireless dead-zone, rendering my cell phone goodfor little more than telling time—to meet with Greg Georgeand Thomas Eakin, senior rangers and search-and-rescue vet-erans. Eakin, with 35 years of experience in the Lake Pleasantarea, is as much a wilderness detective as he is a forest ranger,carefully reconstructing the lives of lost hikers. As the authorsof a study on lost-person behavior in Alberta, Canada, write, “Itis often the case that the geographical setting is well known tothe search manager, but the psychology of the lost person is not.”Although the detective novel has traditionally been an urbanform, its heroes unsentimental city dwellers, one can imagineEakin cast as a character in a Raymond Chandler tale.

In the Coloney search, Eakin painstakingly reconstructed thehiker’s whereabouts and movements stretching back a year to2005. On the second day of the search, a red kayak was foundon Sumner Stream with a map of a different area printed off theInternet. Searchers weren’t sure the boat was Coloney’s, but Eak -in traced it back to where he purchased it and when. Judgingfrom changes of clothes at the campsite, rangers were able to con -clude that Coloney went missing three or four days after he setup camp. “We really don’t know what happened from there,”Eakin told me.

At headquarters I saw a record of the search. On a topo-graphic map, layers of plastic indicated the area covered eachday. A dotted black line showed the 4.5-mile range withinwhich 85 percent of people in Coloney’s class would likely befound (80 percent of missing hikers turn up within a three-mile radius of their last known location). The 4.5-mile range,

JACK COLONEY WAS LAST SEENON JUNE 6, 2006. HE VANISHED SEVERAL DAYS LATERIN THE MOOSE RIVER PLAINSWILD FOREST, ONE OF THE MOSTREMOTE YET ACCESSIBLEREGIONS OF THE ADIRONDACKPARK.

Boomhower had beenmissing for severaldays before the De -

partment of Environ-mental Conservationwas notified, ham -

pering search efforts. PO

STER

CO

UR

TESY

OF

GR

EG G

EOR

GE

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At the same time, the likelihood of erratic behavior and poordecision-making increases the longer a hiker is lost. Severalrangers told me a story of a lost hunter who crossed the North-way and kept on going. Another waded across a river and backwith no recollection of ever having done so. In addition, hypo -thermia is always a risk. As the DEC Unit Management Planfor the Moose River Plains Wild Forest states, “Frost can occurany month of the year.”

“What it comes down to is, when you break your ankle ina hole on the side of a river and you can’t self-rescue, it doesn’t

matter how experienced and knowledgeable you are,” saidDEC forest ranger captain John Streiff.

That may have been the fate of E. F. Crumley, a 69-year-oldpharmacist and former mayor of Fort Ann who disappeared inAugust 1951 near Bear Brook between Raquette and BlueMountain Lakes. After a massive 17-day search, no traces of theexperienced woodsman were found. Six years later, a hunter whohad been part of the original search came across a rubber rain-coat buried under dense brush and foliage. Pieces of a coat, asmall metal box, a tie clasp, fishing tackle, two stub pencils, a .32

Winchester special cartridge shelland five small bones were also found.Crumley’s son identified the tie claspand told the Elizabethtown Post thathis father always carried an emptyshell of that kind to use as a whistlein the woods. Hamilton County cor -

oner John Sullivan ruled Crumley’s death accidental. The case of another avid hunter, George Bombardier, re mains

one of the park’s longest running unsolved disappearances. Hevanished in November 1971 near Paul Smiths (not long after thedisappearance of eight-year-old Douglas Legg from a familycamp outside Newcomb, which also remains unsolved). Thenight before the search began, longtime forest ranger GaryHodgson recalled, it snowed more than a foot. “We found somesnowed-in tracks but nobody knew whose they were.”

The remains of hikers who have been missing for several dec -ades do sometimes turn up. One of the more intriguing cases wasHoward Gilroy. Described as a recluse who frequently hikedalone, Gilroy went missing on October 10, 1958, near SantanoniPeak. A member of the Adirondack Mountain Club, his realname was Leslie A. Wiggs and he was the son of a well-to-doVirginia attorney. There were reports that he had refused hisshare of an $80,000 estate—allegations that his father denied.Whether he had shunned his family’s wealth, there is no ques-tion that he had turned his back on them. During the search forGilroy the Associated Press wrote, “A missing man being soughtas lost in an Adirondack wilderness may simply have resumeda long, lonely flight to anonymity.” (In some ways, his storyresembles that of Christopher McCandless, the subject of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, who severed ties with family,adopted a pseudonym and eventually perished in the Alaskawilderness.)

The last sign Gilroy left behind was a note in the register ontop of the mountain that read, “Cloudy, not raining yet.” Thatnight, ac cording to Adirondac, a bimonthly publication of theAdi rondack Mountain Club, heavy rains and hurricane windspummeled the area.

In June 1988, three decades after Gilroy’s last sighting, hik-

Advice on not getting lost can seemso basic that it’s easy to dismiss.From the seasoned woodsman to thefirst-time hiker, many of us cut cor-ners, take chances on the weatherand assume that we’ll make it backbefore dark.Following a few simple rules could

make the difference between stayinglost and being found.

> Tell more than one person exactly whereyou’re going and when you expect to return sothat if you don’t they can contact the DECquickly. The first 48 hours are critical insearch-and-rescue efforts. After that, chancesof being found decline rapidly.

> Always sign in and out on trail registers.

> Carry a map and compass and know how touse them.

> Familiarize yourself with the general areabefore you set out. Take note of landmarks asyou hike.

> Know how to build a fire in all conditions.

> Be physically prepared for the terrain andcarry proper gear for the weather.

Above, from left to right:Ran gers confer before a2007 search for missingkayakers near Newcomb.A High Peaks map usedduring the search forThom as Carleton, in 1993.

STAYING FOUND

PH

OTO

GR

AP

H B

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ATT

PA

UL.

FA

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DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

Contents of DEC spokesman David Winchell’s pack: 1. Mess kit 2. Extra socks 3. Pain relievers 4. First-aid kit5. Toilet paper 6. Bug repellent/sunblock 7. Head lamp and batteries 8. Matches and fire starter (a mixture of dryerlint, sawdust and linseed oil) 9. Snack bars 10. Whistle (doubles as a waterproof container for matches) 11. Multi-function pocketknife 12. Water-purifying kit 13. Two water bottles 14. Pen and paper 15. Map and compass 16.Business card or other identification 17. Bivvy sack 18. Rain gear and warm, noncotton clothing [ ]

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At the same time, the likelihood of erratic behavior and poordecision-making increases the longer a hiker is lost. Severalrangers told me a story of a lost hunter who crossed the North-way and kept on going. Another waded across a river and backwith no recollection of ever having done so. In addition, hypo -thermia is always a risk. As the DEC Unit Management Planfor the Moose River Plains Wild Forest states, “Frost can occurany month of the year.”

“What it comes down to is, when you break your ankle ina hole on the side of a river and you can’t self-rescue, it doesn’t

matter how experienced and knowledgeable you are,” saidDEC forest ranger captain John Streiff.

That may have been the fate of E. F. Crumley, a 69-year-oldpharmacist and former mayor of Fort Ann who disappeared inAugust 1951 near Bear Brook between Raquette and BlueMountain Lakes. After a massive 17-day search, no traces of theexperienced woodsman were found. Six years later, a hunter whohad been part of the original search came across a rubber rain-coat buried under dense brush and foliage. Pieces of a coat, asmall metal box, a tie clasp, fishing tackle, two stub pencils, a .32

Winchester special cartridge shelland five small bones were also found.Crumley’s son identified the tie claspand told the Elizabethtown Post thathis father always carried an emptyshell of that kind to use as a whistlein the woods. Hamilton County cor -

oner John Sullivan ruled Crumley’s death accidental. The case of another avid hunter, George Bombardier, re mains

one of the park’s longest running unsolved disappearances. Hevanished in November 1971 near Paul Smiths (not long after thedisappearance of eight-year-old Douglas Legg from a familycamp outside Newcomb, which also remains unsolved). Thenight before the search began, longtime forest ranger GaryHodgson recalled, it snowed more than a foot. “We found somesnowed-in tracks but nobody knew whose they were.”

The remains of hikers who have been missing for several dec -ades do sometimes turn up. One of the more intriguing cases wasHoward Gilroy. Described as a recluse who frequently hikedalone, Gilroy went missing on October 10, 1958, near SantanoniPeak. A member of the Adirondack Mountain Club, his realname was Leslie A. Wiggs and he was the son of a well-to-doVirginia attorney. There were reports that he had refused hisshare of an $80,000 estate—allegations that his father denied.Whether he had shunned his family’s wealth, there is no ques-tion that he had turned his back on them. During the search forGilroy the Associated Press wrote, “A missing man being soughtas lost in an Adirondack wilderness may simply have resumeda long, lonely flight to anonymity.” (In some ways, his storyresembles that of Christopher McCandless, the subject of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, who severed ties with family,adopted a pseudonym and eventually perished in the Alaskawilderness.)

The last sign Gilroy left behind was a note in the register ontop of the mountain that read, “Cloudy, not raining yet.” Thatnight, ac cording to Adirondac, a bimonthly publication of theAdi rondack Mountain Club, heavy rains and hurricane windspummeled the area.

In June 1988, three decades after Gilroy’s last sighting, hik-

Advice on not getting lost can seemso basic that it’s easy to dismiss.From the seasoned woodsman to thefirst-time hiker, many of us cut cor-ners, take chances on the weatherand assume that we’ll make it backbefore dark.Following a few simple rules could

make the difference between stayinglost and being found.

> Tell more than one person exactly whereyou’re going and when you expect to return sothat if you don’t they can contact the DECquickly. The first 48 hours are critical insearch-and-rescue efforts. After that, chancesof being found decline rapidly.

> Always sign in and out on trail registers.

> Carry a map and compass and know how touse them.

> Familiarize yourself with the general areabefore you set out. Take note of landmarks asyou hike.

> Know how to build a fire in all conditions.

> Be physically prepared for the terrain andcarry proper gear for the weather.

Above, from left to right:Ran gers confer before a2007 search for missingkayakers near Newcomb.A High Peaks map usedduring the search forThom as Carleton, in 1993.

STAYING FOUND

PH

OTO

GR

AP

H B

Y M

ATT

PA

UL.

FA

CIN

G P

AG

E: P

HO

TOG

RA

PH

AN

D M

AP

CO

UR

TESY

OF

THE

NEW

YO

RK

STA

TE D

EPA

RTM

ENT

OF

ENVI

RO

NM

ENTA

L C

ON

SER

VATI

ON

DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

Contents of DEC spokesman David Winchell’s pack: 1. Mess kit 2. Extra socks 3. Pain relievers 4. First-aid kit5. Toilet paper 6. Bug repellent/sunblock 7. Head lamp and batteries 8. Matches and fire starter (a mixture of dryerlint, sawdust and linseed oil) 9. Snack bars 10. Whistle (doubles as a waterproof container for matches) 11. Multi-function pocketknife 12. Water-purifying kit 13. Two water bottles 14. Pen and paper 15. Map and compass 16.Business card or other identification 17. Bivvy sack 18. Rain gear and warm, noncotton clothing [ ]

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“PEOPLE ARE NOT LEARNING THE GOOD COMPASS-AND-MAP SKILLSAND SURVIVAL SKILLS. AND THEY JUST FEEL THAT THEY CAN PUSH

THEIR PERSONAL LOCATOR BEACON OR SPOT FINDER AND SOMEONE WILL JUST FALL OUT OF THE SKY AND BRING THEM HOME.” Blue Mountain

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JACK COLONEYJUNE 2006

E. F. CRUMLEYAUGUST 1951

GEORGE LAFORESTAPRIL 2006

IRENE HORNEJUNE 2007

ARTHUR BIRCHMEYERDECEMBER 2002

FRED GILLINGHAMOCTOBER 2008

DONALD BUSHOCTOBER 1997

DAVID BOOMHOWERJUNE 1990

GEORGE WOLTJENOCTOBER 1992

E. F. Crumley went missing on August 10, 1951, between Raquette and BlueMountain Lakes. Six years later a huntercame across traces of his remains.

Howard Gilroy (né Leslie A. Wiggs)was lost on October 10, 1958, on San-tanoni Peak. Thirty years later hikersuncovered his skeleton, a Kodak cameraand rusted thermos.

Douglas Legg was lost on July 10, 1971, near Santanoni Great Camp. Nosign of the boy has been found.

George Bombardier disappeared onNovember 29, 1971, near Paul Smiths.His automobile was found near the Hayes Brook truck trail.

Steven Thomas vanished on MountMarcy on April 11, 1976. During thesearch for Thomas, the belongings ofanother missing hiker, George Atkinson,who disappeared on March 15, 1973,were found in Panther Gorge.

Alaim Dufresne disappeared in October1974 on Algonquin Peak. His remainswere found the following spring.

Michael Croteau was lost on AmpersandMountain in October 1982. Three yearslater hikers came across his sleeping bagwith his skeleton inside.

David Boomhower was lost in June1990. Four months later a hunter foundhis body near Lewey Lake.

George Woltjen disappeared on October24, 1992. Four years later his body wasfound in the Cedar River.

Thomas Carleton was reported missingin October 1993, after he failed to returnfrom a solo-hiking trip in the High Peaks.There has been no sign of him.

Arthur Birchmeyerwas reported missingin December 2002 and found de ceasedthree days later near little Indian Lake, inthe Moose River Plains Wild Forest.

George LaForest was last seen on April21, 2006. His truck was discovered nearhis favorite fishing hole along the CedarRiver, near Indian Lake. No sign of himhas been found.

Jack Coloney signed the trail register at Wakely Dam on June 6, 2006. He dis-appeared a few days later in the MooseRiver Plains Wild Forest.

Irene Horne’s tent and belongings werefound by fishermen in the West CanadaLake Wilderness Area in June 2007.There has been no sign of her since.

Fred Gillingham, a 72-year-old Californiaresident, became lost on October 12,2008, along the Rock River trail, betweenIndian and Blue Mountain Lakes. Aftersearching for 12 days, nothing wasfound. A month later a hunter cameacross his body north of the Rock River.Donald Bush went missing in the samearea in October 1997. His body wasfound the following year.

ers found a skull poking through pine needles and brush onSantanoni. The next day rangers and state troopers uncovereda partial skeleton, a rusted thermos, light meter and Kodak cam-era. Eastman Kodak dated the film to the late 1950s. “We triedto develop the film and got nothing,” state police investigatorThomas L. Hickey told the Schenectady Gazette.

The elements have a way of covering our tracks. Whateverrecord Gilroy may have left of his final hike, perhaps even hisfinal days, had been erased.

For rangers, though, the new technology—GPS devices, per-sonal lo cator beacons and cell phones—has only limited use.Many fear the tools may be encouraging a false sense of secu-rity or a reckless ap proach to wilderness survival. Personal loca-tor beacons, for example, have been employed in situations thatmay not be emergencies, triggering expensive and sometimesdangerous res cue efforts. “People are not learning the good com-pass-and-map skills and survival skills,” said Streiff. “And theyjust feel that they can push their personal locator beacon orSPOT finder and someone will just fall out of the sky and bringthem home.”

Carl Skalak, a 55-year-old from Cleveland, Ohio, was thefirst civilian to use a personal locator beacon in the continentalUnited States. In November 2003 Skalak triggered his deviceafter a three-day snowstorm in the Five Ponds Wilderness Areawhere he was camping and was airlifted by helicopter. When hereturned later that month to retrieve his gear, it snowed again.Skalak’s clothing and boots were soaked, and he made use of hishandy gadget a second time. He was airlifted again, but thistime charged with two counts of falsely reporting an incident andspent a night in the Herkimer County jail.

Cell phones, too, are a mixed bag. According to DEC spokes -man Winchell, nearly everyone who has a cell phone carries itinto the woods. Reception here is never a sure thing, and a cellcall from high in the mountains may end up registering in Ver-mont or New Hampshire. Phones have at times helped rangersassist an injured or disoriented hiker, perhaps even preventing alarge-scale search. Yet, said Winchell, “we still get the calls of,‘It’s four in the afternoon, I’m lost, I’m unprepared, come findme,’ and the cell phone goes dead. We have stories about peo-ple finding their way out of the woods barely by the light oftheir cell phone screen because they never thought to bring aflashlight or proper gear.”

GPS units have probably had the greatest overall impact onhow people approach the wilderness—especially hunters whouse them frequently and often wander off trail. Forest rangerlieutenant Robert Marrone said that GPS devices have signifi-cantly decreased the number of searches for hunters every year.They’ve also transformed the documentation of the searchprocess. Today, search crews carry GPS devices with them andat the end of a day download where they’ve been onto a pro-gram called Maptech. Drawing on plastic has gone the way ofthe compass.

In addition to encouraging a false sense of security, some seethe reliance on navigational tools and cell phones as havingmore profound implications. In his recent book, You Are Here:Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall,Colin Ellard, an experimental psychologist at the University ofWaterloo, in Ontario, makes the argument

In the decades since Gilroy perished, the number of toolsavailable to help us find our way (or help others find us) has in -creased exponentially. Eastern Mountain Sports and other out-fitters now sell a SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger or personaltracker that lets you check in with friends and family and auto-matically sends and saves your location using Google Maps.Stores also carry a “fast find” personal locator beacon for about$300. A German inventor has de signed a belt (the feelSpacebelt) that uses an electronic compass and a series of vibrators totell you which direction you’re going. If you’re heading west, thesensor on your right hip vi brates. “Eventually, I felt I couldn’t getlost, even in a completely new place,” one of the belt’s users toldWiredmagazine in 2007; however, he was walking around cities,not the woods.

Of the three million acres of public land in the

park, this triangle ofwilderness in the central

Adi rondacks accounts for adisproportionately highnumber of lost hikers.

(Continued on page 52)


44 ADIRONDACK LIFE September/October 2010

that our inability to navigate without theaid of trails, roadways, signs and nowGPS de vices may signify a deeper prob-lem. “Losing such way finding skills,” hewrites, “has helped propel a dangeroustrend whereby our connections to our nat-ural environment have be come seriouslysevered.” Ellard is not advocating a returnto a premodern civilization or even thatwe try to emulate the ways of Polynesianseafarers and Inuit navigators, who couldtravel long distances guided by oceanswells or patterns of wind etched into thesnow, but that we try to retrieve some ofthe lost arts of reading the landscape andknowing our place in it. In A Field Guideto Getting Lost, Re becca Solnit writes,“There’s an art to attending to weather, tothe route you take, to the landmarks alongthe way, to how if you turn around youcan see how different the journey backlooks from the journey out, to reading thesun and moon and stars to orient yourself,to the direction of running water, to thethousand things that make the wild a textthat can be read by the literate.”

Such skills may not have helped Col -oney, LaForest and others who have dis-appeared in the Adirondacks. The terrainis unforgiving, often surprisingly so. Dur-ing the search for Douglas Legg, in 1971,the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Teamwas flown in from California to look forthe boy and said they had never seen brushso thick. There were re ports that searchersused flashlights even in daytime to “piercethe forest darkness.” In the hunt for StevenThomas, a 19-year-old who disappearedin April 1976 while camping with friends,the slopes of Mount Marcy were “studiedwith near microscopic intensity,” accord-ing to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, andrevealed nothing. The same could be saidof the searches for Coloney and La Forestthree decades later.

On Google Maps you can pull up asatellite image of the Moose River Plainsand Lost Ponds; you can scroll over Sum-ner Stream where Coloney’s kayak wasfound and the precise spot near the CedarRiver where LaForest’s truck was parkedwhen he went fishing in April 2006.Zoom in for a closer look and it all turnsto a sea of green, a wilderness of trees inevery direction.

mL O S T

Continued from page 43


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