MOUNT WASHINGTON, Mass. – Two hikers have been rescued after they were stranded by feet of snow in Mount Washington State Forest.
A six-person search team spent hours Tuesday evening escorting the hikers, two men aged 47 and 53, out of the forest in the far southwest corner of Massachusetts shortly before dawn Wednesday.
Dispatchers with the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office forwarded a 911 call from one of the hikers to Massachusetts State Police.
The hiker told troopers he and his friend went for a hike on the Alander Trail in the state forest, located in the southern Berkshires town of Mount Washington near the New York and Connecticut state lines.
This comes as a powerful nor’easter slammed the Northeast bringing as much as 3 feet of snow in the highest elevations of Massachusetts, Vermont and New York.
The 911 caller said because of the bad weather and gathering darkness, he and his friend could no longer see the trail markings. He estimated that they were about two miles into the forest. The hikers felt they could not continue to a cabin they were headed to at the mountain peak and could not retrace their steps back out of the forest due to heavy falling snow filling in their tracks.
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Troopers and emergency dispatchers told the hikers to stay where they were while they began assembling a search and rescue team equipped with snowmobiles.
While authorities worked to obtain and plot the exact coordinates of the hikers’ location, roads had to be cleared to the entrance to the forest trail. Troopers said the roads were blocked by trees and power lines that were knocked down by the winter storm.
A search and rescue team was able to make entrance into the forest about 11:15 p.m., but their snowmobiles were unable to drive onto the trail covered by two-foot-deep snow. The crew then dismounted and began the two-mile walk into the forest to the hikers’ coordinates.
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After hiking for more than 2.5 hours, the search team found the hikers about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. The two men suffered from fatigue and cold temperatures but were not injured, troopers said.
Shortly before 5 a.m., the search team and the hikers exited the forest as paramedics worked to examine the hikers. They were taken to an area hospital for evaluation.