Lost 1

LOST

By Jane Mackay

Dedicated to China, Dustin and Anna, to Mendocino County Search and Rescue, and to searchand rescue volunteers everywhere

Saturday 21

November dawns bright and clear, if chilly. A friend with whom I’ve spentthe night (she rose early to head to San Francisco for school) reports ice on the roadoutside her house in Ukiah, about an hour north of my northern California home.Around mid-morning, when it is a little warmer, although not much, I leave Ukiah anddrive an hour further north, to Laytonville, to join a Sierra Club friend for a hike in theAngelo Coast Range Reserve near Branscomb, about half an hour west of Laytonville.The plan is to go for an 8-mile, out-and-back hike. Around noon, we set out. Thepartially dirt, mostly gravel road, which leads in to where smaller trails branch off, isalmost completely shaded and I realize I had forgotten that Laytonville is at a higherelevation than where I live; the trail began at around 2000'. I’m not dressed for that; eventhough I am wearing layers, they are light layers. I know that as long as I keep movingI’ll be fine, but I need the hike to end before sunset. That doesn’t seem like a problem—eight miles on easy trails is three hours at the most, with a lunch stop. The Reserve,which is owned by the University of California as a biological study area, is incrediblybeautiful, like a high elevation rainforest, filled with ferns and mosses. The hike in alongthe road is quick and easy and after an hour or so we turn onto a narrow trail signposted“The White House.” The eponymous house is an old, boarded up two-story clapboard(now mostly black with mold) home on the edge of a forest-ringed meadow. We peerthrough an unboarded patch of glass and in the gloom make out fabric-covered paddeddining chairs, one of which is pushed back from the table as if its occupant had just gotup. Eerie. At the far edge of the meadow we sit on a fallen log in the sun to eat oursnacks, setting off back the way we had come about twenty minutes later.Then comes the first of the questionable decisions. The trail we are now on is calledAhlquist, which, if we go right, takes us back to the road at the Wilderness Lodge, whichthe UC uses for study groups. My friend has been told by a purportedly reliable sourcethat if we turn left and follow Ahlquist east along a ridgeline, it links up with anothertrail that will take us to the top of Black Oak Mountain (3750') and then down andaround and back to the road, coming out near the car park.We have rough maps that we'd picked up at the unmanned entrance kiosk. I study themap and am very dubious about whether the trails link up, plus it looks like a reallylong way and it is already after 2 p.m.—a reservation that I express two or three times.We are not dressed or equipped to deal with the conditions if anything goes wrong. Nordo we have lights if we have to poke around in the forest after dark to find our way tothe road. But an insistent tone has entered my friend’s manner, and since we don’t knoweach other very well and it is the first time we’ve hiked together, I don’t want to be aparty pooper. I also trust her judgment as she has been going off in the woods alone fordays at a time for the past twenty or thirty years. I say, OK.

Lost 2

So we turn left, along the ridgeline, and soon we are thrashing through manzanita andother scrubby brush which has completely overgrown the trail; we rely on our feet tokeep us going in the right direction. (Not that this is too difficult, since there is a steepslope on our right and a hillside on our left.) After about half an hour we pause and myfriend points across the forested canyons below us to a mountaintop that looksimpossibly distant.“That must be it,” she says, “the one with the color [autumn leaves] on top. It’s thehighest peak around.”My heart sinks. There’s no way we’ll reach Black Oak Mountain in time to scale it andgo down the other side before dark. But still I trust her and still I want to give her thisthing she obviously greatly desires. Anyway, I think, if we don’t reach it in reasonabletime we can just turn back and at least we will have tried.After another hour or so we’re very near the mountain and the trail peters out at ameadow with a pond. We explore this way and that and then go around the pond andfind a nice wide track leading in what we agree is the right direction: up andapproximately southwest. We hike up around a couple of switchbacks to the back sideof a ridge, then pause as the track we’re on heads down the back side of the mountain,which we agree is the wrong direction. We poke around to see if we can find a trailgoing up the mountain. The info pamphlet advertises a 360° view from a clear spot atthe top of Black Oak Mountain. We go up to the ridge, no view and no trail. We exploreand find what looks like a trail; that peters out. We poke around some more, try goingup this slope, down there, perhaps that's it over there. . . . No trail.I am out of water. Anticipating a three hour out-and-back hike and then a short driveback to my friend’s house, I had only brought 500 ml. My friend, who has a liter bottle,shares half of what she has left with me.By this time it's four o'clock. and under the canopy it'll be dark in about an hour. Myfriend at this point acknowledges that even if the trails do meet up, we're not going tofind either of them. But, rather than heading back to Ahlquist, she believes it would bequicker and easier to head down the side of the mountain to the road, which she isconvinced is not far below.I still trust her judgment, but decide now to assert my judgments into the decisionmaking. I see a dry watercourse near us and suggest that we follow that downhill; atleast that way we won’t end up getting disoriented and wandering all over themountain. Plus, as my friend points out, the road we walked in on had crossed a coupleof small bridges over streams, so, if the road is below, the stream should run us rightinto it.I take the lead and for most of the next hour or so we are silent as we concentrate onpicking our way down the narrow, rocky, mossy streambed. It’s not easy going and wecross back and forth and sometimes take to the slope above. The ground is still saturated

Lost 3

from Friday’s heavy rain. It is cold. Even with the exertion I keep my mouth closed andbreathe through my nose, not wanting to lose more heat and moisture than I need to.My friend resorts to sliding on her bottom, but I am determined to stay dry for as longas I can. The last thing I want is to spend the night on the side of a mountain at around2700’ elevation in late autumn, in wet, thin clothes. I know that my survival mightdepend on my staying dry until it’s impossible not to do so. Without wanting to fullyacknowledge it, I am aware that my body might need to take me through a night andanother day in this forest. When we were coming along Ahlquist, above the canopy, Ihad noticed dark clouds forming over Black Oak Mountain.After an hour or so, I estimate that we have dropped in elevation enough that we shouldbe near the road, if it’s there. The streambed by this point is running with water and it’sevident that we’ll have to pick our way along the steep bank above it if we want to keepfollowing it, keeping the noise of the rushing water on our left, or southern side. We areheading approximately west, towards the long-since disappeared sunset. The light isfading.I clamber over yet another massive fallen Douglas fir and pause to look ahead. Belowme the stream tumbles merrily onward between steep tree-covered slopes, over rocksthat look as if they’re getting bigger than the ones we’ve been picking our way aroundand over. I shake my head. It’s time to do something before we lose all light. I look up tomy right and see a ridgeline that follows the slope of the mountainside.“I’m going up there to see what I can see,” I say.My friend is exhausted and readily welcomes the chance to rest. It takes me about fiveminutes to climb up to the ridge. When I get there, one glance tells me all I need toknow. The last of the sun’s pale glow lights tree-blanketed mountains and steepcanyons, with nary a clearing in sight. There’s no way we’re getting out of here today, Isay to myself. I decide to try my cell phone. I know it doesn’t have much battery chargeleft, and searching for a signal will drain the battery quickly, but I have to try.On cell phone coverage maps, great swaths of far northern California are blank—i.e.,without coverage—and we are smack in the middle of such a swath. But I’m on a ridgenear the top of a mountain, and I decide it’s worth a try. I look up and see a tiny gap inthe canopy. I position myself beneath it and turn on my cell phone. No signal. I walk upand down, back and forth around and across the “clearing” (it is a

very

small gap in thecanopy). Somehow, I know there is a signal to be had, here. That has been the mostinteresting part about all of this, so far, the sense of inevitability, as if I were being pulledalong a path that I had no choice but to take. I

knew

we weren’t going to make it overBlack Oak Mountain and out. I

knew

that we wouldn’t find our way out before darkness,that we would be lost and stuck here for the night. I

knew

I would end up calling forhelp.Which I do. As soon as I see that my sparkling new cell phone (an unfancy phone onestep up from my previous unfancy phone) has latched onto a faint signal, I dial 911. Onering and there is a human on the other end of the line.