Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken had just finished a meeting Monday night with emergency dispatchers in Saratoga, Wyoming, when he jumped in his car and saw an alert for three missing hikers lost on Medicine Bow Peak.
The mountain, the highest in the Snowy Range, lies about 35 miles west of Laramie. It also was 35 miles southeast of where Bakken was. Knowing his deputies were busy, the sheriff decided to drive out to the mountain, set up a command post and wait for search and rescue members to show up.
It was getting late and the sun had just set.
Bakken learned the missing hikers were two boys and a girl, all just 17 years old. They had started their hike at about noon but had drifted far off the trail trying to detour around deep snow.
One of the hikers had asthma and was suffering from a panic attack, so the teens stopped and called for help.
They had been smart enough to not hike alone but had not planned to be out on the mountain at night. All three were wearing shorts and the temperature was beginning to drop from the 50s into the 40s.
The teens’ initial cellphone coordinates put them near Heart Lake on the north side of Medicine Bow Peak.
“Based on the remoteness of the coordinates, no vehicles would be able to reach the stranded hikers,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Sun Began To Set
Finally, a sergeant and a volunteer search and rescue member, Max Leiseth, arrived. Leiseth had hiked the mountain many times, even running in the Med Bow Rail Marathon.
Bakken felt the urgency as dusk set in.
Before he had been elected sheriff, he had been a member of Carbon County’s search and rescue teams. He told his sergeant to man the command post while he turned to Leiseth.
“Hey, if you’re good with hiking up there, let’s do it right now. We’ll take advantage of this little bit of daylight we got left, and I’ll just hike up there with you,” Bakken told Cowboy State Daily Tuesday, replaying his conversation from the night before. “We’ll go summit the peak and see if we can get a location on these guys with a little bit of daylight we have left.”
Leiseth and Bakken set off up the Lake Marie Trailhead at 8:45 p.m.
The sheriff was still in his uniform and work shoes.
The Climb
A flashlight and headlamp lit the way as the pair hiked up Medicine Bow Peak, postholing through some deep snow along the way. They reached the 12,000-foot summit at about 10:30 p.m.
The pair radioed the command center and received updated coordinates of where the teens were located.
They were about 900 yards to the north, so the searchers worked their way to the spot, bouldering down the north face of the mountain and trudging down a little drainage until they saw a cellphone flashing in the dark.
The teens were all huddled together. They had been using the strobe light function of their cellphones like flares, turning the phones on and off every 15 minutes to save battery life.
“They were definitely not prepared for the weather,” Bakken said. “But they kept their heads, which is the most important part.”
Bakken and Leiseth reached the trio and assessed the teen with breathing difficulties. The rescuers had brought spare jackets, gloves and water for the missing hikers.
The Descent
Bakken, Leiseth and teens walked slowly, and the group began a 1.5-mile descent down the mountain, where other rescuers were making their way up. A convoy of tracked rescue vehicles, side-by-sides and snowmobiles were assembled at U.S. Forest Service Road 103.
“Besides being a little chilly and shaken up, all the rescued parties were OK and did not require medical attention,” Bakken said in a statement.
The teens and their parents were grateful. Bakken said the trio had been smart to stop and summon help when they knew they were lost.
It was the first time Bakken had gone on a search since his days as a volunteer. He said he did not want to send Leiseth up the mountain alone — a cardinal sin in search and rescue efforts — and he knew the temperature was dropping as every second passed.
There was no hesitation.
“It’s only going to be colder and darker as the night progresses,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I’ve climbed it a couple of times. I spend a lot of time snowmobiling out there, so I’m fairly familiar with the area.
“But this was the first time in the dark — and in my uniform.”
Justin George can be reached at justin@cowboystatedaily.com.
