Date: 2005-06-01
From: North of Rt 325

To: North of Rt 443
Miles today: 16.0

I was up at 6:30 and hiking soon after. It is a sunny day but should be uneventful hiking in the green tunnel. There are no views or features today, but little did I know it was going to be a very exciting day. About 9:00am I meet a hiker that asks if I have seen a blonde girl with a red pack. I haven't seen anyone this morning and no one came by my camp last night. She had met up with two thru hiker friends and was going to section hike with them. They had foolishly left her behind and said they would meet her at the next shelter. She had never arrived and even though they had searched for her she was missing since yesterday afternoon. Shawn, the thru hiker is backtracking on the trail looking for her. I ask if he has called 911 yet and he has no cellphone. I offer mine, but we must backtrack about a mile before I get a signal. He calls 911 and a search and rescue mission is set in place by local and state agencies. I decide there isn't much else I can do so I continue north. About 10:30 Bones, a thru hiker I had previously met catches up to me. I tell about the missing girl and we continue on. As we are hiking through this poorly blazed section we find "Sara" sitting beside the trail very bewildered looking but extremely happy to see us. We had stumbled onto the lost hiker at 11:00am. She had got off the AT onto a side trail and become lost. She slept in her sleeping bag but had no tent. She seemed to Ok and refused offers of water or food. She had found the AT in the morning but didn't know which way to hike and she had hurt her ankle. She asked if Bones and I would walk with her to the next shelter. She didn't realize she was still 5 miles from it. We walked with her and tried several times to use our cellphone but were unable to get a signal. We wanted to call off the search. When we arrive at the shelter about 2:00pm and an officer from the Game Commission is there. He asks our names and asks Sara for ID. After he is satisfied all is OK and she declines a ride out he leaves. I eat a snack and move on. I talk to Bones later in the day and he says after I left police, the thru hikers and Sara's mother arrive. The event had made the news and we are the rescuers! I was happy to do what I could but I was certainly not a "rescuer". I was just lucky enough to be able to help. It turns out there were about 75 people out looking for her. A otherwise boring turned out to be quite exciting with a very good ending!This is the article from the Harrisburg newspaper the Patriot-News:LEBANON COUNTYRescuers find hiker lost overnight on trailThursday, June 02, 2005From staff reportsA Johns Hopkins University student who was reported missing while hiking on the Appalachian Trail was found unharmed yesterday by rescuers near the border of Dauphin and Lebanon counties.Sara Rogers, 24, who lives in the Baltimore area, was found around 2 p.m. yesterday near the Rausch Gap shelter along the trail in Lebanon County, just east of the Dauphin County border, authorities said.Two friends who had been hiking with her on Tuesday reported her missing yesterday morning when she failed to meet them at the shelter Tuesday night.Rogers, who did not have a map, fell behind her friends, got lost on a side trail, then found the Appalachian Trail, said Karen Lutz, the regional director of the Appalachian Trail Conference.The friends made it to the shelter Tuesday night and retraced their steps when Rogers did not arrive. They called police yesterday morning to report her missing."She didn't have a map with her and was unfamiliar with the area," Lutz said. "They did the right thing. The only thing she could have done better was have a map."HIKING SAFELY# Check the weather first.# Take trail maps.# Hike with a friend.# Let someone know when you'll be back.# Take drinking water. Don't drink from streams or lakes.Source: Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources