Lost in the Wilderness

It was one of those situations where turning the clock back an hour wasn't exactly helping matters, something Karen Chrappa, a New York City resident, suddenly realized after she got lost in the thick of the Carson National Forest in what she thought was going to be a routine hike nearly two weeks ago.

At roughly 8,000 feet, she'd began the descent with her 1-year-old dog, Jethro, a Jack Russell terrier mix. But suddenly it dawned on her that she was lost, that somehow she'd wandered off the Rim Vista Trail, swept up, quite possibly, in the sweeping vistas.

The bad part of all this was that it was mid-day. It was about 2 pm, on Nov. 1, but for Chrappa, it felt like an hour later, because Daylight Saving Time had concluded just 12 hours earlier.

And nearly a half-hour into what became an exercise in bushwhacking, Jethro started balking as the two started hiking over rocks and following the arroyo. It's something Chrappa now looks back on and realizes that he may have instinctively been trying to tell her something, this rescued dog.

"I think he was telling me we were going the wrong way. I should have probably listened to him," Chrappa tells SFR in an interview Friday, detailing her ultimate rescue after spending nearly two nights, a total of 36 hours, in the forest. "You know how dogs have that uncanny ability to flee the scene when a tsunami approaches?"

But Chrappa kept plugging along, insistent that because she could see Abiquiú Lake from above, she'd be able to hike down to it. Instead, she headed straight for nowheresville in nature, something that ordinarily would be breath-taking if she weren't lost, surrounded by nothing but sheer cliffs, precarious drop-offs, myriad mesas and limestone outcroppings. She spent that night outside, then all day the next day until an hour before midnight.

But it was at exactly 10:57 pm that the panic inside her finally subsided, when the rescue team called out to her, their flashlights shining. It was then that she knew she would live another day to see her 21- and 22-year-old daughters again. She had nothing but praise for the rescue team.

"They are just miraculous, and I'm astounded that people volunteer their time and effort to do this work. I know that they truly saved my life," says Chrappa, a 55-year-old physical therapist who has lived in Abiquiú for the past two years. "But I also feel that we can't rely on a miracle when we're out in the wilderness, and this has made me much more serious about being prepared. I read something about the trail that said going up is very clear and well-defined, but it can be perplexing to find your way down."

It was Richard Goldstein, himself a Santa Fe transplant after living in Miami for nearly four decades, who helped save Chrappa's life. He's a 68-year-old Vietnam War veteran who served as a Green Beret, was shot twice during the conflict and just so happened to be the one who fielded the emergency phone call from his home in El Dorado—essentially the unofficial call center for distress at least one week out of the month where Goldstein, the son of a New York City cop, serves as a volunteer for the Santa Fe Search and Rescue Team.

Not a bad guy to have when you're lost in the wilderness, and in this most immediate case, he became the team's incident commander.

He quickly mobilized a pair of two-member teams in four-wheelers and a pair of four-member teams that would "pound the ground," all of whom would eventually meet at the base of the trailhead at 5:15 pm after an hour-and-a-half drive from the City Different.

They all knew that Chrappa was somewhere west of Ghost Ranch Nature Center, about three-quarters of a mile out, where steep cliffs and mesas amid the juniper and piñón are not the exception but the rule, the situation often calling for highly technical rock climbers.

By 8:30 pm on Monday night, they were in the thick of it, and by 10:57 pm, they made contact, ultimately hiking Chrappa out of safety about 2 am.

"Fortunately for her, it never rained or snowed, because if it had, we'd be talking about a whole different situation," Goldstein says as he recounted the chain of events that led up to the rescue, which required the efforts of the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Posse, the Northern Snow Drifters, the Atalaya Search and Rescue Team and Santa Fe Search and Rescue.

He says all hikers should help themselves this way:

• Rule No. 1. To stay alive when lost, definitely make sure you stay warm and dry, something people don’t always understand is related. “And in order to stay warm, you have to stay dry,” he says.
• Rule No. 2. Never wear cotton, always wear synthetic clothing, and be sure while you’re hiking to take note of various landmarks along the way. It’s too easy to get caught up in nature and forget about how important it is to know your bearings.
• Rule No. 3. (This can easily be swapped for Rule No. 1.) Always tell someone where you’re going, and make sure to bring food, water, and an extra set of clothing in case it does rain or snow and you do get wet. Even though it might seem like a lot to haul, it’s well worth it. It doesn’t have to be the entire closet, just a pair of extra socks, a shirt and pants.

As for Goldstein, his gear weighs 30 pounds, but that's because he always has to be ready to mobilize at a moment's notice when the call comes in. We're talking about blankets, tarps, extra clothing, headlamps, flashlights, working gloves, all the stuff that becomes life-saving commodities when rescuers take their own lives into their hands, for the purpose of saving others.

"It's enough to keep you safe and warm if you have to spend the night, but it's not some toasty warm experience like you're camping out and sitting near a fire," says Goldstein, a former weapons sergeant.

He's been conducting search-and-rescues since 2009, when he moved to Santa Fe, and he loves it. Most of the rescue missions, he says, end successfully, with maybe 1 percent ending in death.

But perhaps the most haunting are those they never find after days of searching.

"It kills the family, not knowing," Goldstein says. "And kills us not finding them."

But in this case, all turned out safe and sound, because Chrappa and Goldstein, both New York City natives, crossed paths, and Chrappa has learned from her experience.

Her full account, written far better than my synopsis, can be found here.

Santa Fe Reporter