After spending hours lost and stuck in knee-deep snow, two Highlands Ranch teenagers, and their neighbor’s dog, were found by county rescue workers on Feb. 23.
The two 18-year-old males, Jack Eickelman and David Madden, were hiking in the Rampart Range area west of Roxborough State Park when they became lost, according to Douglas County Search and Rescue.
The father of one of the hikers, Steve Eickelman, called police when the pair did not return home on time. The two had left for the hours-long hike around 1 p.m. About 9 p.m., the car they were driving was found by a Douglas County Sheriff’s deputy, who called in DCSAR.
As the agency was being activated, rescue workers received a distress signal from a personal tracker, locating the teens about four miles from the nearest highway, north of the Indian Creek Campground.
The boys and the dog were found uninjured around midnight in an area called Stevens Gulch north of Highway 67, said DCSAR president Bruce Fosdick. Temperatures were in the mid-20s with winds gusting from 20-30 miles an hour.
Fosdick said the teens had tunneled out a pit in the snow and huddled up to keep warm. The first rescue team started around 10:15 p.m. before the teenagers were found around an hour and a half later by their footprints.
“The wind was really blowing that night, it was quite chilly,” Fosdick said. “They didn’t have a lot of extra clothing or food with them.”
Jack Eickelman and Madden were met by an ATV team before they were driven back to the DCSAR base where family members were waiting.
“It was three miles of challenging terrain, taking three hours to reach a main trail where the hikers and their dog were met by a DCSAR ATV Team and then driven to the DCSAR base to their waiting family members,” a news release said.
The hikers attempted to walk in knee-deep snow and “became wet and exhausted,” according to the release. Exposed to the cold, the pair showed initial signs of hypothermia. Emergency crews fed, rehydrated and warmed the hikers and the dog, and the rescue mission concluded around 5 a.m. on Feb.24.
Fosdick said hikers should watch the weather and bring extra clothes and food.
“They were probably appropriately dressed for the weather when they left, but it got a lot colder after it got dark,” he said. “It was good that they had a SPOT beacon (personal tracker), too. We tried to ping their cell phones, but they weren’t working. You can’t always get service out there.”
A map and a compass are good to have on hikes, too, he said.