March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Family spends soggy night on Acadia trail > Mother undergoes ankle surgery after rescue near Hadlock ponds

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK — The early morning hours of July Fourth were soggy and painful for a Caribou woman and her children who spent the night stranded on a trail in Acadia National Park.

Sarah Grier, recuperating Thursday afternoon at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth after surgery for a fractured ankle, described her ordeal as “wet and cold.”

Grier and her children, Samantha, 13, Jerome, 10, and Serena, 5, started their hike on the Norumbega Trail at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, planning to walk for about an hour. They took a wrong turn, which lengthened their walk into the evening hours, said Ranger George Leone.

Rather than returning to their starting point before dark as planned, they ended up hiking to the summit of Norumbega Mountain and around Lower Hadlock Pond. The hike, by then, had lengthened into four hours. The family had not eaten since lunch.

After a foggy day, dusk came even earlier than usual, as did a fine rain.

At about 9 p.m., Grier slipped, breaking her right ankle. Gripped with sharp pain, she found further walking impossible, and as darkness fell the family had no idea how far they were from a road. Having missed the trail junction, they weren’t sure which trail they were on.

T-shirts and sweat shirts offered little protection or warmth from the steady rains that fell overnight, measured at about one-half inch after midnight at park headquarters. Temperatures cooled into the 50s while the family huddled and waited for daylight. Grier tried to help keep her children warm by building a fire that lasted for about three hours, while enduring throbbing ankle pain, Leone said.

Any gear that could have offered better protection was stowed away at their campsite at a Bar Harbor campground.

At about 6:15 a.m., the oldest child took to the trail again, hiked out to Route 198 and flagged down a passing motorist. Within 35 minutes, rangers from the park and volunteers from MDI Search and Rescue located the family. They were only about a half-mile from the road, off the Goat Trail trailhead and south of Norumbega. The trail is located between Lower and Upper Hadlock ponds.

Assembling a litter team, rescue workers carried Grier out of the woods and transported her to Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor for evaluation. She later was taken to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital, where she had surgery.

While Grier underwent surgery, park rangers rolled out the red carpet for her children. Ranger uniforms replaced soggy jeans and sweat shirts that were laundered at park headquarters. By midmorning, rangers were escorting the Grier children to the Fourth of July parade and festivities in Bar Harbor.


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