Three groups of hikers found safe after going missing in blizzard

BACHELDER’S GRANT – Three groups of hikers stranded during the season’s first snowstorm were found safe and in good health Monday.

Ten students from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School’s Wilderness Club and two chaperones were ferried by snowmobile out of an unplowed section of Route 113 near Maine’s western border with New Hampshire, said spokesman Mark Latti of the Maine Warden Service.

“We got them all out and they’re all on their way back to Oxford Hills,” Latti said. School officials said none of the hikers was hospitalized.

Earlier on Monday, three Unity College students who became stranded while winter camping on Tumbledown Mountain near Weld, also in western Maine, also turned up safe when wardens found them in their car, Latti said. They had been gone since Saturday.

A warden had used a snowmobile Monday to search the trail used by the Unity students, who were well-equipped for overnight winter camping. The three were in good condition when they were found.

State officials said two other winter campers who had been out since Thursday and had become stranded in Grafton Township, unable to hike out through deep snow, were located Monday by game wardens coordinating with the Maine Army National Guard, and airlifted out.

The separate groups lost their way in forbidding conditions. Portions of western Maine were covered by more than 30 inches of snow.

Overnight temperatures dipped to 8 degrees Friday night, 10 degrees Saturday night and 19 Sunday night, the National Weather Service said. A harsh wind created blizzard conditions as the storm raged late Saturday.

The 10 Oxford Hills students, who were accompanied by two adults, left Friday afternoon to go winter camping, with plans to hike along the Miles Notch Trail from Bethel, Latti said.

The students had been last seen at about 10 a.m. Saturday by a parent of one of the hikers who met up with the group along the trail, Latti said. The group was due back Sunday afternoon but didn’t show up as scheduled. They were reported missing at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

Volunteer searchers who spent five hours looking for the students Sunday night found no trace of them, Latti said. He said the students were outfitted for winter camping with food and tents, but they had not brought snowshoes.

Mark LaRoach, assistant superintendent of Oxford Hills’ school district, said the two adult leaders are experienced in outdoors skills and brought the appropriate equipment for weather conditions that were forecast when the trip began.

On Friday afternoon, forecasters were predicting heavier snow accumulations along the coast than in inland areas, where only about 6 inches were expected to fall. But that changed by the time the storm hit Saturday.

“What was predicted flip-flopped,” said LaRoach.

When the weather cleared Monday, searchers said their best chance of spotting the students was by plane. A warden pilot spotted the group, walking single file, along a highway that snakes back and forth across the Maine-New Hampshire border as it cuts through the White Mountain National Forest.

Wardens wearing snowshoes trooped in to meet the students and a snowmobile took them out, Latti said.