Santa Barbara Boy Scouts Rescue Former Scoutmaster Lost in the Sierra Nevada

A group of Santa Barbara Boy Scouts hiking deep in the wilderness of the central Sierra Nevada came across a man who, by all appearances, wasn’t supposed to be there.

“He just looked like — basically looked like a homeless guy,” said Scoutmaster MJ Hey. “He was struggling a bit.”

The Santa Barbara–based troop, Troop 26, was on day four of a seven-day backpacking trip through the Emigrant Wilderness, a part of Stanislaus National Forest that borders Yosemite National Park. Nine younger scouts, all around 12 years old, were accompanied by five adult leaders. They were carrying 40-pound packs, navigating through lakes and meadows, and practicing the same skills that generations of Scouts before them had been taught.

The man they found — standing alone in a high-altitude meadow near Long Lake — was not a stranger to those skills. His name is Douglas Montgomery. He’s 78. And he’s an Eagle Scout.

“I’m an Eagle Scout from Troop 10 in Burlingame,” Montgomery said in an interview with the Independent. “We took Scouts into the Emigrant Wilderness for about 20 years, starting in 1963. At one point, we had 95 Scouts in there.”

But this time, Montgomery wasn’t leading a trip. He was lost. He was on a 14-day backpacking trip that became a test of survival after he lost his pack. Without his backpack, he no longer had shelter, food, water, medication, or a way to communicate. 

‘I Had to Make a Decision’

The solo trip was supposed to be two weeks. He’d hired a horse to take him to Upper Emigrant Meadow Lake and planned to hike out toward Kennedy Meadows on a trail he hadn’t taken in 50 years.

At some point along the trail, Montgomery says he set his pack down to scout ahead. Then he couldn’t find it again.

“I checked and checked and checked and looked and looked,” he said. “It was very, very disconcerting not to be able to find it. But I had to make a decision at the last minute just to stop looking and get where I could save my own life, and that’s what I did.”

That night, with no gear, no tent, and temperatures in the low forties, Montgomery tried to stay warm in the only way he could: He buried himself.

“Close as I could get, I crammed myself between several lodgepole pines and covered myself with loam,” he said. “I kept myself busy all night, tweaking the loam over parts of my body that were exposed to the air.”

He didn’t sleep. “I complained about the cold out loud many times,” he added, “yelling out of the darkness.”

‘He Was Very Disorientated’

The next morning, when the sun came up, Troop 26 arrived.

Scoutmaster Hey said the scouts initially stopped and spoke with Montgomery and then called the adults over when they realized something was wrong.

“He didn’t have any equipment with him, didn’t have his backpack, just a pair of old trousers and his shirt, and he was pretty heavily cut up,” Hey said. 

Hey and Assistant Scoutmaster Orin Rowe laid Montgomery in the sun to warm up. They gave him food, water, and electrolytes. “He literally couldn’t walk on his own,” Hey said.

Hey, trained in Santa Barbara Search and Rescue, made the call to initiate a helicopter rescue via Garmin InReach. The troop’s other adult leaders took the scouts on toward their next camp at Toejam Lake.

‘They Had the Garmin’

Montgomery, who normally carries his own personal locator beacon, couldn’t call for help on his own. “I carry a personal locator beacon — but that’s in my pack,” he said. 

Thanks to Troop 26’s Garmin, within three hours, a California Highway Patrol helicopter arrived from Fresno.

“It took two full-grown men to kind of get him to the helicopter,” Hey said. “He was coherent, in better shape, his blood pressure was actually pretty high, and his heart rate was elevated — but not scary.”

“Always lovely,” Montgomery said, when asked about the ride. “I love helicopters. I was in the Navy for four years — a lot of helicopter experiences.”

He was transported to Kennedy Meadows. A deputy met him there. His niece drove out in his 1984 Volvo.

“I got in my ‘84 Volvo and drove home the next morning,” he said.

The Tales of a Scout

The irony wasn’t lost on anyone — an Eagle Scout and former Scoutmaster rescued by a troop of kids doing exactly what they’d been trained to do.

“It became a tremendous teaching point,” Hey said. “They were close enough to it, so it was very visceral for them. They really felt the reality of the situation and the seriousness.”

For Montgomery, the main takeaway is “how to protect yourself from hypothermia.” Luckily, Montgomery is a very experienced outdoorsman who knew how to do so. And as such, he provided the scouts with many great tales as they waited for the helicopter. “He was like one of these real characters … like out of a Forrest Gump movie,” Hey said.

Montgomery said he’s sea kayaked the waters off Greenland, Madagascar, Venezuela, British Columbia, Alaska, and Lake Superior. He’s paddled through French Polynesia and the Baltics. He’s cycled most of Europe, the Crimean Peninsula, South Africa, New Zealand, and the Andes. He’s backpacked Argentina, Chile, India, the Himalayas, and pretty much every mountain range on the West Coast. 

Montgomery also spent four years in the U.S. Navy as a JAG officer and served as a prosecutor aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Coral Sea.

Until his retirement in 1989, Montgomery was a practicing attorney and estate broker. Afterward, he did pro bono legal work for AIDS patients through 2001. He now lives in San Francisco with his partner, and when asked about slowing down, he just says he “does less backpacking, more kayaking.”

“Backpacking was my first love,” he said. “But once you learn how to live in the wilderness … and your backpacking skills become more challenged by age, you like stuff where you’re sitting down.”

Hence the kayaking. “His Kodiak-to-Chignik [sea kayaking] journey puts Jack London to shame,” Hey remarked.

When asked about whether Montgomery regrets the most recent adventure, he says he does not. He is, however, hopeful that his missing pack will turn up someday.

“My pack is a time capsule,” Montgomery said. “If somebody makes the same mistake I made and goes off the trail in the right place, they may find it. Maybe they’ll find it soon.”

For now, it’s buried out there — just like he was.

Editor’s Note: This story’s subtitle was updated to correct the age of Douglas Montgomery, who is 78 not 76.