Two Vancouver men who became disoriented in white-out fog while descending Mount St. Helens in foul weather Tuesday spent the night under a shelter made of fir boughs and a tarp.
After becoming disoriented again in fog Wednesday morning, during a deluge of rain, they walked down to safety.
Kevin Dean, 34, and Mark Lapinskas, 32, “were cold and wet and didn’t require any medical attention,” and were taken to a warming hut, Skamania County Undersheriff Dave Cox said Wednesday.
“They were just glad to be down and reunited with their wives” and to put on warm clothing, Cox added.
At one point, as the two men were trying to find their way back down to Marble Mountain Sno-Park, where they started Tuesday morning, they came across their own tracks. They then followed the mountain’s contour downhill and ended up on the Forest Service 81 Road, safe but about five miles west of the Sno-Park, Cox said.
Volunteers with the Volcano Rescue Team, a unit of North Country Emergency Medical Services, found the two about 4:10 p.m. Wednesday. Team members had been sent to the road in a vehicle to pick up some of the 40 or more searchers looking for them, Cox said.
Dean and Lapinskas told searchers they started hiking down from the crater’s rim about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in near white-out conditions. They lost sight of the trail and, when they reached the timber line, made their shelter.
Wednesday morning, they became disoriented again in the fog but made it down to the road.
“It was just raining buckets up there,” Cox said. “It was just unbelievable.”
John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.<I>
