Skamania County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue staff responded to multiple calls for help over the weekend, mostly for lost hikers.
On Friday afternoon, the sheriff’s office received word of a hiker lost on Mount St. Helens.
The Washington State Emergency Management Center forwarded the call to the sheriff’s office, which said a hiker had lost the trail during his descent.
A sheriff’s deputy and Volcano Rescue Team staff were able send text messages to the hiker, and successfully guided him back to the trail and to a parking lot.
Later that evening, the sheriff’s office was called to help a group of four hikers that had come out of the Climbers Bivouac gated summer climbing route.
The sheriff’s office said a deputy working on the previous call diverted to navigate the snow-covered, gated and closed National Forest Road 830. He connected with the group, then transported the group back to their vehicle at the Marble Mountain Sno-Park, the start of a winter climbing route.
The sheriff’s office said the deputy moved 12 hikers total from the closed area and back to the Marble Mountain parking area.
On Sunday, a Vancouver man called the Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office to report his 16-year-old son was overdue from a trip in the Mount Adams area.
The Skamania County Sheriff’s Office said the boy’s group had hiked from the mountain’s false summit and became separated on the mountain’s southeast face.
The father found the group’s vehicle in an attempt to make phone contact, and was able to get a signal ping placing him in Yakima County, near Crofton Creek.
The man provided directions to officials. Around 1:30 a.m., a Skamania County deputy started driving up National Forest Road 8040, with siren blaring, in an attempt to direct the hiker to the roadway.
While searching, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office received word the hiker made it back to the Morrison Creek Trailhead on his own, tired but unhurt.
Also on Sunday, in the morning, Skamania County deputies were called to a report on National Forest Road 93 in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
The caller said he was driving to Morton with the help of Google Maps.
The Gresham, Ore., man said the application took him to a closed road, where he got his Nissan Cube stuck in a rut. He believed he was near the junction of forest roads 90 and 93, near Lower Lewis River Falls.
A deputy found the man shortly before noon, and was he taken to Cougar to make arrangements to retrieve his car.
