2
Wednesday,February10,2021
RESCUE
Columbia Gorge News
had called 911 and the
Garmin emergency coordi-
'We're eternally
nation team, which contact-
ed Skamania County as well
grateful'
as Yakima County’s search
Continued from page 1 and rescue team, who called
back around 5 p.m. and told
the Stocks they would not
gadgets, so they packed up
be able to make the climb
their gear and drove back
that night due to the weather
home. During that time,
situation.
more beacon notifications
About an hour earlier, the
went out and the SOS alert
Stocks had reached out to
came through the Garmin
a couple locals who offered
InReach device, a satellite
to take their snowmobiles
communication device that
allows users to send a distress up the trail and assess the
situation, which they did.
signal to an emergency
When they came back, they
center, as well as send and
said they could make another
receive text messages.
pass in the morning, and
At this point, the Stocks
asked Stock, “What’s he
wearing?”
“I looked at his room
and pieced together what I
thought he had on him, and
it wasn’t much,” he said.
By then, the Stocks were
able to communicate with
their son through the Garmin
emergency coordination
team. The young skier had
walked down a 10th of a
mile because he thought the
weather was lightening up
and hid behind a snow drift,
where he would wait for the
rescue team.
Trout Lake is a small and
tight-knit community, so
the story had made its way
Signs of LOVE
www.columbiagorgenews.com
around town by nightfall,
which is when Lucas King
and his brother, Alex, heard
of the situation and reached
out to offer help. The King
brothers, Stock said, are very
knowledgeable of the trails
around Mount Adams and
the terrain. Their enthusiasm
for mountaineering earned
them four of the five fastest
known times to hike around
the mountain, per fastest-
knowntimes.com.
“All of us up on the moun-
tain were very familiar with
our surroundings,” said Lucas
King.
Alex King drove up from
Bend and arrived around
midnight. By then, the Stocks
had made a base camp, and
the Stocks, the Kings, and
the two other locals were
deciding the next plan of ac-
tion. One of the Kings, Stock
recalled, had told the locals
who went up before that
“We’ll go if you go up again.”
That is when Stock re-
membered telling the crew of
volunteers, “I’m not going to
ask any of you guys to go. My
son made the mistake, unfor-
tunately he’s going to have to
deal with the consequences.
“Probably one of the
hardest things I had to say if
I’m being honest,” Stock said,
recalling that he couldn’t ask
others to risk everything. The
team still decided to make
the climb that night, because
they were not sure they could
wait until the morning. They
split up into two groups: The
first would go up on snow-
shoes and the other would
snowmobile up to 4,500 feet
and ski the rest of the way,
figuring they would make
it to the location at around
9,000 feet around the same
time.
“That night it was pretty
bad conditions … personal
safety of myself and the guy
I was with was definitely
number one priority,” said
Lucas King.
One of the team members
called Stock a couple of hours
in to tell him they were in the
zone and told him to text his
son to “stand up and yell.” He
said his recalled it took him
a few minutes to do so. The
team had actually walked
right past his son, and when
they were a couple hun-
dred feet past his location,
TheLunchCounter,seenhere,islocatedonthesouthsideofMount
Adams.Theskierwasfoundinthisarea,nearly9,000feetabovesea
level,intheearlymorningofJan.31.Visitwww.ColumbiaGorgeNews.
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CourtesyGoogleEarth
the young skier found the
strength to shout.
“And the rest is history,”
said Stock. The team that
found him gave him a drink
and clothes and helped
him make his way down the
mountain. He needed some
help to walk and was slurring
his words, said Lucas King,
who works as a firefighter for
Washington Department of
Natural Resources.
“My son’s an adventurer,
he’s going to go skiing and
then he learns some things.
I really hoped he learned the
lesson to go up with some-
body,” said Stock.
The groups of volunteers
met each other on the way
down the mountain and
the boy and his father were
reunited early Sunday
morning.
“Talking to the kid that got
stuck up there, there’s a lot of
lessons learned, like how im-
portant it is to be prepared,”
said Lucas King.
The week after the incident
occurred has been helpful
to process what went down,
and for Stock, it is just the
beginning of a project to
create a local search and
rescue team based in Trout
Lake. The need for one is
there, said Stock, who had
a similar incident occur in
November, when they lost
their 5-year-old at one of
the local sno-parks. The boy
was quickly found thanks to
locals who were at the area.
In both instances, emer-
gency officials were not in a
position to help, due to either
jurisdiction issues or the lack
of an adequate response time
because of weather or the
geography of the area, Stock
recalled.
“We have a ton of people
(in Trout Lake) who know
Mount Adams and Gifford
really well, and in either of
our situations, we would have
lost one of our sons if we
didn’t know our local town,”
said Stock.
“The honest fact of the
matter here, if something
happens to you and you’re
somewhere up in the Gifford,
you need to be prepared to
survive for a couple days.”
He is having ongoing
conversations with groups to
find support for a search and
rescue team in the Trout Lake
area. He said its important,
especially since Skamania
and Yakima counties are
close by, that it makes having
adequate coordination be-
tween all the stakeholders a
challenge.
This week the young skier
has been taking it easy at
home and making time to
hang out with his buddies,
and “everybody is trying not
to take anything for granted,”
said Stock. “Now he’s got a
few more (friends) because
his rescuers want to take him
skiing,” he said.
“We’re eternally grateful
to those five people who did
it. It’s because of them he
still walks on the earth,” said
Stock, sharing his gratitude
for the support the Trout
Lake community lent him
and his family that night. “It’s
a pretty spectacular commu-
nity. Anybody will drop any-
thing for anybody, and that’s
just what happens here.”
LOVE is the message for The Dalles outside The Workshop, 201 E. Second. Valentine's Day is, Feb. 14
and shops throughout the Gorge are ready with a variety of gifts for those celebrating the day. The mini
mural was created by owners Lindsey and Tom Giamei, Jenny Louhmiller and Connie Giamei.
Niki Piacente photo
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