Three hikers stuck on an exposed ridgeline near the 8,600-foot summit of Sierra Buttes were pulled to safety Sunday after one of their satellite communicators sent out an emergency SOS signal, according to the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office.
The alert came in around 2:30 p.m. from a Garmin device, prompting the sheriff’s office to launch a search and rescue effort in the Tahoe National Forest. Local responders called in mutual aid from Nevada County’s Search and Rescue Mountain Rescue Team and Washoe County’s RAVEN helicopter unit to reach the hikers.
Aerial crews located the three stranded hikers clinging to a steep, exposed section of ridgeline just south of the Sierra Buttes lookout tower. Given the terrain, ground rescue was not an option.
“Due to the difficult terrain and hazardous location, a helicopter hoist rescue was necessary. The RAVEN crew lowered a rescue team member to the stranded individuals,” the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post.
A rescue team member was lowered by hoist to reach the group before all three were brought down from the mountain.
A pattern of close calls in California’s high country
The Sierra Buttes rescue is the latest in a string of recent incidents in which hikers in California’s mountains have relied on emergency devices or last-resort calls for help to survive.
Last week, a 39-year-old Florida man spent two nights stranded on Shastina Peak after suffering a badly injured leg. He had reached the 14,179-foot summit on a Sunday afternoon when an erroneous GPS route directed him onto the Whitney Glacier. He fell through a snow bridge at 12,600 feet, injuring his leg severely enough to halt his descent before rescuers eventually reached him.
Earlier this month, two hikers from Salt Lake City — a 19-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman — endured a freezing, 36-hour ordeal on Mount Shasta after becoming trapped between cliffs. The pair had set out on what was meant to be only a day hike while a friend continued on to the summit. They didn’t call for help until around 10:20 p.m. on Oct. 12, by which point they were too cold and exhausted to finish their descent safely. Rescuers finally heard shouting from a gulch and located them near the bottom, about 1,000 feet from the McBride Springs Trail, around 4 p.m. on Oct. 13.
Each case underscores a common thread: when conditions turn and terrain becomes unforgiving, a working communication device — whether a satellite messenger or a well-timed call — can be the difference between a bad day and a fatal one.
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