2 Oregon Men Die in Forest After Going Missing While Looking for Sasquatch:

RJG

RJG

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Nov 19, 2023
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Sea Isle City, NJ
There’s a valuable lesson here. Learn how to stay warm if you get lost in the woods in cold weather. Hypothermia is about the only potential danger you face in the Pines if you get lost in cold weather and don’t find your way back before dark.
 
Teegate

Teegate

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Sep 17, 2002
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RJG said:
There’s a valuable lesson here. Learn how to stay warm if you get lost in the woods in cold weather. Hypothermia is about the only potential danger you face in the Pines if you get lost in cold weather and don’t find your way back before dark.
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This brings to mind Henry Beck describing his travels in deep snow out of Chatsworth, turning left at the Chatsworth Cemetery heading towards Dukes Bridge, and then turning towards Bear Swamp Hill heading towards Penn State Forest and Sim Place with the back side of Haines Cranberry Bogs far through the woods miles down the road.

Beck writes on 2/8/1934

Pressing on in the direction of the Penn State Forest and the tributaries of the Oswego river, we suddenly struck a rough patch. The wheels of the car plunge through and the chains cut into the ice concealed by snow, making a swath as clean as would a buzz saw.

Long, lonesome hike.

Closer examination of our plight was not encouraging. The ground was hard, but in the stretch which deceived us, ice covered with a layer of untracked snow, we had found a rut in which was black and mucky water. We tried digging, without result. Usually flagged by an auxiliary car, we were on our own with a vengeance. We trimmed a few logs and tried them as pries, but made no progress.

There was only one thing to do; one of us must hike for it. Through the trees there was a single line, probably a telephone, to one of the cranberry outpost. But the direction it took was dismal. In seeking another trail, along which the tracks of another car presented themselves, we crashed through in a swamp, oozy muck climbing over shoetops. There is no use dwelling on the rest of a 6 to 8 mile trek through snow above which protruded the stiff teaberry leaves, gnarled scrubs and small trees.

We took care to keep going towards the sun, but the winding trail was deceptive. Everywhere where the footprint of deer, marks of cloven feet deep in each cavity. At last, after a stiff hike, up hill and down Dale, around Cedar lowlands and beyond a forsaken cross path, a cranberry plantation appeared.

At this time of the year the bogs are frozen over. On the ice there is a thick covering of snow, giving the impression of a wide sea of white. The only crossing is on the top of causeways, and here, where the wind found play, the temperature was colder.

The whistle and the breeze in the trees was behind us. The only sound was the chirp of small birds in the marshes and the hollow boom of the ice, interrupted at intervals as we passed the bubbling sluices. Spying a parked automobile in the distance, hope was revived. Making toward it, we came upon two men, one white and the second colored, drawing a homemade sled across a frozen marsh, laden with new cut logs.

Piles of logs were placed ready for loading at the edge of the spung. The shouts of other lumberman at work across the swamp were heard at intervals. We asked for the nearest telephone and instead of a lift, we were offered information as to how to reach the Haines place, in the distance across the cranberry plantation.

How welcome "civilization"

This meant a trek of another mile or more. It was hard to believe that we had come all this way to Haines, back on the Harrisonville (spelled wrong) road, far below Speedwell. How good felt the warmth of the house in which we telephoned. How welcome was the voice of Willis Busby on the other end of the coffee-bog telephone line, in which one still rings the party he wants all by himself.

Willis promised help and in a half an hour two men appeared with another car. When we got through to the place where we had left our companion with the car, he had got a pine fire going, in the hopes of warming himself, as well as attracting attention of some wandering fire warden. The rest of the story can be told briefly-- the other car was mired, and we had to dig both out before getting underway after nightfall. But in any rate, we had those pictures of a country few but the natives ever see

 
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