#wilderness-rescue

#wilderness-rescue

Getting struck and killed by lightning was a real possibility since we were the highest thing around for miles and lightning was striking all around us. To reach safer ground, they decided to abandon their plan of taking a trail back. Instead, using their ice axes, they climbed down the face of the mountain through steep and icy snow chutes.

But Hey had training in search and rescue, so he struck up a conversation with Montgomery and asked a few important questions. Among them, he recalled: "Mate, have you got a backpack?" Montgomery's story was a long one. It touched down in places such as Vietnam and Alaska and ended with a helicopter ride to safety for Montgomery and a sober but ultimately uplifting lesson in wilderness survival rules for Troop 26.