There are a few general rules followed by searchers for lost people.
If the proposed destination or general direction in which they
disappeared is known, the rescuers take the trail and track them.
Every trail, even across windswept bare rocks high above the
timberline, as is the Long's Peak trail, has occasional deposits of
soft sand in which footprints may be imprinted. And as I have said
before, the area which must be searched is restricted by confining
cliffs and ridges. A lost person who cannot find his way back over the
trail he has come, shows wisdom in following down a stream which will
eventually bring him to habitations in the valley below.
Whether or not searching parties start out at once for the unfortunate
climber depends on the character of the country he was bound for. If
his goal is the summit of a high, bleak peak like Long's; or a glacier,
it is imperative to start at once as the temperature above the
timberline is often below freezing, even during the summer months. But
if the country is not so menacing, the searchers delay, hoping the lost
person, like Bo Peep's sheep, will come home unsought, as indeed he
generally does.
Most of the lost are found, but a few persons have vanished never to be
seen again. The Reverend Sampson disappeared supposedly somewhere
along the Continental Divide between Estes Park and Grand Lake, and
though parties made up of guides, rangers and settlers searched for
more than a week, they found no trace of the missing man. I was in the
town of Walden, North Park, late one fall when a woodsman came down
from the mountains west of the Park with some human bones he had found
near the top of the Divide. By the marks on its barrel, the rusty
rifle lying near the bones was identified as one belonging to a man who
had been lost while on a hunting trip thirty years before.
One moonlight night I had an extraordinary and ludicrous experience
with a lost person, though at the time it seemed only exasperating. I
had stepped outside my cabin to drink in the "moonshine" on my superb
outlook. Across the valley, as clearly as in daylight. Long's Peak
and its neighbors stood out. The little meadow brook shimmered like a
silver ribbon. I walked out to Cabin Rock, a thousand feet above the
valley, and sat down. Coyotes yip-yipped their salutations to the
sailing moon. The murmur of the little brooks rose to my ears,
subdued, distant. I listened for each familiar night sound as one does
for the voices of old friends. I sat entranced, intoxicated with the
beauty of the hour, refreshing my soul, at peace, content.
A strange cry startled me from my reverie, a human cry, faint, as
though far off.
"Help!" Then a pause. "H-e-l-p!" Then more urgently: "H-E-L-P!"