Lost in the Woods, Part 3

My mom hiking in nice smoggy LA

As chronicled here, and here, my mom got this crazy idea to train to climb Mount Whitney, but since she is unable to get out of the house early enough or use a map, she leaves late and gets lost.

Remember when I made my mom promise that she'd never do it again?

I was on call in the Surgical ICU one night when I got another text message from my dad. Again, my parents had gone out hiking and had headed out in the late afternoon for a long hike. My mom had forged ahead without my dad, and it was again, many hours past dark, and my mother was nowhere to be found.

Fortunately, my dad did have cell reception at this trailhead, since I was taking care of sick patients and unable to coordinate the search efforts from Utah again.

Around midnight, Search and Rescue was called out, and searched briefly... and around 2am, I got another call from my dad, saying that they had called the search off. The weather was good- in the low 60s, so if my mother was still out there, she would be fine through the night.

Fine through the night?! But what if she had fallen and gotten hurt??? Or attacked by a mountain lion??? But there was nothing I could do. I continued taking care of my sick patients and tried to ignore the fact that my mom was out in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of the night.

Finally, we were on morning rounds when I got a text from my dad that they had found my mom. Relieved, I let out a "Oh thank God" in the middle of rounds, prompting my attending to pause rounds and look at me.

"Oh, my mom's been missing all night and they just found her."

"JESUS, Alice, that's been going on all night and you haven't told us?!" He had been on call with me all night.

I guess I hadn't explained that this was quickly becoming a commonplace occurrence.

I called her a few hours later and she got upbraided by an irate and post-call daughter for doing exactly what she had promised not to do. Apparently she had tried to head back early enough (apparently NOT early enough...) and had gotten lost in the impending darkness. She had found a group of hikers who were camping out for the night and joined their campfire until day broke so she could head back down to the trailhead. But I got this explanation a lot later. I was too mad (and too post-call) to listen to a thing she was telling me the first time around.