MILLINOCKET, Maine — Rescuers said Jason Hartley and Jennifer McIntyre used excellent survival tactics to survive hypothermia when a canoe accident deposited them in the icy cold waters of Millinocket Stream earlier this week.
But if the 31-year-old Rite Aid worker had to endure another dunking under similar circumstances, probably she would wish for one change in the narrative: dry cellphones.
Hartley and McIntyre had to huddle by the small fire they built along the stream stripped down to their long johns in 30-something degree winds and snow for four hours Tuesday before they could call for rescue, McIntyre said.
“His was out but mine was just going on and off,” McIntyre said Thursday. “As soon as it [dried enough and] started working, he called the police station” using her phone at about 2 p.m.
Left after rescuers found them with what she called a giant bruise on her right knee from hitting a rock while swimming ashore and a sore back when the canoe hit her, McIntyre said she is grateful to be alive.
“You couldn’t [go] 10 minutes [before the accident] without having to move your body around and then, when we flipped the canoe, we couldn’t move any more than a foot from the fire,” McIntyre said. “Both of our socks burned.”
“His sweatshirt we had leaning on a tree and it had icicles leading from it in about 10 minutes,” she added.
A stay-at-home dad to their three children and a part-time trapper who sells muskrat and beaver pelts to North American Fur Traders, the 36-year-old Hartley goes out on the water at least once a week to check his traps. Never an outdoorswoman until they met 10 years ago — “It’s just not something I was brought up doing, but now I love it, just the whole adventure of it” — McIntyre often accompanies him, she said.
The wind and current were unusually strong that day, contributing to an accident that they couldn’t imagine happening — until it did, she said.
They had just collected a muskrat from a trap and were about 100 feet from the boat landing at Shad Pond, where Millinocket Stream and the west branch of the Penobscot River merge, when things suddenly went wrong. Wind that was already whitecapping the water blew the 16-foot Sullivan aluminum canoe leftward into a rock that McIntyre was trying to push away from. The canoe’s left side hit the oar and rock, rolled up against both, and dumped the couple to the right.
“We have been in white water before so it [weather conditions] really didn’t concern us. Neither of us thought it was going to tip just from running up against a rock and the oar,” McIntyre said.
Hartley yelled for McIntyre to watch out for the rock, but by then it was too late. They had personal flotation devices with them, but weren’t wearing them, McIntyre said. Luckily, the water was maybe 6 to 10 feet deep and they were yards from shore.
Rescuers were impressed when they found the couple. Hartley and McIntyre had sought shelter behind some trees and a large tree stump, removed some of their wet clothing, started a fire to warm themselves, and hung orange hunting vests and other clothing along the shoreline to alert searchers to their location.
“They did a great job. They stayed calm, which probably helped save their lives, and they were prepared,” Millinocket Fire Chief Andrew Turcotte said Wednesday.
McIntyre credits the couple’s love of outdoorsmanship — and of television shows on that subject — for their preparedness. Besides their layers of clothing, she and Hartley had four or five lighters, waterproof matches and a knife with a flint with which to make the fire, she said.
An avid outdoorsman all his life, and realizing that hypothermia can incapacitate its victims in minutes and kill within an hour, Hartley dropped his usual fun-loving demeanor and immediately took charge, McIntyre said.
“He was very cool, calm and collected,” McIntyre said. “He did awesome.”
His only humorous outburst was inadvertent. When they got ashore and he said, “Get your clothes off now!” McIntyre said she had to laugh at his decidedly unromantic tone.
“I like everything about him. I like how he is funny,” McIntyre said. “He can make pretty much anybody laugh.”
Hypothermia set in almost immediately despite the fire, she said. Her toes went numb and it wasn’t until about 10 p.m. Tuesday night that she regained some feeling in them. At that point, exhaustion set in.
“I am thankful I am alive,” McIntyre says now. “All I could picture was the worst. The worst-case scenario was going through my brain. It was automatic: ‘What happens if I don’t make it out of here?’”