MILLINOCKET, Maine — After putting a ham in the oven for Christmas dinner, three friends set out Sunday on two snowmobiles for a ride from their camp on Smith Pond over to Kokadjo, but they didn’t return.
When the sun set and the temperature dipped below zero, the husbands of the three friends got worried and started searching the area, looking along Golden Road all the way up to Abol Bridge, 27 miles away. They found nothing.
After exhausting all efforts, the husbands decided at 2:30 a.m. to call for help. More than a dozen Maine game wardens and two Warden Service aircraft helped search for the three women. The wardens found two in less than three hours, and the third, who was sent to go get help but got lost, was saved by three snowmobilers from Liberty.
“There was no plan,” Dorothy Gould of Glenburn said Tuesday of the daytime snowmobile trip with her friends Valerie Morrow of Garland and Alice Meadow of Tioga, Texas. “We were out riding, and the guys were out on the side-by-side.”
After getting more than halfway to Kokadjo, one of the snowmobiles got stuck in a ditch near Penobscot Pond, which is in the southern part of the Nahmakanta Public Reserved Land. Without cellphone service, the women could not call for help.
After getting stuck, “they delegated me to take the other snowmobile and go for help,” Gould said of her friends. “They picked me because I knew the trails better.”
Unbeknownst to Gould, the group somehow “got ourselves turned around,” so when she left Penobscot Pond thinking she was heading east back toward Millinocket, she was actually heading north. She stopped when she came upon a cabin in the woods near Nesowadnehunk Field Campground at the north end of Baxter State Park.
“I jumped off the snowmobile and went to the door and tried it, and thankfully it was open. I left the snowmobile idling, and it ran right out of gas right then and there,” Gould said of how she got stranded.
She later found out “it was 30 miles” from where she left her friends on the side of the trail.
The cabin had a woodstove and split firewood that Gould was able to use to start a fire and keep warm.
“I was so scared for those two because they had nothing,” Gould said of Morrow and Meadow, who had just arrived from Texas and was not property prepared for the subzero weather.
“She had boots on but not snowmobile boots,” Gould said. “She had a jacket on but not a snowmobile jacket. It was cold.”
To keep warm, Morrow and Meadow kept moving.
“They snuggled and walked and jumped and prayed,” Gould said. “They did a lot of praying and thinking. The wardens found them at about 4 a.m.”
They were cold and hungry but otherwise OK, she said.
After spending the night in the cabin, Gould saw a young snowmobiler from Liberty and was able to flag him down. He went for gas and returned about 30 minutes later with two others. She followed them back toward Millinocket and met with game wardens at about noon, eight hours after her friends were found.
Cpl. John MacDonald, public information officer for the warden service, said “none of the women had extra gas or emergency supplies with them,” and because of the freezing temperatures and reported thin ice in the area, “game wardens were very concerned for the women’s safety.”
He asked that snowmobilers prepare when they hit the trails.
To educate riders about how they can be safe on the trails this winter, wardens and the Maine Snowmobile Association are hosting a 10 a.m. Thursday news conference at the North Augusta Trailblazers Clubhouse at 213 Burns Road.
“Thursday’s press conference will highlight the need for snowmobile riders to work together and reduce crashes,” MacDonald said. “Driving under the influence, speeding, operating in adverse weather conditions and operating on unfamiliar water bodies are common contributing factors with fatal snowmobile incidents. To help reduce snowmobile search and rescue incidents, we ask that riders focus on leaving trip plans and carry essential items.”
Gould said that the next time she leaves on a snowmobile ride, she will have extra gas, a good trail map and a way to make fire and will leave her husband a note saying where she is heading.
“The Christmas of 2016 is something we’ll never forget,” Gould said.