“He told his wife that he was never going to hike that mountain range again,” one of the rangers who rescued him said.
A man from Singapore visiting the Adirondacks in New York who went missing was rescued after he spent three days in a swamp, The Adirondack Daily Enterprise reported.
The 58-year-old unnamed man was rescued by forest rangers with the state Department of Environmental Conservation on June 22, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise reported.
Authorities say that he might not have lived through a fourth night in Dix Pond Swamp had they not gotten to him in time.
The man was solo hiking when he got lost and then wandered around the area for three days after leaving a marked trail and becoming disoriented, the Times Union reported.
Forest rangers Andrew Lewis and Jamison Martin, who assisted in the swamp search and rescue, said the man barely survived when he was found in hypothermic conditions as the temperature falls below 40 degrees Fahrenheit each night. They said he was drinking swamp water to stay hydrated and was found with tattered clothing and bug bites covering his face.
The rangers said the man was a college professor who recently left his job and told his wife he was going to spend time in the Adirondack region and gave her a rough itinerary. He flew into JFK airport and rented a vehicle and made his way up the area, according to Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
However, when his wife had not heard from him after a few days and had been following his progress in the area via the fitness tracker app Strava, she noticed that it lost his signal. It was then she called local authorities for help, the rangers said.
Rangers were then able to get in touch with the car rental company he was using and through their GPS they tracked his vehicle to Elk Lake parking area, which leads to the Dix Range. The rangers located the vehicle and then looked at the trail register and noticed he signed in but never signed out, Adirondack Daily Enterprise reported.
When he was found, Lewis told reporters the man was “drenched from head to toe.”
Lewis added the swamp is “one of the most brutal swamps you could get stuck in.”
“You wouldn’t want to be in there three minutes, never mind three days,” Martin said.
The rangers warned that if you are not experienced, the trails can be difficult and dangerous. They also added that people should not rely on apps or GPS for navigation as signals tend to get lost while in the backwoods and mountains.
Rangers also urged that a paper map and compass should always be brought when hiking, especially when out of cell range or when the batteries die.
“He told his wife that he was never going to hike that mountain range again,” Martin said.
