Nashua hiker found after night lost in Franconia Notch

[Greg]

Nashua hiker found
after night lost
in Franconia Notch
By LORNA COLQUHOUN
Sunday News Correspondent

LINCOLN — A lone set of footprints spotted by air searchers yesterday as a snowstorm was bearing down on Franconia Notch led rescuers to a Nashua man, who had been lost overnight Friday.

Dan Cashman, 44, was found in the Pemigewasset Wilderness at about 4:20 p.m., as daylight faded and snow began falling. He had been missing since Friday afternoon, when he became separated from his hiking companions in the midst of a whiteout on the Franconia Ridge trail.

“It was like we were being sandblasted,” said Will Gaudette of Hudson, one of Cashman’s hiking companions. “It was like getting hit with ice pellets.”

They, along with another friend, Dennis Bettencourt of Lawrence, Mass., had planned for a day hike up the Falling Waters Trail to Mounts Lincoln and Lafayette. But bad weather struck the exposed ridge and Gaudette said within a matter of moments, they lost Cashman in winds that officials said gusted to up to 50 mph.

Gaudette and Bettencourt retreated to treeline and waited to see Cashman’s red parka emerge, but they eventually went down the trail to wait, hoping he would emerge then.

They called for help later on Friday night, but Fish and Game Lt. Todd Bogardus said the weather was too bad to send teams up that night. At first light yesterday, they headed up the Falling Waters trail and fanned out to find Cashman. They were assisted by an Army National Guard helicopter out of Concord.

Early in the day, Bogardus said, conditions above the notch were windy and cloudy.

“It’s socked in,” he said. “There are winds from 35 to 55 mph and clouds and snow.”

A few minutes before the Blackhawk was to bow out of the search because of the gathering storm, a set of foot prints were discovered in the vicinity of the Lincoln Brook trail. Two conservation officers, bushwhacking at times, followed them and eventually reached Cashman.

“It’s a thick area,” Bogardus said.

Gaudette and Bettencourt waited through the night for Cashman to come off the mountain. Late yesterday, as he was being walked out by conservation officers to Lincoln Woods off the Kancamagus Highway, Gaudette said the experience was sobering.

“You really need to be prepared,” he said. “You really need to have a plan so that if something happens, everyone knows what the other person might do.”

He said he kept going over in his mind what Cashman might be doing throughout the night.

When Cashman did emerge, in a U.S. Forest Service vehicle dispatched up a service road at Lincoln Woods to retrieve him, he said he had spent most of the time walking and when he rested in the dark hours, he remained sitting up.

“I didn’t want to start shivering,” he said.

Bogardus surmised that Cashman walked about 11 miles from the point he was last seen to when he was found.

“Start out as a group, stay as a group, end as a group,” Bogardus said.

Lessons were learned from the experience, Gaudette said.

“You have just got to be prepared — you can’t play around up here,” he said.

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