Sheriff’s deputies used military technology to triangulate the location of a cellphone used by a person who was missing in the snow near Wrightwood, and the barefoot woman was rescued.
“Conscious and coherent” was the description of the woman after her rescue, who was rescued by a Sno-Cat after nine hours spent lost in blinding fog and deep snow, not far from the Mountain High-North ski area.
The rescued person was described as a 53-year-old woman from nearby Phelan. She had “texted her son about 2:42 a.m. that she was lost and walking around with no shoes or socks on,” Lt. Ken Wright of the sheriff’s Palmdale station told City News Service.
At 5 a.m., deputies discovered her vehicle in the ski area’s parking lot at at 24512 Angeles Crest Highway, Wright said.
They also saw tracks into a closed, snowbound campground. Following her trail, they found her car keys, a sock and tracks, but they could not find her.
Helicopters could not be brought in due to clouds, but the cellphone was still communicating with the network, deputies said
Palmdale station deputies and the Antelope Valley Search and Rescue Team got special permission from the Air Force to use a cell phone detection tracker, which led them to the phone and the lost woman, in the snow near the amphitheater at the Table Mountain Campground.
No further details about why the woman was lost in the snow-covered mountains nor why she was barefoot.
–City News Service