Three hikers stranded on an exposed ridgeline near the summit of Sierra Buttes were pulled to safety Sunday after one of them triggered an SOS alert from a satellite communicator.
The Sierra County Sheriff’s Office began a search and rescue operation after the Garmin device sent out the distress signal from the 8,600-foot peak in Tahoe National Forest at around 2:30 p.m.
Deputies requested mutual aid from Nevada County’s Search and Rescue Mountain Rescue Team and Washoe County’s RAVEN helicopter unit to reach the hikers, who were found clinging to a steep, exposed section of ridgeline just south of the lookout tower on Sierra Buttes.
Because of the difficult terrain and hazardous location, rescuers determined a helicopter hoist was the only safe way to get the hikers down. The RAVEN crew lowered a rescue team member directly to the stranded group to bring them out.
“Due to the difficult terrain and hazardous location, a helicopter hoist rescue was necessary. The RAVEN crew lowered a rescue team member to the stranded individuals,” the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post.
Part of a busy month for Sierra rescues
The Sierra Buttes rescue is the latest in a string of difficult mountain rescues across California in recent weeks. Last week, a 39-year-old Florida man spent two nights stranded on Shastina Peak with a badly injured leg before crews could get him off the mountain. He had reached the 14,179-foot summit Sunday afternoon when an erroneous GPS route sent him onto the Whitney Glacier, where he fell through a snow bridge at 12,600 feet and injured his leg.
Earlier in October, two young hikers from Salt Lake City, a 19-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman, spent 36 freezing hours trapped between cliffs on Mount Shasta after getting separated from a friend who continued on to the summit. They called for help around 10:20 p.m. on Oct. 12 after becoming too cold and exhausted to finish their descent. Rescuers located them the following afternoon near the bottom of a gulch, about 1,000 feet from the McBride Springs Trail.
