Maryville, TN Hiker Survives Close Call on CDT

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December 21, 2007

Maryville, TN Hiker Survives Close Call on CDT

By Rick Laney
of The Daily Times Staff

Bert Emmerson is a serious hiker. The 59-year-old Maryville resident is chasing hiking’s “Triple Crown,” which includes the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. With more than 7,000 miles logged and two of the three trails finished, Emmerson is less than 200 miles from achieving his goal — but his plans were put on hold this week in a remote area of southwest New Mexico.
On Monday afternoon, Emmerson knocked on the door of a complete stranger in Gila, N.M., and asked for help. His lips were black, and he couldn’t feel his hands. The toes on both of his feet were frostbitten, and he was running low on food after being caught above 10,000 feet in a four-day snowstorm. Temperatures were 10- to 20-degrees below zero and, as he tried to hike, the snow was nearly to his waist.
“It started snowing on Saturday, Dec. 8, and continued for the next four days,” Emmerson said during a telephone interview from New Mexico.
“I’m 5 feet 10 inches tall, and it got to where the tips of my mittens were dragging in the snow while I was walking.
“When my toes started to get numb, I got in my tent and crawled into my sleeping bag. My socks were frozen to my toes, and I knew I was in big trouble.
“The next morning, my toes were black — so I tried to follow a route down through the Gila Wilderness Area to a road that I planned to hike out on.”

The Continental Divide

The route Emmerson was taking on the Continental Divide Trail is 2,567 miles long and stretches through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
Emmerson started his journey at Glacier National Park on June 15 and has been hiking ever since. His plan was to reach the Mexico border and be home with his wife, Becky Emmerson, by Christmas.
The Continental Divide Trail climbs and descends the peaks of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico, traversing mountainside meadows, granite peaks and high-desert saddles. Through five states, 25 National Forests, 20 Wilderness areas, three National Parks, one National Monument and eight Bureau of Land Management Resource areas, the trail travels along the “backbone of America” through dramatic and wild backcountry.
Although he started his trek with a small group of other hikers, Emmerson had been hiking solo since he left the trail for a while at the beginning of September to attend his son’s wedding in New Hampshire.
“I had resupplied in Pie Town, N.M., on Dec. 3 and had about one week’s worth of food with me,” Emmerson said.
“I had planned to make it to a place called Doc Campbell’s in about nine days but, when it started snowing, I decided to do a road walk rather than risk getting lost on the trail.
“The road was 39 miles straight to the west — and as I walked, the snow just kept getting deeper and deeper.
“By the time I made it to the house in Gila, I had been out for two entire weeks.”
Back home in Maryville, Becky Emmerson was hours away from asking the New Mexico Police to launch a full-scale search and rescue mission.
She wasn’t sure where her husband was, but she knew it was desolate, steep and remote. The Gila Wilderness Area covers 3.3 million acres of forest and rangeland and is the sixth largest National Forest in the United States. There are six peaks in the Mogollon Mountains — where Emmerson was at the time of the snow storm — with elevations between 10,000 and 11,000 feet. He had described the area during the couple’s last phone call as being “in the middle of nowhere.”
“I hadn’t talked to him for almost two weeks and I was starting to get worried,” Becky said. “There really aren’t many good maps of that area — and the Continental Divide Trail has so many alternate routes.
“I had been talking to the police and forest service people in New Mexico. The police were helpful, but they said it was a 7,000-square-mile area and you can’t really search it.
“Then I ended up talking to another through-hiker who acted really concerned after hearing about Bert. That made me even more worried.
“When I found out that Bert hadn’t picked up one of his packages that he should have already had, I decided we were going to have to do something.”

Ghost town

Just as Becky was making plans to contact authorities in New Mexico, the phone rang and it was Bert. After hiking out of the Gila Wilderness Area, he came to the ghost town of Mogollon, N.M. — an abandoned mining town from the early 1900s that now boasts “five or six” residents.
Emmerson knocked on virtually every door in town, but most of the buildings were vacant. Finally, he reached Dan Ostler’s place.
Ostler, who said people die every year in the mountains around Mogollon, said Emmerson was a hero.
“Geronimo spent part of a winter up there,” Ostler said, “but he was in a cabin. Geronimo also had canned food — Emmerson had neither.
“Very few people walk out of there — actually only two in the last 17 years that I can recall. The first one who walked out had no snow, Emmerson had plenty of snow. I suspect two or three feet had accumulated before he got out.
“It really surprised me when he knocked on my door. There are so few people here, that you don’t really expect anyone to show up.”
Jokingly, Ostler said he expects to find a phone booth up in the mountains next spring when it warms up — because he knows Emmerson has a cape and superhero costume hidden somewhere.
“Very few human beings could survive up there in that,” Ostler said. “They find one to three bodies up there just about every year.
“Emmerson is a remarkable individual — a really good guy.”

No typical retirement

Four years ago, Emmerson retired from the Tennessee Farmers’ Co-Op in Rockford where he was a plant manager for 13 years. Originally from Kansas, he moved to East Tennessee in 1978 while working for ConAgra Foods.
During his first year of retirement, Emmerson hiked the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. The next year, he hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. He didn’t schedule any long-distance hikes for 2006, but started planning his Continental Divide Trail trek for 2007. On average, less than two dozen hikers attempt the six-month journey on the Continental Divide Trail each year.
Emmerson said, “Last year, when Becky wanted me to stay home and act normal, I worked at Little River Trading Company in Maryville part-time. I’m planning to go back to them — it’s a great store and I recommend Little River’s products to everyone. Most of my equipment is from Little River Trading Company.”
Emmerson was examined by a doctor on Wednesday and planned to return to Maryville today. According to Emmerson, the doctor said he wouldn’t lose his toes to the frostbite if he is careful with them in coming weeks.
“I was never really worried about being lost,” Emmerson said. “I knew where I was — within a mile or so — the whole time.
“I did get a little concerned about the Mexican grey wolves that were reintroduced into the wilderness area near Snow Lake, N.M. They can be aggressive toward humans.
“I had the black bears, the mountain lions, the coyote, the Mexican grey wolves and the creatures from outer space to contend with (a reference to the UFO conspiracy theories about Area 51 in Nevada) — but I wasn’t lost.”
Emmerson plans to go back to New Mexico next year and finish the Continental Divide Trail in April or May. He stressed that he would do this “after the weather breaks.”
To learn more about Emmerson’s hiking adventures and view photos from his trek, visit his online hiking journal at www.trailjournals.com/wildcat.