Greenfield fire and police personnel successfully found a hiker who was lost off Ted’s Trail Tuesday evening.
Rescue personnel were summoned just after 7 p.m., when a man called 911 because he was lost without a flashlight after starting a hike. “He wasn’t exactly prepared well,” Fire Chief Rick McQuade said, but had a working cell phone with a good battery, so county dispatch was able to approximate his location from his phone’s signal.
The hiker, a man in his 30s, had come from out of town and drove a car with Pennsylvania plates, McQuade said. Fire and police personnel arrived soon after and began hiking up Ted’s Trail, using one of the rescuer’s phones to triangulate the missing man’s signal. “He was off the trail quite a bit,” McQuade said, and it took an hour and a half to get close to him, and even longer to find him. “The area he was in was very overgrown and thick, it was challenging to find him even though we were within 40 to 50 feet,” he said.
The hiker was “absolutely fine” and walked out with the rescue party, thanking all of them, McQuade said, and they gave him a ride back to his car at the top of the hill.
“Not having a flashlight proved to be challenging,” McQuade said, and that it was difficult to follow the trail now that the leaves are down.
Ted’s Trail is a 5.4 mile trail off Mountain Road in Greenfield that connects with Carolyn’s Trail and the top of North Pack, according to the trail site AllTrails.com.