HANCOCK, Mass. — Emergency rescuers found two snowboarders lost in the Pittsfield State Forest after a four hour search.
According to police, Shaun Maynard and Anthony Shufelt, two Pittsfield residents in their late teens were snowboarding on the backside of the forest when they got lost.
The two used a cell phone to dial 911, which called into Rensselaer County Sheriff's Department, shortly after 6 p.m. The phone then lost service and the snowboarders attempted to hike back from where their starting point.
State police were coordinating the efforts by the environmental police, Hancock Fire and Rescue and the state Department of Recreation. The hikers were found at 10 p.m. by the environmental police. Neither were injured but both were taken to Berkshire Medical Center for evaluation.
Some 5 to 8 inches of snow had fallen over the region since Monday night and temperatures were plummeting as a cold front moved into the area along with high winds. Forecasters were predicting temperatures overnight to dip below zero with a wind-chill factor of 10 to 20 degrees below zero.
Searchers were reportedly using sirens in the area of Goodrich Hollow Road.
The Massachusetts State Police Air Wing last night located a hunter who had gone missing in a forest in Savoy.
A state police helicopter crew found the hunter, a 62-year-old Savoy man, at 10:50 p.m. in a wooded area by using the aircraft's forward-looking infrared camera. The hunter was located about one-third of a mile from the point where he had entered the woods almost nine hours earlier.
The helicopter crew directed state police ground units to the hunter's location. Troopers on the ground and local firefighters determined that he had suffered potentially serious injuries but was conscious and appeared to be in stable condition. The helicopter crew illuminated the scene using a high-powered searchlight mounted under the nose of the aircraft while rescue personnel removed the hunter to an ambulance for transport to an area hospital.
State Police had begun searching for the hunter at 5:50 p.m., when his wife called the barracks in Cheshire to report him missing. She told troopers he had entered the woods at about 2 p.m. wearing fluorescent orange clothing and was usually home by dark. Troopers and state police dogs began a ground search. At approximately 10 p.m., the Air Wing unit was dispatched from its base in Westover and located the hunter less than an hour later.
State police are not releasing the hunter's name or the nature of his injuries at this time.
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