Mushroom hunter who survived frigid night in Jackson forest says be prepared even on a ‘short hike’

Bring a whistle with you every time!

Linda Doar got knocked out when she got separated from her group and fell into a hole in Jackson Demonstration State Forest on Jan. 28. After surviving a frigid night she wants to help others be better prepared to survive the redwood wilderness.

“They say don’t turn your back on the ocean and most people here understand that. But they should also say don’t turn your back on the forest or don’t underestimate the forest. It can consume you, just like the ocean. It looks inviting and safe but you have to know how to respect the forest. People have been stuck out there for days and lost toes or fingers to frostbite,” she said.

Others lost have never returned and are assumed to have perished.

Doar talked to me and gave me a lot of hints on staying safe. Her Southern accent and storytelling talent make it fun to listen to her talk, so check out the piece Elise Cox and I did at KXYZ. [interview]

Getting off the roads and into the wilderness is tempting in Jackson Demonstration State Forest. [photo by Frank Hartzell]

A whistle is the thing she will always have with her in the future to summon searchers. She could hear them calling her in the distance but they could not hear her. A shrill blast or two from an old P.E teacher-style whistle would likely have resulted in her being saved right away. Other items she recommends include two flashlights, a thermal blanket (which can now be rolled up to be tiny), a compass, protein bars, and matches and/or a lighter in a plastic bag. Even more than bringing the right stuff is telling people where you are going, always go in a group and when you are truly lost, stay in one place, according to forest hiking tips compiled from groups like Save the Redwoods League. Doar had told people where she was going and was with a group. She had 13 years of hiking experience in the woods. She went to a house on Road 409 in Caspar to go mushroom hunting with friends in the afternoon. She spotted some fabulous Sweet Tooth mushrooms and went after them. It’s easy to get excited and lose oneself momentarily when the mushroom fever hits. There were also lots of hedgehogs. Deep in the brush, she tripped and hit her head and went out cold, in more ways than one.

She and her friends had checked in several times and next they looked and she was no longer behind them.

Linda Doar

Her group searched and searched and immediately called the sheriff’s department. The searches were intense as twilight fell. Doar was knocked out for the remaining moments of daylight and woke up to realize she really should have been more prepared.

“I thought, Oh, how dumb I am. I didn’t even wear a jacket. We were just gonna go out for an hour or so and go back.”

“There was a big pile of downed trees I was walking across and just fell through,” Doar said.

She found herself in a pit. When I interviewed Linda last week, a visible shiner bruise could be seen across her forehead. 

“It was dark when I came to so I couldn’t tell how big of an area I was in or the layout of the hole I was in. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand when I held it up to my face and thought, how am I gonna get out of here?”

She tried crawling up out of the apparent hole she found herself in, hearing distant searchers early on. They couldn’t hear her when she yelled back, either in or out of the hole.  When there were no more human sounds and the darkness complete, she heard critters rustling about in the bushes. She hoped it was a deer or a raccoon but worried a bear or mountain lion could be about. 

“Every time I heard any noise, I’d start hollering, get away from here, you know, Oh, I heard all kinds of noises, but you know, like something walking in the grass or in the leaves, crunch, crunch, crunch, yikes. So I was just kind of like; Go away! Get away from here!.”  The noise usually stopped after she yelled.

“I had no idea what it was, and I was hoping it wasn’t a mountain lion. But because I couldn’t see, I couldn’t tell how far it was from me, but I could tell it was in my general vicinity somewhere.  Doar, a cancer survivor, loves animals and has worked with both wild animals and veterinary animal clients.

The hole she was in was scarier than whatever was in the bushes.

“I knew that I was on a downslope and apparently in a hole. I just didn’t know how far down the hole or hillside went, So I sat there dug into the side of the hill, my heels, my shoes, and just hunkered down under my sweatshirt, and that’s where I stayed until daylight.“

She tried to keep warm on a night when the mercury dipped below 40 degrees but didn’t know that the bushes had torn a giant hole in the back of her shirt.

“I put my hands inside my hoodie and I pulled my sleeves as far over my fingers and hands as I could get them and tucked them in behind my hoodie, between my hair and my neck, but still was freezing because of that hole in my shirt in the back.”

When she crawled out of the hole at daybreak and stood up she was colder than she had ever been. 

“I had to fight so hard in that hole and to get out of it, I was all hot and sweaty in the frigid weather which made it worse, as being wet is really bad.”

After a frigid night her toes and other parts ached from the near freezing temperatures and she knew she had to get out.

“When it got daylight I finally got up and out of the hole but I still couldn’t get my bearings. I didn’t know which way I had come.”  

Then she heard a thrilling sound – a car going by.  Cars went by every few minutes, which made it hard to figure out where the road was. “Your ears can play tricks on you in a situation like that. If you hear a sound when you are facing one way and turn around to look for it, then it sounds like its in another direction. It depends more on which way you are facing than you realize,” she said.

The going was tough and she realized following the car sounds was a bad idea. Finally, she found markings of a forest operation, including tape and other disturbance of the forest. She managed to find her way to a camp with a lumber loading platform. 

“I knew they had to drive in to get to that and I found a really rough forest road, but a road you could walk on. She was following the road along a ravine and making good forward progress then saw a flash of silver go by on the other side. 

“This gave me some energy and I scooted down the side of the ravine and up the other side and there it was road 409. I couldn’t even figure out if I was going back toward Fort Bragg or not but knew it was 409 so I’d come to the fire station or the highway soon enough.”

A car pulled over and the woman inside said “Honey what is your name,” Doar said.
“I told her and she was really happy, she said, ‘get in, we have been looking for you.” The woman was from the search and rescue crew.

When she got to the command center, an ambulance crew checked her out but she wasn’t interested in going to the hospital.

“I just wanted to go home and get in a hot bath for about two hours and finally get my feet warm,” she said. “I was fortunate that I didn’t get any frostbite.”

She plans to go mushroom hunting again but with all the right gear. She says much of the advice given online for safe hiking doesn’t work for mushroom hunters. She stopped bringing her cell phone along after it fell out of her pocket crawling on her hands and knees looking for mushrooms and got lost. Plus cell phones rarely get any signal in the forest.

Another bit of universal advice for hikers that doesn’t work for mushroom foragers is to wear a backpack, “To find mushrooms you have to go into brush that the backpack will be constantly snagging on,” she said. Mushroom hunters wear hats which keeps the thorns and branches from taking a piece out of one’s scalp. Heavy shirts are great but too heavy and a person gets hot and sweaty, she pointed out.

Before she goes mushroom hunting again she plans to find a fanny pack that can be worn on the front, away from the brambles. Of course, she has a flat belly, while some of us who have the bubble in the middle might need a different approach.

Inside the backpack, put those universally advised items, compass, whistle, energy bar and two flashlights.  She also plans to take colored tape and anytime she goes off the trail, mark the way back with the tape then collect it on the way back through.

“In 13 years of coming into these woods, I never thought I would go for a short hike, fall in a hole between big logs where nobody could hear me. But the forest will swallow you and I knew that and had heard of it happening. I will go back and I will be more prepared.”

“Every muscle in my body hurts, okay, but I’m nothing but grateful, and I thank God that I’m still here today. But I was one cold soul last week,” she said.

These mushroom hunters stick together and try to resist the temptation of going just a little further in. [photo by Frank Hartzell]

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department does not have separate statistics that would show how many people are lost in the woods each year, said spokesman Quincy Cromer. 

He said when someone goes missing and a search and rescue operation is launched press releases are issued. Sometimes people get lost out in the woods for days and it never gets reported. 

Cromer said the sheriff’s department has averaged more than 50 Search and Rescue deployments per year over the past decade or so. Cromer pointed out this is almost one per calendar week. He said numbers have fallen in the last few years but still average over 30 deployments per year. The Search and Rescue Team is all volunteer and they work at training and searching almost like they would at a full-time job.

Last May, Cromer issued a series of press releases after a woman disappeared in the woods. 75 search and rescue volunteers from counties all over the area searched for two days with dogs and helicopters for Dr. Elizabeth Schenk. She had disappeared in the woods between Fort Bragg and Westport. The 70-year-old spent two nights in the woods, although the nights were much warmer. She seems to have broken one of those critical rules of being lost in the woods – she was found miles from where she disappeared.  The rule – Stay in one place once badly lost. 

Doar, 60, a widow, grew up in Alabama and Florida and loved to hike in the woods there. She came to Mendocino to live. Her sister Helen, is a long-time nurse supervisor at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital.

“Some people who come here don’t realize how big the redwood forest is and the dangers a person can encounter there. The ones back east are nothing like this.”