The school board will require satellite phones and better planning on future wilderness outings.
OXFORD – The next time Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School students go on a organized wilderness trip they’ll lug along a satellite phone.
More administrators will know about the trip, too. And they’ll have access to a map showing the outing route.
These, and several other procedures proposed by an ad hoc committee, were approved by SAD 17 directors Tuesday night.
The committee consisted of Superintendent Mark Eastman, OHCHS Principal Joseph Moore, directors Dale Piirainen and Tim Ingram, wilderness leadership class instructors Ann Speth and Jeff Norton, observers Paul Marcolini and Ron Deegan and students Kyle Ingram, Josh Eichel and R. Atkinson.
The panel reviewed a camping trip that Speth and Norton and seven OHCHS students and another teen took in the White Mountain National Forest. The group was late to return from the outing, delayed by a strong winter storm.
Fearing the students were snowbound or worse when they failed to meet a school bus at a prearranged site, the Maine Warden Service and helicopter pilots from the Maine Army National Guard began a search.
The campers were spotted by a warden service pilot walking along an unplowed Route 113, about 1 mile from Evans Notch.
36-inch snowfall
They had weathered 36 inches of snow, winds reaching 60 miles per hour and temperatures in the single digits.
The committee recommendations included that:
• A satellite phone be required.
• A more complete list of team phone numbers be left with school administrators.
• A day-by-day map be left with administrators.
• An annual briefing for families of students planning to take the camping trips be held.
• A snowshoe use procedure be established.
• Participants must review guide rules and investigate having Outward Bound certification.
Board members praised the leadership of Norton and Speth.
“It was a great, really great time,” said Eichel. “Everybody did their job. We had a lot of confidence and there was no panic. Ann and Jeff dealt with it really good.”
The camping trip began at 8 a.m. Friday, Dec. 5, with 3 to 5 inches of snow forecast.
Speth assured Moore that that amount of snow was no concern because they were well prepared. The instructors brought extra food and fuel and everyone had extra clothing.
Speth said in the report that it started to snow on Saturday and there was 2 inches by noon.
“By 3 p.m. it was snowing heavier and getting darker,” she said.
Finding a water source prompted the group to stop 1.5 miles short of its planned destination. They got up at first light and hiked for 12 hours. Speth said the students were kept fed and hydrated and said they hiked until “the students were starting to stumble and then set up camp.”
They slept until 7 a.m. Monday.
Norton said snowshoes would have been no help with 3.5 feet of snow having accumulated.
Eastman produced an article from a member of the National Weather Service in Gray saying that even meteorologists did not see the storm coming.
He also distributed a report from the director of the warden service saying he believed in satellite phones and that one would have worked in that area.
Eastman said if a list of phone numbers and a daily map of the proposed routes were left with administrators other than Moore, response to the inquiries about the situation could have been more immediate.
He also said the committee would meet again and talk about Outward Bound certification for instructors leading the wilderness trips,
Speth said a winter trip is planned. That outing is usually made in February.
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