It was supposed to be just a short walk

Teens recall ordeal

By BRIAN FERRY bferry@timesobserver.com


Kelly Brose and Julie Christie just wanted to enjoy Memorial Day with a picnic and a walk in the woods.

They got a lot more than they bargained for.

By the time rescue personnel from Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department found them, Brose, 19, and Christie, 18, had hiked more than seven miles and been in the woods for almost nine hours.

“Julie called me the night before and wanted to do something on Memorial Day,” Brose said.

They agreed to go to the Allegheny Reservoir.

They got together in Youngsville, then headed up to Route 59.

They passed the signs for Jake’s Rocks and Rimrock and turned in at Morrison Trail.

“We ate our lunch first,” Brose said.

There was no need to take the food along on a short walk. They had bug spray, sunscreen, hats, and one water bottle. They did not have a flashlight, any means of making fire, extra clothes or blankets.

Christie didn’t take her water bottle. “It will weigh me down,” she said. “I was just thinking 3.5 miles.”

After all, they were going on a short walk.

A “helpful” stranger told them the left path would circle around in three-and-a-half miles.

“He acted as if he was up there a lot, so we took his word for it,” Christie said. “We went into the woods at 2:30 (p.m.).”

They took the stranger’s advice and the left-hand path – even when they saw the sign that seemed to disagree with his words.

“We were on some trail that was not 3.5 miles,” Brose said. “It was much longer than we anticipated.”

“Around 7 p.m. I started to think 3.5 miles should have been over long ago,” Christie said.

“Julie was saying, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to spend a night in the woods,’” Brose said. “I said, ‘No, we’re not.’”

But she wasn’t very confident.

“Between 7 and 8 (p.m.) I was wondering if Julie was right,” she said.

The high temperature that day was 82. The low was 39 – not good weather to be spending the night outside in jeans and t-shirts.

Christie thought of turning around.

“I started to think we were on the wrong trail,” she said. “Should we turn around?”

They didn’t.

“We just kept on going because we figured it couldn’t be that much farther,” Brose said. “At 8 we were still walking.”

It wasn’t easy walking, either.

“I don’t remember where we had smooth walking,” Christie said. “It was very rough. It seemed we were always going up or down and hill, then across this creek.”

Both young women had their cell phones with them, but signal is spotty at best in that area.

“We checked our phones constantly for service,” Brose said.

Then at about 8 p.m., Brose’s phone beeped. She had a voice mail.

Better yet, she had enough signal to receive that voice mail.

“If I have enough service to get voice mail, I must have enough service to get out,” she said.

She called home.

Her worried mother told her not to move because she might not find cellular service anywhere else.

Christie’s phone had no signal, so she used Brose’s to let her family know she was all right, but in the woods and uncertain of her location.

The signal wasn’t strong. “Even though we never moved, we would lose service,” Brose said.

The phone beeped again. “I was finally able to call my family back,” she said. “My mom asked me if I’d called 911 yet.”

She hadn’t. While she still had signal, she placed the emergency call and reached Telecommunicator Ken McCorrison.

“Ken was able to locate us,” Brose said.

“He was so nice,” Christie said. “He made us feel much better just hearing his voice.”

“Thanks to Ken for calming me and Julie down,” Brose said.

The ladies weren’t panicking, but they weren’t perfectly calm, either.

He asked Brose if they had a flashlight or matches.

“I was really embarrassed,” she said.

But, McCorrison took it in stride. “He didn’t flip out,” Brose said.

McCorrison did cause the pair some alarm. “The second to last time I was talking to Ken, he said thunderstorms were approaching,” Brose said. “I was very scared.”

Shortly before 11 p.m., Brose and Christie saw flashlights in the woods. Minutes later, two members of the Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department walked up.

“It was a sense of relief and happiness,” Brose said of their rescuers’ arrival.

The rescuers had food and water, and their light was welcome, too.

The hikers had been using Christie’s phone and digital camera for light. “It was better than pitch black,” she said. “Next time we want matches, a flashlight, and blankets.”

They could use her phone as a light because it wasn’t doing any good as a phone. “We were trying to save her battery,” Christie said.

With all the searching for signal, the battery indicator showed low power. “By the time we got out to the road, it was dead,” Christie said.

The rescuers hadn’t had to venture far into the woods.

The Phase II Wireless location technology had told McCorrison just where Brose’s cell phone was. He passed that information to Clarendon VFD and the spot was about a mile from the road.

Even if Brose and Christie had kept walking that mile, they wouldn’t have been “out of the woods.”

“It was a couple miles back to my car,” Christie said.

“It was quite an experience,” she said.

The story has brought the women some celebrity. “We’ve been having to retell it to everybody,” Christie said. “We’ve been taking a lot of teasing.”

She admits some of it is deserved, but not all.

“I would love to thank all of the volunteers that found us,” Christie said.

“Thanks to Clarendon VFD for taking time out of their day to find us,” Brose said.

“Thanks to Ken McCorrison,” Brose said. She has already written him a thank-you letter.

They also thanked their families.

And both are now fans of the Phase II system.

Because they had walked so far, neither woman knew exactly where they were. “We thought we were in Jake’s Rocks,” Brose said. “We saw a whole bunch of rocks and we were very far from where we started.”

Phase II found them.

“I’m very grateful for it,” Brose said. “It led the Clarendon VFD right to where we were.”

Not all of the cellular towers in the county work with Phase II. Brose is in favor of changing that.

The pair learned several things about taking hikes.

One thing they found out was that their friendship is strong.

“I couldn’t have picked anybody better to be lost with,” Christie said.