‘I’m going to die’: Two childhood friends recount hours-long ordeal on Mt. Baker

EVERETT — Multiple hours into a mountain adventure gone wrong, Emily Trepanier could not feel her toes inside four pairs of socks.

In the early afternoon on Jan. 6, Trepanier, who works at The Daily Herald, left work to visit the Baker Hot Springs alongside her childhood friend Autumn Boober. While it was Trepanier’s first visit to the springs, she said the pair felt confident they knew the way, as Boober had visited once before.

Their midweek adventure would turn into what Boober referred to as a “bad scary movie” hours later upon finding themselves trapped between a fallen tree and a cliff.

“It almost all felt like a dream,” Boober said.

Around 4 p.m., the snow started falling as Trepanier’s Nissan Rogue began to climb the mountain road. As they neared the springs, the snowfall intensified, forcing Trepanier and Boober to turn around.

While Trepanier’s vehicle could handle the snow, falling trees made the narrow mountain road difficult to navigate. Trepanier described continually getting out of the car to move trees off the roadway and, on one occasion, dig her Nissan out of the snow.

Around 6 p.m., they had just freed Trepanier’s car from the snow when they discovered another tree had landed on the roadway. Trepanier said at first she thought the tree was “no big deal.”

Despite being one of the smaller trees in the forest, the trunk was just big enough to stop the Nissan from driving over and too heavy to be pushed to the side.

“When it didn’t move, my first thought was, ‘Oh, it’s gonna move. I’m gonna make it move,’” Trepanier said.

After multiple unsuccessful attempts, Trepanier weighed her options.

The road overlooked a cliff, so driving around was not possible, and attempts to move the tree only resulted in a wiggle from the still partially attached trunk, she said.

“I even thought about walking down the mountain,” Trepanier said. “I was like, ‘Well, that’s not safe. I’ll probably die faster.’”

Attempts to call 911 automatically connected Boober to a text line due to the lack of cell service. The text line ran via satellite connection, which required Boober to point her phone to the sky to receive service and take three-minute breaks in between to wait for another satellite to orbit nearby.

Over satellite, first responders asked questions about their situation, including if they had enough resources for the night.

“I was like, ‘Hey, I’m not sleeping here all night,’” Boober said. “So then I started texting people that I know.”

Without promise of rescue, the wait began.

After around an hour, Trepanier thought, “I’m going to die.”

“Normally, I can find myself out of things, but I could not find a way out of this,” Trepanier said. “I think that’s where my anxiety heightened.”

Boober eventually connected over satellite with a friend of a friend who lived nearby. During his first rescue attempt, the snow was too deep, forcing him to turn back for a shovel.

To keep herself grounded, Trepanier began taking stock of the surrounding trees, specifically those she thought would stay in the ground.

“You’re just trying to come up with anything in your mind to know you’re going to survive,” she said.

To distract themselves from the sounds of snow falling and the rustling animals in the dark, Boober said they talked about “anything and everything.”

“We have a lot of history,” Trepanier said about Boober. “I was like, ‘If I die on this mountain, I need to tell you this, this and this.’”

During the second rescue attempt, the friend’s car still couldn’t get past the thickening snow, so he parked and hiked up with a chainsaw, Trepanier said. As he made his way up the road, she began flashing her headlights as a signal, one of the two times she decided to turn on the vehicle.

“You ready to get out of here?” Trepanier recalled the man saying as he emerged from the snow.

He yanked the chainsaw’s cord. Nothing happened.

“I’m like, ‘Your hands just gotta be cold. There better be enough gas in that thing,’” Trepanier recalled thinking. “We’re just sitting there, and he’s pulled it four or five times.”

After what Trepanier described as another nerve-wracking wait, the chainsaw began to rumble.

“I didn’t really act how I thought I would react by being rescued,” she said. “I thought I’d cry and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much.’ I was just silent.”

On their way down, Trepanier said they passed Whatcom County sheriff deputies on their way to them.

“They had almost made it,” Trepnaier said.

Around five hours after they initially got stuck, they saw the land beneath the snow, she said. When they arrived at a gas station, the Nissan only had 20 miles of fuel left.

Whether lost or injured, hundreds of individuals require rescue services, with the Washington Emergency Management Division reporting that Search and Rescue performs 900 to 1,000 missions each year across the state.

A Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson encourages individuals traveling to Mount Baker to bring the 10 essentials, a Personal Locator Beacon and to call for help early.

The 10 essentials include:

• Navigation

• Sun protection

• An extra layer of clothes in case of extreme weather conditions

• Flashlights, lanterns and headlamps

• First Aid Supplies

• Matches, lighter and fire starters

• Repair kit and tools

• Food

• Water and water treatment supplies

• Emergency shelter

While Trepanier said they came prepared with the survival tools, next time she would bring a chainsaw and a can of gas.

Boober and Trepanier both agreed they want to try again to get to the springs. Just not in the snow, Trepanier added.

Jenna Millikan: 425-339-3035; jenna.millikan@heraldnet.com; X: @JennaMillikan