Lost hiker ignored rescuers' phone calls, thinking they were spam

"You can get a cellphone signal on the highest mountain in Colorado, and if you get lost hiking that mountain, you should probably answer your phone — even if you don't recognize the caller's number.

That's the message being spread by Lake County Search and Rescue, which tried to help a lost hiker on Mount Elbert by sending out search teams and repeatedly calling the hiker's phone. All to no avail. The hiker spent the night on the side of the mountain before finally reaching safety."

Some odd people about. Should have called the 3rd party if was going to be delayed.

Pardon me, but WTF is a "phone call" in a critical situation. Somebody selling an insurance upgrade thingy, or whatever? That would be my response also, and I would not be inclined to pick up.

If SAR had a number and a signal, why not send a text with useful data. Like, Hello this is XXXSAR please respond!

SAR did send texts, they were ignored too, according to the SAR thread on facebook.

And presumably the 3rd party that alerted SAR also attempted, so hard to see why that would have been an unknown number, if they knew the hikers expected return time.

https://www.facebook.com/LakeCountyCOSAR/posts/329214695671604

Wow, that's bizarre.

I've read about people acting in irrational ways faced with a survival situation. They shut down, can't think clearly, or sometimes just freeze and can't take action to save themselves at all. I wonder if that applies here.

If I remember correctly (another interview published at the time) he didn't consider himself "lost", just a bit delay, and didn't expect anyone to be out looking for him.

Hm, that requires a different view -- if I was just fashionably late but not in distress, and not likely to be, I might just ignore the phone. Though if I had a signal I would probably fire a note to my emergency contact to avoid triggering a whole lot of unnecessary search activity.