48 | March• 2019MISSING: DOG WALKER, 56, FEMALEthe shooting pain in her back. Roxy
and Chloe, who’d stayed by her side
all night, looked at her quizzically.
Marcel’s going to find me, Poitras
thought.He knows which mountains
Iusuallywalk.He’s going to find me.
“Bubba!” she called out again.
She’d been walking dogs in the
areaformorethantwoyears,al-
ways bringing a kit that included a
whistle, some munchies, a dog bowl,
an extra piece of clothing and a bear
belltuckedintoabumbag.Buton
November 20, she didn’t bring it with
her; with the elderly Bubba tagging
along, she didn’t think the walk
wouldlastmorethan20minutes.
Suddenly, as if reading her mind,
the puggle came running through
thetrees.“Finally!”Poitrasyelled.
Buthertemporaryburstofgratitude
at seeing Bubba was tempered by the
task at hand: getting herself, and the
dogs, off the mountain alive.
Tree after tree looked the same, the
ground matted with seemingly iden-
tical remains of sodden old growth.
Poitras didn’t know it, but she was
walking deeper into the woods. The
dogs followed closely, shivering from
cold and staring at their leader long-
ingly. They hadn’t passed a stream or
anything that looked edible. Suddenly,
Poitras made out the buzz of helicop-
ters overhead – they were looking for
her! She grabbed a long stick from the
forest floor, tied her pink rain jacket to
one end and began to wave her make-
shift flag. But her wild flapping was nothevan.Heclimbedoutofthecar
andwalkedovertothenowpitch-
blackstartofthetrail,callingforPoi-
trasandwhistlingforthedogs.When
heheardonlysilence,Marcelknew
somethingmusthavegonewrong.He
dialled emergency services.
An alert went out just after 8pm:
missing dog walker, 56, female. “That
should be pretty easy,” said Aidon
Pyne, a local search-and-rescue (SAR)
volunteer. “She probably has a twisted
ankle off the side of the trail.” As a crew
assembled in the car park near the
mountain, the search slowly got into
gear. The 20 SAR volunteers believed
that after a couple of hours of yelling
her name and searching the perimeter
trails, Poitras would turn up.
She didn’t, even after the team’s
more athletic members ran laps
aroundthemarkedtrailslooking
forher.Bythen,itwaswellintothe
night, raining and only a couple de-
greesabovefreezing.At3am,they
put out calls to other nearby search-
and-rescue teams: come morning,
they’d search in the dense forest
circling the watershed.
SOMEWHEREin the underbrush,
the light of morning had penetrated.
Poitras had spent the night propped
up against a fallen tree, the rain
relentless, and she felt like she hadn’t
slept at all. Poitras dragged herself to
her feet, shivering and soaked, her
blonde hair slick against her head. De-
termined to find Bubba, she ignored