MOUNT WASHINGTON, MASS. (WHDH) - Two hikers had to be rescued overnight this week after heavy snow left them stranded in Mount Washington State Forest near Massachusetts’ borders with Connecticut and New York, the Massachusetts State Police announced.
Police said a call came in around 7:45 p.m. Tuesday after one of the hikers called 911. The hiker told officials he and his friend had gone for a hike on the Alander Trail. With bad weather and darkness, he said, he and his friend were unable to see trail markings. The hiker said he and his friend couldn’t continue to a cabin they were originally headed to. State police said they also couldn’t retrace their steps out of the forest as snow had covered their tracks.
Police said officials assembled a search and rescue team with personnel from multiple agencies, plotting the hiker’s location and assembling at a command post at the Egremont Fire Department on Route 23.
State police said crews had to clear roads between the command post and an entrance to the trail where the hikers were stranded, as the roads were blocked by trees and power lines.
Crews got power shut off to downed lines by 11:15 p.m. to clear the road to the entrance. A six-person search and rescue team soon moved toward the trail on snowmobiles, only to dismount and begin a two-mile walk into the forest when snow proved too deep for the snowmobiles.
Officials said the team got to the hikers around 2:30 a.m. The hikers, according to state police, were uninjured, though they were suffering from fatigue and cold temperatures.
The group soon began hiking out of the forest, eventually getting back to a Department of Conservation and Recreation headquarters building near the trail entrance just after 4:45 a.m.
State police said the hikers, two men aged 47 and 53, were taken to an area hospital for evaluation due to their fatigue and cold weather exposure.
The response ultimately involved personnel from the Department of Conservation and Recreation, state police, firefighters from Egremont and Sheffield, state environmental police, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, National Grid and Southern Berkshire Ambulance EMTs.
Nor’easter snow buried several communities in Massachusetts under more than two feet of snow Tuesday.
Where crews responded to rescue hikers in Mount Washington, to the east, crews in Princeton separately rescued a pair of skiers that got stranded on the backside of Wachusett Mountain outside the boundaries of the mountain’s ski area on Tuesday night.
“Personnel battled the elements, darkness and dangerous snow pack,” the Princeton Fire Department said in a statement. “This could have ended tragically but these boys are very lucky and used their heads and shared body heat to survive.”
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)