Missing hiker located Thursday morning on Eagle Rock Loop

Matthew Teeters of Texarkana, Ark., was found safe Thursday morning in the Ouachita National Forest, about 18 hours after he was separated from his hiking partner on the Eagle Rock Loop in Montgomery County.

Family says Teeters is sore, a little dehydrated, scraped up and exhausted, but otherwise OK. An ambulance crew checked him out after he came off the trail.

Teeters was found by Ashley Smith, a local hiker who knows the area, and her dog, Buckey. Family says Smith had a feeling Thursday morning that she should go search, so she called in to work and hiked in the back way from Musgrove Hole to Winding Stair. She found Teeters at the Winding Stair swimming hole, the same spot he and his hiking partner had been trying to reach the day before.

HOW HE GOT LOST

Teeters and his cousin, Nick Walker, started the roughly 27-mile loop Tuesday afternoon at Little Missouri Falls. It was Teeters’ first overnight backpacking trip. The pair camped the first night near Blaylock Creek and were headed toward Winding Stair on Wednesday afternoon, where Walker’s father was going to meet them with water and Gatorade.

In a detailed account posted Thursday, Walker said Teeters’ feet were blistered and he had slowed down, so Walker had been stopping to let him catch up. About 200 yards before Winding Stair, Walker pointed out the swimming hole and walked on ahead. When he reached the area and dropped his pack, Teeters never came around the bend.

Walker said the likely explanation came later. A sign with an arrow sat near Winding Stair, and Teeters saw it from farther back on the trail and took it to mean he should turn right before he reached it. That put him on a trail Walker says he didn’t know existed. His sister described it as a fork where Teeters should have gone left and went right.

“Two or three minutes. That’s it,” Walker wrote.

Walker spent about 30 minutes backtracking, checking Viles Branch and the river before sending an SOS by satellite message around 2:30 p.m. His fiancée, Lonna Johnson, began calling the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Forest Service. Walker kept searching for about two more hours before hiking out to meet law enforcement at the trailhead.

THE NIGHT IN THE WOODS

Family says once Teeters realized he was going the wrong way, he tried to find his way back. By nightfall he stopped, set up his hammock and slept. He had food and water with him.

His sister said he heard the drone overhead Wednesday night and heard people calling for him. He yelled back until he couldn’t anymore, but the ridges and ravines swallowed the sound.

He got up around 6:30 a.m. Thursday, found his way to the swimming hole at Winding Stair and waited, knowing someone would come.

THE SEARCH

Searchers worked until about 2 a.m. Thursday. Monte Bartek drove from De Queen with his personal thermal drone and flew it until it lost signal behind a ridge near midnight and went down in the trees. Walker and others hiked back in Thursday afternoon and recovered it with one broken arm on the drone.

Radio contact with search teams was lost for nearly two hours Wednesday night because of the terrain, according to Walker.

By Thursday morning, the sheriff’s office was setting up a command post at Albert Pike and volunteers were arriving with side-by-sides and horses. Word came over the radio shortly after that a woman had found a hiker.

Teeters was reunited with his mother, sister and cousin at the store in Langley.

When Walker asked if he wanted to go back and finish the trail, Teeters answered with a firm no.

LESSONS LEARNED

Both family members said the experience showed how easy it is to get lost in those mountains, even for people who have been there before. His sister said the family learned to stay closer together on the trail and that trail signs in the area can be misleading.

Walker also pushed back on online speculation about what happened while the family was out of cell service. “No fight. Nobody abandoned anybody,” he wrote. “Just one misunderstood trail marker, one wrong turn and a couple of minutes.”

The family thanked the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Forest Service, Langley VFD, search and rescue volunteers, and everyone who searched, shared and prayed. Most of all, they thanked Ashley Smith and Buckey.