Deep in California’s Emigrant Wilderness, in the High Sierra north of Yosemite, Santa Barbara’s Boy Scout Troop 26 was on a backcountry trek when they came across a man standing alone in a meadow at the edge of the trail. He was dressed lightly for the terrain, carried no gear and appeared disoriented.
“He was very polite, very cordial, but he was a little confused in what he was saying,” Scoutmaster Michael-James Hey said. “It just didn’t look quite right. He had a lot of cuts on his hands, and he didn’t have his pack.”
The man, 78-year-old Douglas Montgomery, was cold, dehydrated and more than a dozen miles from where he thought he was…