Rainier student details nightmare hiking trip to Coldwater Lake

Track and field teaches student athletes life lessons about pushing through when they face adversity and leaping over obstacles standing in their path to victory.

For Rainier High School senior and track athlete Emma Mathson, an April 10 hiking trip with a friend and three dogs to Coldwater Lake near Mount St. Helens presented much different hurdles than the 30-inch metal frames she jumps over in a tracksuit.

Mathson, 18, and her friend arrived at Coldwater Lake on a sunny late morning around 11:30 a.m. with their three dogs for what was supposed to be a 10-mile hike that they expected to take less than five hours. Mathson had never been hiking at the lake, let alone in the snow, but her friend had. They briefly discussed downloading a map phone app called Gaia to use without needing service before the trip, but they didn’t anticipate needing it.

About halfway through their hike, they realized that their plans, or lack thereof, would take a little more labor to complete than originally thought.

“The first 5 miles were great, and then halfway, we started to hit some switchbacks and incline super quick. Then we hit a little bit of snow, and it wasn’t a big deal, so we just kept going,” Mathson said. “My friend asked me if I wanted to turn around, and I was like, ‘No, I think it’s gonna even out.’ At that point, we were way past turning around.”

As they trekked on in the late afternoon, the hikers ran into more patches of snow. They never lost the trail, but they realized it wouldn’t be easy, or even possible, to walk through it. After all, Mathson was only wearing old running shoes, and the dogs surely would not have had an easy time marching through the steep snowy hills.

“The first time we got stuck, we were on the trail but the snow made the trail not there at all. We were sliding, and we turned back and we went off the trail and down and around the snowy part,” Mathson said. “At that point, I thought we were kind of stuck and I was getting nervous. We thought we could just keep going around the snowy part because there were some grassy areas. After that first time, we made a joke like, ‘Oh my god, we almost got lost.’ We even made a video, and then five minutes later, we hit it again thinking we could go around it and then we just slid all the way down.”

The hikers thought that if they could find the lake, they could get back to the parking area. But there was no trail that way, the sun was beginning to set in the early evening, and Mathson’s phone was dying. She connected to a satellite and texted her mother and her boyfriend that they were lost. The last text Mathson received was from her boyfriend, which read, “Are you serious?” She tried to call 911, then her phone died. Her friend called 911 and gave their coordinates to officers, who told the hikers to stay put.

Mathson, her friend and their dogs waited for four and a half hours in the snow.

As the sun disappeared and a haunting darkness overwhelmed the lost hikers, their dogs started barking hysterically to the bewilderment of the two women. Twenty feet away, a cougar approached them and began following them, pacing back and forth for about an hour and a half.

“It was dark so we thought we were hallucinating or something,” Mathson said. “I had a hunting knife in my bag, so I just sat there with it. At that point, I thought I was going to die because it was 120-pound me against a giant mountain cat. It’s not the fairest battle.”

While they waited for what felt like an eternity for any sign of help to arrive, Mathson and her friend sat in silence as they processed their thoughts of fear. They decided to start yelling for help, but nothing came.
“I was getting really pissed. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m tired. I miss my mom. I miss my home. My dogs are hungry,’” Mathson said. “Then we got up, and we saw a light flashing in the sky. It was a drone, so we started heading toward that.”

Eventually, 15 Cowlitz and Skamania county search and rescue personnel arrived and found the hikers around 10 p.m. and checked them for frostbite. Mathson said she had a rash on her ankle, but it has since healed. Officers gave their dogs tuna to calm their stomachs, and they walked the hikers and pups back to their vehicle, which took another two hours to round out a total of 12 hours on the trip. They arrived home around 3 a.m.

“I was really scared, and I was scared for my mom. I wanted her to know that I was OK and that I wasn’t injured,” Mathson said. “We drove about an hour to Napavine and finally saw my mom. I had no more tears at that point. I only cried once, and then I was like, ‘OK, it’s mind over matter. I gotta get through this. I’m not gonna die.’ I was happy to see my mom and my best friend, and my mom looked so stressed out.”

The next day following the traumatic hiking adventure, small moments in Mathson’s routine became a little more significant and much less mundane.

“I was doing some simple things like doing my laundry or driving my car by myself, and it made me tear up a little bit because I could’ve died,” she said. “Any simple tasks when you’re always like, ‘I hate folding my laundry. I don’t want to do this,’ now I’m thankful I’m able to do that.”

Mathson competed in the 300-meter hurdles and the triple jump on April 19 at the Chehalis Activators in her first track meet for Rainier since the nightmare Coldwater Lake trip.

Her coach, Rob Henry, said the team has rallied around the senior he described as “mentally tough.”

“I don’t think the kids really realize how much she was actually going through while she was up there. We’ve worked on mental toughness on that kid for years since she was a freshman,” Henry said. “One thing about track or athletes that you always try to teach is life lessons, so that was a life lesson. Hopefully she is able to carry through that and say, ‘I can keep going.’ That’s all you can hope for.”

The top lesson that Mathson took away from the hike was to be prepared for anything ahead of time, including the route and the weather conditions.

“It’s not like, ‘Oh, it’s a nice day. It’s gonna be a nice hike.’ That’s not how it works in the mountains. It’s different,” she said. “Even if you think you might need something, bring it anyway.”