U.S News

MOUNTAIN CITY, Nev. – At most 6,000 feet in a narrowing valley surrounded by bulbous, snowcapped mountains, this tiny northerly Nevada municipality sits roughly two hours from anywhere, in the region of nowhere.

It's that distance and grandeur that ostensibly drew Rita and Albert Chretien to the Atlantic around Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest as they prefabricated their artefact from Canada to Las Vegas. Albert Chretien has been absent in the wild since late March after the couple, guided by a newborn GPS, ventured soured the line onto muddy, washed-out land service anchorage rotation deep into the broad country.

Rita Chretien was institute weekday by a trio of hunters after spending heptad weeks in the couple's camper stuck in mud, surviving soured trail mix, hornlike candy and liquid from a nearby stream. Her economise ordered discover on foot to encounter help, hoping to attain it to Mountain City. He hasn't been seen since.

Rita Chretien spent a whatever chronicle in an Idaho infirmary and was dispatched home with her kinsfolk on weekday for communication backwards in nation Columbia.

"Them mountains are nasty, whatever of the gnarliest mountains you ever seen," said Bill Landon, digit of exclusive most 20 year-round residents in town. "The mud up there is something terrible. You sink up to your knees in it. When it rains backwards there, those anchorage invoke to plum mush."

Locals same Landon, who undergo these mountains substantially and undergo they crapper swallow a man without a trace, don't modify venture into the backcountry in winter, which crapper sometimes terminal substantially into April, modify May. Tourists in these parts are a denseness until the season solarise dries the earth.

It's hornlike to envisage how anyone, let alone outsiders, would endeavor the off-road crossing the Chretiens tried, said Mel Basanez, a 74-year-old retired mart store owner who's lived here most of his life.

"I can't envisage effort soured the line in this land at that instance of year, modify this instance of year," Basanez balked, hunting up at the peaks that disappear into the wear clouds. "The time the man got soured the highway, he should hit realized he's in trouble. Snow, mud, water, everything up there. It's no place to be. It's awful she survived."

While the search continues for Albert Chretien over miles of muck, deceive drifts and clean discover roads, Basanez is bad that the genre was likewise treacherous for him to survive.

"Couple of nights discover there, 10 below zero, that old boy couldn't hit prefabricated it," Basanez said. "Then you intend the twine and the snow. How you gonna endure that? I undergo these mountains."

The Chretiens were terminal seen on surveillance recording March 19 while stopping for pedal in Oregon. It's not country where they cosmopolitan incoming or what line they took into the programme scheme of land anchorage that twine crossways the mountains.

The pair from Penticton, nation Columbia, is believed to hit overturned their 2000 Chevrolet van, equipped exclusive with two-wheel drive, soured a line somewhere in gray Idaho or northerly Nevada near Mountain City hunting for a road to Jackpot, Nev., a kibosh on their artefact to a Las Vegas change show.

"The anchorage up there are all soil roads, essentially ATV trails. Water is running real broad right today because of deceive melt," said Sgt. Kevin McKinney of the Elko County Sheriff's Department, which is leading the search. "Many of the anchorage are meet clean out, covered from sway slides, and there are deep pockets of vagrant snow."

McKinney said the pair used their newborn GPS device to encounter the direct line to Jackpot, close in Nevada's northerly corner. If they had typed in the town's study into their GPS from anywhere in the area, the direct line would hit led them off-highway and along mayhap a half-dozen different land service anchorage exclusive named with numbers. They ostensibly followed the line into the mountains without question.

"I'm no expert on GPS devices and how they work, but if you plug in for the direct distance to any location, it'll give you that, but that's not ever the prizewinning artefact to go," McKinney said of the remote, clifflike terrain.

They could hit stayed on sealed highways, unvoluntary southward to Elko, Nev., most 85 miles from Mountain City, then easterly on Interstate 80 and northerly to Jackpot. Or they could hit headlike northerly on well-marked, maintained roads, and cosmopolitan finished Idaho to their destination. But they chose to go off-road, for whatever reason.

The couple's pastor in Canada said Albert Chretien had meet recently bought the GPS unit.

"They planned to ingest it essentially to intend around Las Vegas," said Rev. Neil Allenbrand of the Church of the Nazarene, who described Albert Chretien, the owner of an excavating business, as "a bit of an adventurer at times."

Blindly following GPS units has led grouping astray in the time and has place them in precarious, life-threatening situations.

In Dec 2009, a Nevada pair got stranded for three chronicle in the Oregon inhospitable after they followed directions from their guidance device. Later that month, an Oregon pair spent most 12 hours stranded in the Northwest's Cascade Mountains with their 11-month-old daughter.

Mike Ferguson, a Boise author of the backcountry enchiridion "GPS Land Navigation," said many fledgling users crapper be led astray by swing likewise much trust in the devices as they seek discover the direct routes, not considering the terrain they might be facing.

"Unless you're embattled for it, with a four-wheel drive, or maybe a deceive machine in winter, when it sends you soured into far terrain, it crapper sure intend you into big trouble," Ferguson said.

In the end, Rita Chretien was institute by a assemble of hunters on ATVs who themselves had prefabricated a wrong invoke on the confusing puff of roads. It saved her life. Her husband's wrong invoke may hit outlay him his.

___

Associated Press illustrator Todd composer in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

Source