This article was updated on May 29 at 12:30 p.m. to include a quote and background information from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.
Hiking mountains on psychedelic mushrooms can be a bad idea. On May 24, at 9 a.m., 911 dispatchers in New York received a strange call from two hikers who were on Cascade Mountain in the Adirondacks. The hikers reported that their friend had died on the mountain and they needed help.
But not all was as it seemed.
When the hikers later encountered the Cascade Mountain summit steward, a trained educator who was on a routine patrol, they told them that they were lost.
According to a press release from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the summit steward quickly realized that “the hikers were in an altered mental state,” from ingesting psychedelic mushrooms.
The plot thickened when the third member of their party called while they were still engaging with the steward. It turned out that they weren’t dead after all, but had just gotten separated from the other two. The steward contacted Forest Rangers, who dispatched someone to come assist.
DEC Forest Ranger Rob Praczkajlo responded. He escorted the two hallucinating hikers down the mountain to the waiting ambulance and police unit. Ranger Praczkajlo then brought the lost third hiker back to the group’s campsite. No one was reported injured.
DEC told GearJunkie, none of the hikers are facing criminal charges.
“Cascade Mountain is among the forty-six High Peaks in the Adirondacks with an elevation of nearly 4,100 feet. It is one of the more popular mountains for hikers,” DEC said. Forest Rangers respond to more than three hundred search and rescue calls throughout the state every year, mostly in the High Peaks and Catskills. DEC encourages hikers to be prepared before heading out.”
Hiking on Hallucinogens Doesn’t Always End So Well
The hikers on Cascade Mountain this month were lucky that their situation wasn’t worse, and that their friend was located alive. Other incidents haven’t ended quite so fortuitously.
In 2022, a woman hiking with a friend in Gold Bar, Wash., had taken psychedelic mushrooms. The two got separated, and when one of them returned, she reported her friend as missing. The missing woman’s body was discovered in the river the following day.
In 2018, two snowshoers on Mount Seymour in North Vancouver took both ecstasy and cannabis and ended up in a violent knife fight. One of them reportedly had a psychotic break and attacked his companion. The two stabbed each other with Bowie knives, nearly killing one another. Both men were arrested when rescuers responded to the 911 calls.
Psychedelic substances aren’t the only culprit, either. Alcohol can similarly get people into trouble when out in the wilderness. In 2006, two men who’d left a nearby bar in Vancouver ended up hiking down a trail on Burnaby Mountain and lost their way. They were discovered deceased at the bottom of a 200-foot ravine a day later.
Speaking to King 5 News about the 2022 death in Gold Bar, Dr. Nathan Sackett, a medical researcher at the University of Washington, said that it isn’t necessarily these substances that are inherently dangerous. It’s the environment in which they are taken. Particularly when it comes to psychedelics, accidents are “prone to happen,” he said.
“As psychedelics become culturally more normative, it’s really important that people know they should do them in a controlled environment,” Sackett said in the interview. “Hopefully, one day, people won’t have to hide in the woods to experience them.”
