Deschutes County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue has a busy late-summer Sunday, with three rescue missions west of Bend
![](https://ktvz.b-cdn.net/2023/03/Deschutes-County-Sheriffs-Search-and-Rescue.jpg)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – Deschutes County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue teams had a busy late-summer Sunday, with three rescue operations west of Bend – including one in which an off-duty volunteer happened upon a group of lost teens, and another that ended just as it began when an overdue man turned up in good condition.
Shortly after 9 a.m., a woman called 911 dispatchers to report her boyfriend was missing after he became separated from her and her father Saturday night while they were out rock-hunting and looking for artifacts off Conklin Road, between the Cascade Lakes Highway And Spring River Road, SAR Deputy Donny Patterson said.
The 33-year-old Bend man, who Patterson said was very familiar with the area and experienced in the outdoors, had a dog with him. His cellphone battery had died, so they could not ping to get his location.
Patterson said they'd called in a SAR team and had started building maps and plans, also calling up air assets to assist.
“Just before we sent everybody out the door," Patterson said, the female reporting party called again to say she'd just gotten a call from her boyfriend, who was fine and had reached the Cascade Lakes Visitor Center. A Forest Service law enforcement officer made sure he was okay, then gave the man and his dog a ride back into town.
Around 12:30 p.m., an off-duty DCSO SAR volunteer hiking on the Broken Top Trail with her family came across the five Bend teens, 14 to 17, who were lost. Patterson said they had been dropped off by a parent Sunday morning and intended to take a route to the Green Lakes Trail area but got confused when they went up the Todd Lake Trail about which trail to take for the return trip.
The volunteer escorted four of the teens to the Broken Top Trail and back to their waiting parents at Todd Lake, Patterson said. But one teen had gone back to Green Lakes, so another crew went there to intercept him and escort him to his waiting father.
Sunday's third SAR mission began after a man called 911 shortly after 1 p.m. to report a woman had been injured in a mountain bike crash on a trail northeast of Tumalo Mountain and was unable to come out on her own. A SAR crew headed to the woman, reached her late Sunday afternoon and brought her down to where a Bend Fire medic crew later took her by ambulance to St. Charles Bend