Author Cathy Coltrin Hufault, sister of one of the survivors, has gathered hundreds of facts that had been obscured by the passage of time. She studied the newspapers of the day - as a newspaper reporter, I wrote many of them - for clues to the past, and then followed up with an unusual determination.

                She tracked down more than 100 participants in the events that followed the storm, and 79 of them had never been interviewed before. She resurrected Tucson weather records, and then extrapolated them to the Santa Rita Mountains south of the city to recreate the hardship encountered by the boys and the searchers - as many as 750 on some days.

                She even uncovered a side story about two airmen who had been trapped in the snow and cold without anyone realizing it. They lived to be accidentally rescued only because one of them had been trained in cold-weather survival by his father in Washington State. But for the other search, they might have died.

                The book’s photos include one of cowboy Ralph Spillers standing by his horse after a day on the mountain. His chaps are soaking wet almost to his mid-section, a sign of how deep the snow was. Another shows rancher Mike Knagge, who worked the mountain for 19 straight days, as he rides away on the back of his mule.

                Author Hufault has pieced together the myriad parts provided by detailed interviews and reconstructed weather records to provide a riveting account of human tragedy and sacrifice.

                To this day, when winter comes and clouds hover over Mount Baldy, it is almost automatic for the longtime area resident to recall the danger and deaths of November 1958.

Donald W. Carson

Tucson, Arizona

 

Reporter for The Arizona Daily Star in 1958

 

Winner of the Arizona Press Club “Story of the Year” for the newspaper articles about the lost scouts

 

Co-author of Mo, The Life & Times of Morris K. Udall