NINA MOOSE LAKE- A helicopter crew from the Minnesota Air National Guard rescued a Twin Cities couple who had been lost in the Boundary Waters for nearly a week. The rescue came in the wee hours of Friday, June 2, in eventual response to a text message that Charles Kelly, age 66, of Brooklyn Park and Pamela Scaia, age 65, of New Hope had sent to a friend on May 26.

In the message, the couple told their friend, “Mike” that they were in trouble somewhere between Lake Agnes and Ramshead Lake and asked him to call the DNR.

According to Kurt Erickson, First Lieutenant of the St. Louis County Rescue Squad, Mike initially believed the text to be a joke and he failed to contact anyone until Sunday, May 28. That’s when he contacted the U.S. Forest Service, but officials there made the decision to hold off until the following day when the couple was scheduled to exit the wilderness. No one made any further reports on the couple until Thursday, June 1, when Scaia’s daughter called to report her mother and two friends missing. The call is what finally prompted authorities to dispatch the rescue squad.

By early Thursday afternoon units began arriving, and canoe teams were deployed on the Moose River and several lakes, including Nina Moose, Ramshead, Lamb, Agnes, Oyster, and southern bays on Lac La Croix. By 8 p.m. there was no sign of the lost campers and supervisors called the ground units back to staging as darkness was approaching.

Rather than abandon the search for the night, the rescue squad called in a State Patrol fixed wing aircraft to search a large area of swamp southwest of Oyster Lake. The rescue squad personnel had surmised that the couple may have entered a flowage that passes through the swamp during a flush of high water and gotten trapped when the water receded. And that’s where the pilot, using infrared sensors, found the couple, who began waving flashlights as the plane conducted its search of the area.

That’s when the rescue squad contacted the governor’s office for permission to deploy the National Guard’s Blackhawk helicopter to the scene. The helicopter is rescue-capable in night operations and it was able to retrieve the victims shortly after 1 a.m. on Friday morning using a rescue bucket. The helicopter then flew the couple to the Ely Hospital for an assessment. Both were found to be in surprisingly good condition, considering they had spent seven days stuck in a swamp.

Rescuers had expected to rescue three individuals, based on the report from Scaia’s daughter, but the third member of the party had been unable to make it on their wilderness adventure and was fine, at home in Wisconsin.

In an interview with KARE 11 News, Scaia and Kelly reported that they are experienced campers and had already had quite a trip in the BWCAW including ten portages, eight lakes, and three rivers over just five days. They were on their way out when they missed a portage and went into the swamp. In her interview, Scaia said, “we kept pushing, thinking go a little farther, go a little farther, until we had gotten so deep into the swamp that we were stuck.” Both say that they will go back to the Boundary Waters but will be even more cautious from now on.