Jean McCardle is thankful mountain bikers were hot on her trail during a recent walk in the woods with her chocolate lab named Clover.
On Oct. 29, the 65-year-old Victoria-by-the-Sea resident ventured for the first time along one of the beginner cross-country ski trails at Mark Arendz Provincial Ski Park in Brookvale.
The plan was to enjoy a roughly five-kilometre trek over 90 minutes or so. The scenic stroll would end up taking twice that amount of time and prove to be more than double the expected adventure.
Just one kilometer into the outing, McCardle suddenly realized she had at some point stumbled on an entirely different trail. She immediately turned around in an attempt to backtrack her steps.
That, she says, only managed to get her really lost.
“It sounds like I’m an idiot, but I am a fairly experienced outdoors person," she adds.
McCardle had her iPhone, but when she turned it on, it quickly went dead.
“I wasn’t worried,’’ she recalls, speaking with The Guardian over the phone Monday while walking Clover on a trail in Tryon. “I thought ‘we will find a way’."
Not, it turned out, without some help that would roll to her aid.
McCardle had the good fortune to encounter two separate mountain bikers. They both pointed her in the right direction. As they were leaving, they told McCardle if her car was still in the parking lot when they got back from their ride, they would come back to find her and Clover.
The more she tried to find the right path, the deeper she plunged into the black diamond trails.
She was starting to get a bit desperate about her situation. Then rain started to fall, not heavily but enough to cause a bit of panic.
She called out “hello" hoping to summon help, but she was doubtful she would be heard.
“Much to my surprise and incredible joy, I heard a noise behind me and when I turned around, I see a guy coming towards me on a mountain bike," she says. “I practically fell on my knees in joy."
Three mountain bikers had actually answered her call. They abandoned their own adventure to guide McCardle and her dog to the main parking lot.
“Thankfully it was not that far, but I know that I would never have found it on my own," she says.
On the way to the parking lot, she ran into the mountain bikers who she had encountered earlier. They had come back to find her.
She did not get the names of the Good Samaritans that had her back that day, but she is keen to once again extend to them all her heartfelt thanks.
“I just think its emblematic of P.E.I.," she says. “They are just great guys."
