Today we have a very special guest - Ralph Coltrin Boy Scout Survivor of Mount Baldy
On November 15, 1958, three Boy Scouts were lost in the Santa Rita Mountains. They were unprepared for the sub-freezing weather brought on by a snowstorm. Three other boys made it out of the mountains, but the search for the missing boys lasted until their bodies were found Dec. 4, 1958.
After a massive but fruitless search for the lost Scouts by 700 volunteers, a rancher finally found the three bodies east of Josephine Saddle on Dec. 4. Soldiers from Fort Huachuca stacked rocks and erected crosses where the boys were discovered. Then they carried Mike Early, Michael LaNoue and David Greenberg off the mountain.
In August 1959, Ralph Coltrin Jr., who was just 12 on the day of the hike, returned to the site with John Early, Mike's father. They carried three small markers fashioned by a Southern Pacific Railroad metalworker.
They found the three stone piles and wooden crosses and wired the metal markers with each boy's name to the memorials.
Thirty years later, in 1988, Coltrin returned and found two of the markers deteriorating. The third, Michael LaNoue's, was missing.
He decided to take the markers off the mountain. Greenberg went to his family, but by then the Early family was gone and the metal marker was placed in the Otis H. Chidester Scout Museum in Tucson.
