| QUEENSBURY -- An elderly Glens Falls woman's five-minute drive to play bingo Tuesday night turned into a 22-hour ordeal when she inexplicably drove nearly 10 miles out of her way and wound up stranded overnight on a West Mountain snowmobile trail. Leona W. Roberts, 75, was listed in good condition at Glens Falls Hospital on Thursday after her rescue Wednesday afternoon from her icy car that was stuck on a remote trail nearly a mile from the nearest road. Roberts had been in her car for nearly a day when a jogger -- who was not identified -- came across her Mercury Tracer wagon stuck on a rocky, snow-covered trail miles from the nearest home. The jogger flagged down passing snowmobilers, who used a cellular telephone to call for help, said Jim Webb, captain of the West Glens Falls Rescue Squad. "It was her lucky day," Webb said. "This guy happened to be jogging on this trail and not some other one. I'm convinced if she'd been out there another night it would have been a different story." Even though temperatures dipped to single digits overnight Tuesday, Webb said Roberts was alert and seemed to be in good shape when rescue squad members and West Glens Falls firefighters reached her. The rescuers used 4-wheel drive vehicles to get to Roberts on the rugged trail off Beartown Road. She did not appear to be suffering from hypothermia, Webb said. Roberts kept extra clothing in her car, including gloves and an extra coat, which she put on when her car ran out of gas. She'd brought along a doughnut that she gnawed on through the ordeal, Webb said. How Roberts wound up where she did perplexed police and rescue officials. Roberts, who lives in Stichman Tower, had set out on Tuesday for 6 p.m. bingo at the West Glens Falls firehouse on Luzerne Road, less than a mile from her home, officials said. She apparently missed the station, though, and drove west on Luzerne Road, past West Mountain Road and onto Glens Falls Mountain Road. She drove several more miles and turned onto Beartown Road, a lightly traveled and sparsely inhabited thoroughfare, continuing for nearly three more miles before turning off onto the narrow trail. At a fork in the road a short distance before the trail she bore left instead of right, when a right turn would have funneled her to Clendon Brook Road. Webb estimated she managed to drive three-quarters of a mile or more on the trail before her car became stuck. She kept the engine running so the car's heater would stay on, but it ran out of gas after several hours. "She just waited with the car and did a lot of hollering," he said. "If she had tried to walk out of there who knows what would have happened." Will Ramsey, a tow truck operator for Dave Barnes Auto Body, said it took him 2 1/2 hours, using a tow truck with 4-wheel drive, to get the car off the trail. "I had a hard time getting up there and I had 4-wheel drive," Ramsey said. "I don't know how she did it." Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland said the twisting mountain roads on the Queensbury-Lake Luzerne border can be confusing, particularly at night and to an elderly person who isn't familiar with them. "The snowmobile trails are usually pretty clearly marked, though," he said. Gene Merlino, spokesman for the South Warren Snowmobile Club, which maintains the trails, was shocked to hear that Roberts had managed to drive a two-wheel drive car so far onto the trail. "How the heck could she get in there?" he marveled. "I can barely get in there with my truck. You're a couple of miles into nowhere there." The trail she drove onto is clearly marked with reflective signs as a snowmobile trail, he said Roberts declined interview requests Thursday at Glens Falls Hospital, hospital spokesman F. Raymond Agnew said. |