The head of Salvamont Harghita (mountain rescue) called us on Wednesday evening, 6 June, asking for CST's help in finding a man who had gone missing on Monday, 3 June, in the Băile Harghita area. We alerted the team, and for an hour the phones rang non-stop. Four CST members took a "sudden" day off from their day jobs, with their bosses' agreement over the phone.
The team was ready: Călin with Yupi, Oana with Fedor, Ralu, Relu and Vali. The plan: we would leave at 2:00 AM so that, by 6:00 AM, we would reach Lupeni (Harghita), where our friend Zsolt Benko had promised to be waiting for us with coffee.
So… backpacks packed (food, water, a change of clothes), 2 hours of sleep… or less, and… on the road!
The plan worked. By 6:00 AM we were in Lupeni, and at 8 we met the other members of the Salvamont Harghita teams and of the Mountain Gendarmerie team at the Harghita County Council headquarters. After a short briefing and a cup of tea, we set off towards the village of Racu. There we left some of the cars behind and continued, for about 10 km, in the Salvamont vehicles, up to a sheepfold where the missing man had last been seen. No one knew for certain where the man had been trying to get to. Although the information provided by the people at the sheepfold was rather unclear, they showed us the spot where they had found the man's coat and cap. We began the search from that point. The whole team (6 Salvamont rescuers from the Mădăraș, Gheorgheni and Miercurea Ciuc units, 6 mountain gendarmes, 5 CST members and 2 dogs) began searching towards the village of Mădăraș, the direction the man was assumed to have headed in. The terrain ranged from very easy to very difficult, alternating between mountain pastures, young fir woods and mature forest. We later returned to the spot where the clothes had been found and continued searching that area. The mission leader, Bertoki Zsolt, then decided to continue the search along a forest road leading to Băile Harghita, the man's home town. We searched along the road and checked a number of small cabins near it. Around 4:00 PM we reached the end of a valley where the cars were waiting. That was the end of a serious day's work, though without the joy of finding the missing man. We were tired after a sleepless night and dozens of kilometres of searching, but glad that we had all faced up to another mission in the Harghita Mountains. We all headed home, wondering whether we could have done more, or better. It was the first mission for Ralu, Relu, Vali, and especially for Yupi! Oana, Călin and Fedor added one more to a list they had opened eight years before.