New York state forest rangers help one of the hikers back to the trailhead in the Catskills (Photo: Courtesy DEC)
As drugs go, magic mushrooms are relatively safe. Unlike heroin, cocaine, or fentanyl, users who take too much don’t die from their effects. There also isn’t much evidence of long-term physical symptoms from their use. Throw wilderness into the mix, however, and things can go very wrong.
We’ve covered stories of hikers’ mishaps on psilocybin before. In 2023, a group of hikers needed rescue in England after going on a bad trip mid-hike. And this May, another duo of high hikers in New York called 911 after they inexplicably became convinced that their friend was dead. (He was not, and rangers sent to find his body eventually reunited him with his buddies.) In the latest psychedelic mishap on the trail, a quartet of hikers ended up lost, sick, and missing some very important possessions after imbibing in the woods.
In its weekly roundup of search and rescue incidents, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation said that at 5 p.m. on August 29, rangers received a text via satellite from four hikers who were lost. They were near Giant Ledge in the Slide Mountain Wilderness, the largest wilderness area in the Catskill Forest Preserve. According to the DEC, the caller “admitted the group had consumed mushrooms, and one of them was experiencing a debilitating high.” By 6:45 p.m., a trio of rangers had located the group, who they then helped to the trailhead with the assistance of the Pine Hill Fire Department, where they were medically evaluated.
But the hikers’ problems didn’t end there. They soon realized that they had lost their car keys during their hike, so rangers drove them back to their rental lodging. The next day, one of the rangers returned to the trail and managed to locate the hikers’ bag under a log in a patch of tall ferns.
Drugs and the woods can be a perilous mix. Sheriffs and rangers responsible for conducting rescues have spoken up about their frustration with hikers who get lost or hurt under the influence. I can also recall a handful of incidents—and even deaths—from my own short stint in search and rescue where a rescuees’ drug use was a contributing factor.
Although we all know that staying sober in the woods is the safest choice, anyone who’s ever spent any amount of time around a campfire probably realizes that hikers getting high in the woods is a phenomenon that’s unlikely to stop any time soon. It remains to be seen whether legalizing mushrooms—something that two outdoor-heavy states, Oregon and Colorado, have done so far—will convince more people to take their psychedelic adventures to more controlled environments.
In the meantime, make sure you keep track of your friends—and your car keys.