What do you get when you mix psychedelic mushrooms with a trek through an 47,500-acre wilderness area?
For a group of hikers in New York, the answer last month was a “debilitating high” and two disoriented hours while they awaited rescue.
Four hikers reported being lost in the Slide Mountain Wilderness of the Catskill Mountains around 5 p.m. on Aug. 29, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a news release.
The hiker who called for help said that the group had taken psychedelic mushrooms and that one was suffering from a “debilitating high,” officials said. The hikers were not publicly identified.
The department did not specify where the hikers obtained the mushrooms, which contain psilocybin, a hallucinogenic compound that can cause people to see, hear or feel things that do not exist. Psilocybin mushrooms can also cause anxiety, paranoia and nausea, according to the National Institutes of Health.
About two hours after the initial rescue call, forest rangers and members of the Pine Hill Fire Department arrived and helped the hikers to a trailhead, where they were evaluated by an ambulance crew.
Forest rangers drove the group back to their rental lodging but “somewhere along the way” the hikers also lost their keys, the department said. The next day, a ranger returned to the rescue area to find a bag with keys under a log in tall ferns, the department said.
The group was lost near Giant Ledge, a popular hiking destination in the Catskills, about 80 miles southwest of Albany.
The area is an interconnected trail hike that ranges from 1,100 to 2,600 feet in elevation with “several sheer cliffs and drops,” according to a news release from the Police Benevolent Association of New York State, a union that represents forest rangers, among other state employees.
This was not the first time this year that hallucinogens caused hikers in New York to lose their way.
In May, two hikers in the Adirondack Mountains called the authorities to report that a member of their hiking party had died.
In reality, the two hikers were in an “altered mental state” from psychedelic mushrooms, the department said.
A forest ranger responded to the call on Cascade Mountain, about 130 miles north of Albany, and found that the third hiker was, in fact, not dead or injured.
The ranger escorted the two hikers who had ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms to a waiting ambulance and a State Police unit, the department said.
Hannah Ziegler is a general assignment reporter for The Times, covering topics such as crime, business, weather, pop culture and online trends.
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