NORTH COAST, Calif. – South Lake County Fire and Cal Fire personnel offered key assistance to Mendocino County officials on Tuesday during a snow rescue operation.

Early Tuesday afternoon, Cal Fire and the South Lake County Fire Protection District received a call for mutual aid assistance from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue, according to Mike Wilson, information officer for Cal Fire's Sonoma Lake Napa unit.

Wilson said sheriff's officials at that time were making a plan to reach three young adults who had spent Monday night in the Hull Mountain area of the Mendocino National Forest.

The heavy snow conditions in that area had unexpectedly stranded the three young men approximately 10 miles north of the Gravelly Airstrip near Lake Pillsbury in Mendocino County, Wilson said.

South Lake County Fire has a Snowcat, a tracked vehicle that Wilson said is the appropriate resource for these types of rescues.

He said two rescue and operator trained firefighters from Cal Fire and South Lake County Fire loaded up the Snowcat and headed out to assist the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Lake County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue resources also were at the scene.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue commander traveled with the two Snowcat rescuers making their way through white out conditions and snow drifts using only GPS navigation to reach the three young adults, Wilson said.

He said the sheriff’s office had pinpointed the location of the three and had plotted a course to follow on forest roads.

Wilson said it took approximately three hours for the rescuers and the Snowcat to reach the men, climbing up to around the 7,000 foot elevation.

The snow was halfway up the windshield of the stranded vehicle when the rescuers arrived, with the GPS taking them to their exact location in the dark and snowy conditions, Wilson said.

With the heavy snow conditions, Wilson said it is unlikely that the vehicle the men were traveling in will be visible on Wednesday.

Wilson said early Wednesday morning that the three adults and the rescuers made it down to the snow line and everyone was at that point headed home.