March 16, 2001---Two snowmobilers lost in Stampede Pass, WA, late Saturday were
quickly rescued with the help of a novel Web site the a search team used to locate them.
The Web site is located at www.topozone.com.
The snowmobilers, brothers Daniel and Patrick Fraser of Renton, WA, became lost after
one snowmobile got stuck in a canyon, according to Sgt. Fred Slyfield of the Kittitas (WA)
County Sheriff's Department. "The weather socked them in and they didn't know where
they were," Slyfield told the local MSNBC outlet in Ellensburg, WA. They had no
survival gear and were not dressed for inclement weather. But they did have a cell phone
and a global satellite system (GPS), which they used to call Slyfield's office.
The sheriff's search and rescue team, in turn, used TopoZone to ascertain the
snowmobilers' exact location. Rather than spend a long, dark night in the cold
backcountry, the snowmobilers were found within an hour.
About TopoZone
TopoZone provides online topographic mapping services to outdoor recreation portals and
specialized destination sites and by selling custom data sets for business and
professional applications. It offers full national coverage, unique search tools and map
symbol display capabilities, and allows users to easily locate places in the United
States, create customized maps on demand, and highlight specialized places of interest and
information.
TopoZone is a USGS Digital Cartographic Business Partner and serves over 4 million
pages of geographic content per month. It is produced by Maps a la carte, Inc. of North
Chelmsford, MA, the leading provider of Internet topographic mapping services.
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