While hiking in Escalante National Forest, teenagers Natalie Rowe, Kimberly Watson, Malachi Chaya and their church group discovered a hiker who had been lost in the wilderness for four days.
“I think he just wandered off the trail because the trail wasn’t marked,” Natalie said.
The three teenagers are sixth and seventh-graders at Mountain Heights Academy, an online charter school. When they formed a team to enter the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, they decided their project would address outdoor recreation safety because of their experience.
The Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest challenges students to use science, technology, engineering and math to solve a problem in their community.
Through research, the students discovered that Search and Rescue teams have seen a dramatic increase in requests for help in outdoor recreation areas. Just last year, there were 1,043 search…
