The search for two missing llamas – aka Chai and Dawson – has included sporadic sightings and insightful intuitions of their wanderings, but nothing that has proved fruitful in the 1½-month pursuit of the furry pack animals.
The most recent “sighting” was earlier this week near Tacoma Village, at least 20 miles west of Chai’s and Dawson’s last-known location in the Weminuche Wilderness.
Jonathan Stegemoeller of Durango said he was working in the Tacoma area when a solid white llama meandered into his work area. It had a halter and lead rope.
But Dawson, 14, is brown, and Chai, 12 or 13, is mostly black with white patches. Not a match for either of the two llamas on the lam from the Vallecito area.
“If you get any reports of someone missing one, there’s one wandering around in Tacoma Village,” Stegemoeller said Thursday.
Chai and Dawson were abandoned Aug. 14 by their handlers, Ronda Ramsier and Carol Powell, who spent two cold nights lost above 11,000 feet in elevation and needed to be rescued by the U.S. military, which used a helicopter in the dark of night to pluck them from the wilderness and ferry them to safety.
The women set the llamas free so they could fend for themselves.
Ramsier and her husband, Jack McGroder, have made four multi-day trips into the wilderness to try to locate and rescue the shy ungulates. At one point, McGroder was close enough to toss a rope around Dawson’s neck, but the escape artist slipped through his lasso and scurried up a steep slope, eluding capture.
A small plane flew the area Wednesday, but the aerial search turned up no sign of llamas – only cattle grazing in the high country, Ramsier said.
She and her husband plan to venture back into the wilderness Saturday through Monday for a fifth search-and-rescue attempt.
“I feel best when I’m out there looking,” Ramsier said. “I love being up there, and it helps my stress level a lot just to be doing something.”
Llamas survive on bark, pine needles and certain kinds of vegetation. They don’t need much water, and can lick the dew off the leaves. The biggest threat they face is predators and the approaching winter, which will bring heavy snowfall to those elevations.
Anyone with a sighting or information of Chai’s and Dawson’s whereabouts can call Ramsier at 759-3552.
