BAKER CITY — A Baker County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue team rescued two people on Monday, Dec. 7, after their vehicle got stuck in snow along the Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway between Granite and Anthony Lakes.

Sean Belknap, 28, and Shanda McDonald, 29, were on a 10-day road trip from San Diego, and they were using a scenic byway map as a guide, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.

With the map they plotted a course from Granite to Anthony Lakes. Most of that roughly 23-mile section of the paved byway is not maintained during the winter, when several feet of snow can fall at higher elevations.

Baker County Sheriff Travis Ash said Belknap and McDonald had driven from Ukiah to the North Fork John Day River using the Blue Mountains Scenic Byway, which ends at its junction with the Elkhorn Drive byway.

They turned east on that road, which climbs more than 2,000 feet to the Elkhorn Summit near Anthony Lakes. At 7,392 feet, it’s the second-highest point reached by a paved road in Oregon, surpassed only by the Rim Drive in Crater Lake National Park, which tops out around 7,900 feet.

The other route on Road 73 leads south about 9 miles to Granite. That section of the road loses elevation rather than ascending the Elkhorn Mountains.

Ash received a call from the Grant County Sheriff’s Office regarding a Toyota pickup truck that was stuck in the snow. That section of the byway is in Grant County.

Ash, along with three Search and Rescue volunteers, set up a command post at the Grande Ronde Sno-Park, near Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort. Volunteers traveling in side-by-side ATVs with tracks instead of tires drove about 6 miles to reach the vehicle.

Belknap and McDonald, after getting stuck in the four-wheel drive truck, had activated the emergency beacon on a tracking device they had, which alerted police to their location.

Neither was hurt, nor was their dog, Maisy. They were taken to a Baker City motel.