I'm not as lost as you think I am
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Prelude Dave's Story in Blue | Dean's Story in Green |
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Let’s get this straight from the top: This was the first trip Dave and I ever went on that involved search and rescue. And in the end, the only lasting damage would be the embarrassment of the memories. Those are preserved here for our kids so that they can know that it’s not them that made us this way. It was supposed to be a simple overnight trip. Given the fact that it was Dean and I traveling together, I should have known that it would be anything but simple. But what could go wrong...I had done the majority of this hike when I was 15 years old, hiking with the Boy's Club. But I get ahead of myself. Dean flew down to San Diego on Thursday night and we spent a relaxing day Friday mountain biking. That evening we went to see a live concert by Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket. As we had a late night, we weren't able to leave as early as we would have liked. |
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7:30 |
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So Dave and I left San Diego at about 7:30 in the morning on a gray Saturday. I think Dave plans early morning departures for trips only because he knows that I can drive while he sleeps more, which is what he did. We drove about an hour and a half to Redlands, where we planned to get a few supplies before heading into San Gorgonio National Forest. |
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| 9:00 | ||
| We got our supplies, which consisted of chicken that the store just would not cut up for the poor hikers, seasoning for fajitas that turned out to be a packet of taco seasoning, and a bag of nacho chips that served as breakfast. Dave also impulsed and got packets of Agua Fresca, which is Mexican juice mix. | ||
| On the road from the store to the ranger station, we reviewed our road map, which also had topographic lines and some trails, for possible routes. We generally considered starting west at the Momyer trailhead, going up and east to San Gorgonio peak, then back down to Vivian Meadows trailhead. | ||
| 9:30 | ||
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We told the Rangers out plan for the hike. We would enter at Momyer, go up Alger's Creek, climb up Saxton trail, to Dollar Lake Saddle where we would camp, The next day we would cross Dry Lake View to summit San Gorgonio Peak and then come down High Creek Trail to Vivian Creek and would walk along the road back to our car. Twenty two miles all in all. The rangers seemed to think it would be a good hike, but we had forgotten rope to bear tie our food. After driving down back to the town to buy rope, we set off on the trail at Momyer around 11:00 am.
At the ranger station, we talked with a nice old lady about our planned excursion. We pulled out a map of trails showing distances between locations that Dave had downloaded off the internet (below) and asked about whether the route made sense.
The woman gawked at our map and asked if she could make a copy of it all while Dave is explaining that he just downloaded it off the web and that it was the same as the map on the one they were selling. That was clue #1 that we might have been better not to trust everything we heard. We did, however, trust her advice on bears, figuring that we should go back and get a rope to tie up food. We filled out our permit with planned route, emergency contact, planned date of exit, etc. We bought the 15-minute topo that they were selling and confirmed that the route we were planning had water. We weren’t going to go do something stupid like start a hike without water again. |
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| 10:30 | ||
| After buying the cord to tie up food, we drove up a winding road toward the Momyer Trailhead. Going around a corner, a car flying down the hill had crossed over the centerline and came uncomfortably close to hitting us. That, for the record, was as close to danger we really ever came on this trip. On the drive, Dave had vague flashbacks to his previous trip here 20 years ago with the Boy Scouts. He learned then about the importance of staying hydrated, not waiting until thirsty to drink. One might note that the Boy Scouts never did teach Dave to not trust maps for things like their location of water and trails. Dave also said how excited he was to summit Mount San Gorgonio because he didn't do it before. I was tired, not having napped, but I was excited, too. | ||
| We arrived at the trailhead, where it was sunny and clear. We could look up at the steep hills up to the mountains. We unloaded the packs from the trunk, plus the bags of new food from the car to put into our packs. We had actually remembered to fill our water bottles this time and I added some cytomax. Lack of water and dehydration weren't going to get us this time. | ||
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In the no more than 15 minutes of packing, the weather turned. It went from sunny to windy and foggy before we had our packs on. We threw on light jackets just before heading off. It was 11am. |
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| 11:30 | ||
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On the Trail |
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The trail out of the parking lot went down about 50 ft into a 500-ft wide river valley. The river itself was only about 6 ft wide. The rest of the valley’s width consisted of near-white stark rocks and dried mud. There had clearly been flooding here. |
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| On the other side of the river, we started our hike up. The trail started off straight up and we gained altitude quickly. We passed two guys dressed in green, resting at the side of the trail, no more than 10 minutes into the hike. We said hello and commented on how quickly the weather had changed. They expressed their relief at the weather cooling off. Sure enough, in 5 minutes, we took off a layer of clothing as we heated up. | ||
| In another half-hour, we climbed out of the fog to see blue sky and green and gray hillsides, just like we saw from the car but from up close. We passed a pair of couples hiking up together as they seemed to be stopped for lunch. We kept going, aiming for lunch at Alger Creek. Trees mostly shaded us from the sun at this point. It was just about ideal weather for hiking. Dave from San Diego said it was perfect. Dean from the Bay Area said it was a little hot. | ||
| 12:45 | ||
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The trail started down as we approached Alger Creek. It seemed odd to be going down so we checked the map, which confirmed that we should be going down.
It also seemed to fit that we had just passed
the junction to Mt. San Bernadino, we took a quick lunch break. We ate lunch at the creek at around 12:45, pita bread, some almost tasteless salami, and jalapeño cheese. We did the slightly dangerous Let’sSitOnTheFallenTreeThat’sHangingAboveTheGround15ft picture just because. We did the even more dangerous Let’sNotFillWaterBottlesBecauseThereAreStreamsAhead move before packing up and hitting the trail. Having more than 3 liters personally and Dean with another 2 liters, we still felt pretty safe about water. |
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| 1:20 | ||
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We left the creek
and hiked pretty quickly. Really quickly, it would turn out. The next couple miles were up and down as we crossed a number of canyons.
The trail went through low brush and high trees but was always clearly cut. At one point, the trail peaked at a ridge before descending into a river valley. We briefly stopped to look across at the next ridge, thinking we’d get water on the other side of that ridge. The trail switched back on its way down and to the north before we got down to a stream.
On an interesting side note, as we approached this canyon from the opposite side we joked about how glad we were that we didn't have to scale the canyon wall and could just follow the trail. Little did we know... |
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| 2:15 | ||
| We reached what we believed an unmarked creek on the map and rapidly found ourselves without a trail. This was supposed to be "the first stream" on our way to the second stream at Falls Creek and Dobbs Cabin (Map 1). The 10 ft wide stream was easily crossed where dead wood had clearly been laid down. We walked another 100 yards and found another 10 ft wide stream to cross. This time, there was no obvious crossing. |  |
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When the hike really begins |
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| 2:30 | ||
| I crossed the stream first, jumping boulders to arrive at the bank on the other side. That bank was steep and I could not see an obvious trail anywhere. Dave and I hiked down the stream paralleling each other on opposite sides of the stream until there was a better crossing for Dave and my side leveled out. There appeared to be a vague trail here. There definitely were campsites. We looked at the map at the area around the second stream and saw how the trail generally ran alongside it for a little while. So we followed alongside the stream for a little while, sticking close to the river because the hills to our left were getting very steep. When we got to a point where the "trail" really didn’t easily follow the river, we pulled out the map again. | ||
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| 2:45 | ||
| Maybe we relied too much on our Rule #1, "If in doubt, go up." We certainly didn’t take a good enough look at the map, though the map, as we would find out, really wasn’t very good. At that point, standing at the river, looking at the map, recognizing that we had quite a few miles to go to get to our planned camp spot, we obeyed Rule #1. We looked at the hillside, which was loose dirt at a good 35-degree angle, and told ourselves, "The next mile is going to be hell." | ||
| The first few steps up left me in practically the same spot I started at, as the loose dirt gave way and tumbled down behind me. Dave started up the hill about 30 ft to my right. Occasionally reaching down to the ground or hanging on to fallen trees for leverage, we climbed up 100 ft before crossing paths. At that point, I went right and Dave went left, each of us finding our own most comfortable way to get up the hillside. Climbing canyon walls is tricky business. There are a few different types of terrain: Solid rock which requires some bouldering to ascend, scree which is basically dirt and smaller rocks just waiting to slip down the side of the mountain, and bush climbing where ever step is supported by trees, bushes and low-lying scrub. I'm a rock-climber and Dean is a scree-scrambler, so we meandered up this canyon wall on independent paths. | ||
| 3:00 | ||
| Another couple hundred feet up, we came together again where there were some good boulders to sit on and get a reference point. We drank some water and looked back at the ridge where we thought we’d been before. The clouds that had socked us in before lingered off behind it. We pulled out the map and puzzled over where we were, figuring that we just had to keep going up. I was bugged by the fact that we crossed two streams back at the bottom, but I didn’t know what to make of it. Nowhere on our map did it look like we’d cross streams like that. We folded the map back up in preparation for continuing our hands-and-knees climb. As we folded it, we noticed the caution printed on one fold of the map: "Travel With a Friend". We joked, "If you can’t travel with a friend, travel with an enemy." |
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| 3:10 | ||
| In the next stretch up, we found ourselves climbing through bushes that snagged our backpacks. It wasn’t easy going. At one point, Dave scrambled under a large scratchy bush to reach a wall of solid rock to climb. As I was wearing long pants, I called back to Dean that he would be well served to put on sweats over his shorts to protect his skin. While clambering under the bush, it caught his stove and opened the gas. Cursing as he scrambled to clear the bush, I could see him finally shut it off from the other side of the bush. I decided at that point to head down through a gap in the bushes to my right and then up a more open route, one with more scree, the kind of loose stuff that I was comfortable with, even though it was work. | ||
| 3:30 | ||
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Our climbs paralleled, but as we ascended, the paths were separated by a ridge which would have been difficult to cross. For a while we were in sight and
earshot. I scampered down and found myself on another steep hillside, as steep as the one we’d started on but with more big rocks to hold on to. I climbed up about 100 ft before I saw Dave across the way on a ridge. We were both happy climbing what we were climbing. We continued upward on our own routes, occasionally calling back to each other.
It soon became clear that we soon would lose line of sight. I told Dean to climb up and then head to the left while I would climb up and head to the right, which would allow our paths to intersect. I saw Dave one more time as I climbed the chute I was on, using my hands a good part of the way. The clouds really began rolling in as the ground started to level out. It became a thick fog and very cool very rapidly. As I got to where the ground leveled out, I realized that I hadn’t heard or seen Dave for a good 5 minutes. My Last Sighting of Dean |
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| 3:40 | ||
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Separation Pangs |
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Dave's Story |
Dean's Story |
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| Soon after we were out of eyesight, the hill turned into almost complete scree climbing which went quite slowly. Being on scree, I imagined that Dean was probably motoring up the mountain. I hoped that he would wait for me. When I finally hit the edge of the ridge where the terrain began to level out, a cloud had rolled in on top of me. I was engulfed in a thick fog which cut my visibility to about 20 feet and draped an eerie curtain of silence over the mountain. My shouts to Dean were consumed by the fog almost as soon as they had left my mouth. |
Situations like this force you to make decisions that you may not be proud of. Having not heard Dave for a few minutes, I called out his name. Upon not hearing it, I called again. Calling upon my ability to bark like a dog, I barked like a dog. No response, not even a "Shut up, dog!" So I started heading Dave’s way, under an arch formed by a large tree trunk and its branches that were bent all the way to the ground. I kept calling and started heading down, the terrain being not as rocky as what I’d climbed. This stuff was a lot of loose dirt and a lot of pine needles. I wasn’t sure how far over laterally I had to go, but I knew it was a ways down since I’d last heard Dave, so I made my way diagonally down. |
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3:50 |
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At this point, I was left in a conundrum. I still hadn't found the trail nor did I know where Dean was. Dean also had our only map of the area, and I couldn't see far enough to orient myself. However, I expected to be hitting the trail soon, especially since the ridge had started to level out and I did have a compass which allowed me to orient myself despite the fog. Also I had studied the map in detail on the drive up and before the beginning of the climb. Forward and upward seemed the sensible direction - Dean was probably ahead of me anyways. Most importantly, in our many prior travels, Dean and I had an underlying Rule #1 "When in doubt, go up." This rule seemed especially apropos as we were climbing to Mt. San Gorgonio, which at 11,500 ft is the highest point in Southern California. And as all ridges in the area we were traveling led to San Gorgonio, forward and upward seemed to make to make the most sense. I reasoned we would meet up on the trail or at the very least, at the campsite where we had planned to camp that evening. Never did it cross my mind that Dean was in any trouble from the climb I had just completed. Scree was annoying and slow, but hardly hazardous. |
At this point, my mind went into crisis mode: calm and analytical, but conservative. Dave would not be joking around by not answering. Two options remained. The first was that he was simply too far away to hear me and doing pretty much what I was doing, hiking around calling. The second was that he had hit some rough terrain, gotten hurt, and couldn’t answer because he was unconscious. From my view on my route, which was difficult enough as it was, Dave’s route looked tougher. It didn’t look all that much more dangerous than plenty of other things we’d done, but plenty of other things we’d done would not be considered safe by those of more normal activity. If I were to go down the hill checking for him, it would be a serious haul to climb back up, especially with the fog making it much darker very fast. If I didn’t find him, how would I decide to climb back up vs. check the hill again? Though I felt fairly sure that Dave was OK, I realized that I didn’t want to be in a position where I kept going when he could have been lying in a ditch. So I scouted down the hill, calling out. It was a very odd sensation because I could not convince myself to be really concerned – and trying to convince myself to be concerned was literally what I was doing – yet I was effectively sacrificing the hike to be cautious. "At least surfing down the hill is fun," I thought. | |
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The Way Out |
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I made my way through the fog, initially following firebreaks. When I first caught sight of a string of pink plastic ties attached to a series of trees, I thought I had once again found the trail. I tried to think of where Dean might be at this point - most likely, he would have thought I was motoring ahead of him and would be pushing forward to catch up, where I was really behind him.
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At the bottom of the hill, I looked back up and said out loud to no one, "I will be back." I didn’t sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It didn’t even cross my mind. My mind was thinking about finding someone with a cellphone, making a phone call, and then hiking back up the hill in an hour or two. "This is stupid," I thought, "It shouldn’t have happened."
I trekked across the two streams again, really bugged by the second stream this time. I started up the switchbacks and pulled out the map again. I looked again at the map (origrte.jpg) and saw where two streams came together above Dobbs’ Cabin, but the trail didn’t go that way. We also didn’t seem to have come that far and we definitely didn’t see the trail cutting off to the north. I was confused and put the map away and continued up quickly. Before I got to the top of the hill, I ran across the two couples we had passed hours before. |
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4:20 |
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The pink trail markers seemed to be leading along the edge of the ridge as I expected, but they took an unexpected turn down the hill. Going down seemed like a bad idea, but as trails do tend to go both up and down, I thought I would try to follow it. It turned out to be a doubly bad idea as soon both the trail disappeared and it had lead me deeper into the fog.
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I asked about a cellphone and found that, of the four of them, three had phones. I made no joke at the time, though I thought it rather funny. I gave them the brief story as we tried to find a spot where the phones could get a signal. My friend and I were not sure where we were and started climbing up a steep hill, using voice calls to track each other when we got separated. After I stopped hearing him, I came back down. He’s either fine and moving on or unconscious and hurt. They then informed me for sure that we were at Dobbs’ Cabin. I finally got a signal right up by a tree that had a sign about 15 ft off the ground that said, "Dobbs’ Cabin", with an arrow. The people also told me something that Dave and I had not been told, which was that the Falls Creek trail that we had been looking for to go north – it no longer existed. | |
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4:30 |
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| I was sure at
this point that Dean must have hit the true trail, while I was on this
false trail. He was ahead of me and we would have to meet at the
campsite at this point, unless I could catch up to him. There
was nothing to do but push forward and it was clear that Rule #1 was
clearly in effect. It was slow going as I was again climbing up a steep mountain. Plus hiking in the fog seemed to sap my will - it was bleak and deathly quiet.
Only a solitary crow cawed periodically as the scavenger scoped me out to see if I would be alive much longer.
I was disoriented, but fortunately, I was able to keep going in a known good direction with the aid of my compass.
Perhaps it was a combination of the silence and my exertion, but this was the only time in my life I have ever been able to externally hear my blood as it was ejected from my heart, through the valves, into my aorta. It was quite surreal. |
I finally got 911 and gave them the brief story. They directed me to the local ranger. I gave them the brief story and asked them what I should do, stay up at the top or go down. The person I was talking to started to say that I should stay then decided he needed to talk to someone else. When he went to talk to someone else, the cell signal disappeared. I called 911 again and gave them the brief story before they gave me the ranger again. I gave this ranger the brief story. He asked whether "my friend" was prepared to spend the night outdoors. I said "yes". I wasn’t too concerned, but I was playing it safe, I told him. He didn’t seem too concerned. "So should I stay up here or should I go down?" He finally decided that I should go down. It was 4:37 pm. I told him to expect me by 6:30. I got the name of the guy whose phone I had borrowed – Steve – and his cellphone number in case Dave came wandering into their camp that night. Being the well-prepared backpacker I am, I just put the info in my Palm Pilot, then strapped my pack on for the run down the hill. |
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As I attempted to surmount the ridge, I was pulled by the golden light of the sun as it reflected on the autumn leaves above me. More powerful than a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I was inspired to keep on pushing until I broke through the fog. What I was treated to when I reached my goal was magnificent. Not only were the sun's rays completely rejuvenating, but I could now see the clouds I had climbed though as a pillowy blanket covering the entirety of the land below with majestic purple mountain peaks breaking through. It was truly breathtaking. |
And run I did. I backtracked a little bit, but I also realized that the fastest way down was to go pretty much straight down the hill, not all the way back the way I’d come. So I cut the trail and headed south toward where I knew the river was. When I hit the top of the steep decline, I had been running for about 15 minutes, admittedly having a good time doing it. I looked down at the white mud of the river valley before following a narrow trail that apparently switched back on its way down. I continued to run the trail until I slipped and got cramps in both hamstrings at the same time. That forced me to walk and eat some beef jerky. I walked down the hill, passing a horse stable and a couple of parked cars as the trail turned into a little road before it crossed back over the river. On the other side of the river, I wasn’t sure how far I was from the car, so I got a ride with a kid whose car was pretty much patched together by duct tape. The driver’s side door wouldn’t open, so he got in through the window. He brought me to the parking lot. It was 5:30, well before my estimated arrival time. So I hiked back up the road to the fire station and called again. That got Rusty, the local cop, to the parking lot pretty quick. | |
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Forming the Team |
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5:30 |
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Again on the ridge, I resumed my dual search for Dean and the trail. I could follow the top of the ridge easy enough and keep on trucking in an upward direction, but Dean was nowhere to be found. I came across another trail which follow the upward contour of the hill for a while, but when it started diverging down into a canyon, I knew better this time than to follow it. Plus, now that I was above the clouds - I could see the goal of San Gorgonio. I was upwardly bound on the side of a mountain as sunset approached. I continued the climb though the oranges and reds of sunset and the hazy tan-grey of twilight, hoping I might stumble across the campsite or trail and find Dean. However, when it became dangerously dark, I found a flat spot and made camp. It must have been close to 6:15 or so, because the sun had been setting around 5:15 and I had hiked until the last vestiges of twilight disappeared. My only real concern for Dean the entire day was that he might run out of water - I had been carrying the majority of the water for the two of us and Dean drinks close to twice what I normally drink. This is my standard MO as it allows me to start with a very heavy pack, but the pack weight decreases as water is drunk. Dean did have the map which would show where the springs could be found. Also, as I hit the ridge, I found large snow patches, which would go a long way to alleviate any thirst pangs Dean might have.
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The next several hours involved forming the Search and Rescue team, a period of time that taught me how different real Search and Rescue is from what you see on TV.
Rusty took me back to the S&R headquarters, which consisted of two rooms adjacent to the fire station. The room we entered had a couch to the left and an industrial kitchen straight ahead (including barstools). We headed over to the left to the other room, which was the entrance to the command post. The command post was under "heavy security", being locked with the key held in a combination-based lock box on the wall next to the door. Unfortunately, the combination didn’t work and the box opened regardless of what combination was entered. The command post was a large cluttered room having a couple of cafeteria-like tables lined up lengthwise down the middle, a 3 ft by 4 ft free standing white board, a file cabinet adjacent to an old TV, and the desk with radios, a phone, and an old PC. Upon getting comfortable in the command room, Rusty called to make sure the S&R team was being assembled, then he asked me to recount the story of how Dave got lost, this time with maps. Midway through, the police chief came in and I restarted. At the end, I emphasized again the two likely possibilities were 1. Dave fell and got hurt enough that he couldn’t answer me, 2. He’s OK and progressing up the hill, where, once he hit a trail, he’d turn left. At the end, no one seemed all that concerned, which almost concerned me. Shouldn’t Search and Rescue be a bunch of former Navy Seals, all gung-ho to go hang from helicopters while pulling people from the jaws of death? I guess not. |
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| 6:45 | ||
After hiking most of the day through difficulty terrain, I was in no mood to cook, so I drank some water, ate an orange, some beef jerky and for dessert and inner warmth sipped on the Peppermint Schnapps I had brought to mix with our hot chocolate. Being on the side of a mountain, in a difficult location to reach, and above the tree line, I hoped I was out of danger of bears eating my food, which I chose to leave in my backpack. And to alleviate the problem of my water freezing at this altitude (now approximately 10,000 feet), I utilized my water bladder as a pillow. The night was crisp, but incredibly clear when I went to sleep. I tried to stay awake to look at the stars, but this only lasted a few minutes as I was so tired. My sleeping bag is rated to 20 degrees F, so I was plenty warm and I covered my head with my jacket to keep my face warm. I happily fell into a deep sleep - probably no later than 8:00pm. |
Not long afterward, Alan, the leader of the not-so-macho Search and Rescue team, showed up with his ten-year-old son, who wanted to get on the internet. I told the story to Alan and we tracked things carefully on the map, including more details of the terrain and conditions. I assured him that Dave and I had planned on spending the night outdoors and that Dave had plenty of gear to get through even a cold night. Alan didn’t seem concerned either, but he did get to his large backpack and start packing up for a long night, including gear for hikes through water and cold weather. His plan was to hike up the side of Big Falls, then hike up the river to the Point Last Seen (or, the "PLS" in the S&R lingo). It would be the fastest way up, he said.
Over the next few hours, the team collected at the command post. During that period, we watched the World Series and got a big dinner of fried chicken and biscuits. Alan told me of his intention to bring me up with the team in order to identify the PLS. He would then have one of his team members escort me back to the command post because they didn’t want to have an "RP", the reporting party, staying out all night. As the team members firmed up (it took a while to identify who could actually go), Alan wrote their names, along with mine on the white board. Then we talked about the fact that his daughter was marrying the son of the owner of North Face and he couldn’t wait to get a bunch of free stuff out of that arrangement. And we had some more chicken. Rusty mentioned to Alan that the police chief, who was then absent, would probably not allow me to go up with the team. I was definitely hoping to go. I had been asking about infrared goggles and whether they’d be sending up a helicopter with particular desire to actually try the goggles and ride in the copter. I played it pretty cool, simply saying that I could definitely identify exactly where we had hiked and where I last saw Dave. Then we all rooted for the Mets to beat the Yankees. |
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| 9:30 |
Search and Rescue in Action |
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At about 9:30, the entire S&R team had been assembled with the one exception being whether I was going. At this point, I was very interested in going, but I stood silently as Alan made the points for me to go, the primary one being my knowledge of exactly where I’d last seen and heard Dave. I had spent the last ten minutes preparing a small pack they lent me in case I would go. The police chief finally gave his approval and Alan told me to be prepared to stay the night up there, counter to what they’d been telling me before. So I swapped all the gear from the small pack to my larger pack, latching in the sleeping bag and thermarest in anticipation of snow. I also got an extra set of batteries for my headlamp, knowing that we’d be going through them. At 9:45, the five of us making up the Search and Rescue team piled into one of those big American SUVs, our backpacks stacked behind us. At 10, we got to the trailhead at the base of Big Falls. Alan and his team confirmed procedures, primarily being the check-in with HQ every hour, and the roles of the different personnel. We had a doctor, who we called Doc. We had the tracker, though that wasn’t his official title – his name was Jack. We had GPS guy – again not his real title – which was Chris. Then there was me, the RP – my official title.
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| We hit the trail single file, Alan in the lead, me in the fourth position, conspicuously and probably intentionally having Chris behind me. Our hiking conversation began with, "So does anyone remember exactly how to go up the falls?" In the dark, it was difficult to see anything beyond the upcoming 20-50 ft. It was hard to see the upcoming wall that created the waterfalls, but we could hear it. We stepped along a narrow path clearly to the right of the falls. The trail didn’t drop off severely, but it graded to boulders to our left. We headed down toward the river at the base of the falls. I couldn’t see why we abandoned our trail, but assumed that their experience said that it wouldn’t go. Their experience, however, had been in daylight and they had a hard time finding the trail up. We ended up backtracking to the narrow trail and downriver a little before crossing the river again. We walked around for about 5 minutes looking at the wall of rock and dirt in front of us before we found one section that was less steep, the section that we would ascend. Alan led the way and warned us all to stay back, a warning we heeded readily as nearly every step sent loose pebbles or rocks the size of bowling balls tumbling down the hill. After the scramble through the scree, we were on harder rocks, but crawling under bushes. Though it was in the low 40’s, the effort of the climb had us all sweating and removing clothing this early in the hike. With all that effort, it seemed like we’d only gone a half mile before we had our first hourly check in at 11. All the time, we could hear the waterfall or the river to our right. I never once actually saw the falls. | ||
| After an hour and a half or so, we arrived at a section where it wasn’t clear how to proceed. Slick and steep rock stood above us, definitely navigable but a little daunting, especially since we couldn’t see whether the climb would get worse past our 50 ft of visibility. Chris and Doc went up that while the other three of us sidled around the rock toward a ledge I couldn’t see that dropped off to the river at least tens of feet below us. Then we climbed up, using slightly better leverage in the rocks. Meeting Doc and Chris again, we were sweating, tired, but pleased because we found a blaze on a rock indicating that we were on the right track. Alan and I headed up to a flatter spot. The other three stripped off a layer of clothing. Chris attempted to get a GPS reading for about the 8th time on the hike, each time involving 3-5 minutes of waiting to get a signal through the trees. The lat-long reading he got was relayed back to HQ so that they could track our progress. From where Alan and I stood, we finally got a clear view of the hills across the river. I looked through the darkness for any light that may have represented Dave’s camp. I looked up to see stars. It was going to be cold. As we waited a good 10 or 15 minutes, Alan and I talked about the likelihood that Dave was fine. I emphasized again that he had probably just kept going and that my only concern was that he had fallen, hurt himself, and was turning into a popsicle as the night got cold. We were getting cold just waiting for the other guys to get ready. Alan yelled at them from our spot above them to get their butts in gear. They moaned a little, but moseyed on up. At our location, Alan said that this was where he wanted to descend down into the river. Jack recommended staying on the ridge. I was surprised to see how the decision was actually made democratically. The other three wanted to continue to ascend the ridge and won the vote. They all believed that the route up the ridge would be clearer and easier from that point on. | ||
| During the course of the night the wind picked up significant and was roaring down the hill. I woke up a couple times hoping that it didn't rain on me as I hadn't set up a tent and to secure items so that the wind wouldn't take them down the hill. Later in the wee hours of the morning, I also started to realized that I was being snowed on. | They were wrong. The ensuing two hours felt like four hours, not being able to see how far we were from the top. We had to climb through bushes whose branches scraped skin through pants and jackets. We had to climb through those bushes because they represented the most secure ground on some sections of the narrow ridge. At about 1, we stopped so that I could replace the batteries in my headlamp. Someone accidentally kicked loose a rock that started rolling down the hill behind us. We could hear it going for about five seconds, hitting other rocks or trees. With my light ready, I saw where we were standing, which was at the base of a rock wall that spanned the width of our narrow ridge. This would be the most technical part of our starlight climb, involving a little bit of rockclimbing skill to find good holds for the hands and feet as we first went around to the right, then up a highly cracked part of the rock. | |
|
After this point, the ridge seemed to level out, though we were still walking or climbing through patches of thistle, looking for a sign of a trail. With both the occasional GPS readings and their map, we could approximately place where we were, although we said more than one time that "the trail is probably only a couple minutes away." |
||
| When we finally hit the real trail, it was obvious even in the dark, and it was right at the peak of the ridge before the trail went down to Dobbs’ Cabin. Chris felt the need to get another GPS reading for the next 10 minutes before we took the five-minute walk down to the river. As I waited with Alan and Jack, I showed them on the map how the trail appeared to head straight down to the river, but that it would actually cut back into the mountains and cross where the rivers joined. They seemed a little surprised by this, but we were all tired and mainly interested in getting down to where we could camp for the night. | ||
| So we did. We threw our packs down next to a fallen redwood with a diameter of at least three feet, giving us some protection from the wind. I slept well after a very long day. | ||
|
Sunday |
||
| 6:30 am | ||
| I woke up early in the morning to find
that it wasn't exactly a blizzard, but my sleeping bag was completely frosted over and a
snowy windstorm had brewed around me. Unfortunately, I had left my backpack open and the snow had blown straight down the hill, into my pack.
I dumped the snow out of my pack and tried to keep my gear from flying
away in the wind. Dean had unfortunately had all the breakfast
food. I did have the stove, but warm water without hot chocolate or
oatmeal just didn't sound appealing. I decided that a second orange
and the remainder of the peppermint schnapps was a good substitute and
would keep me warm in the process.
The morning snowstorm impaired visibility similar to the fog of the previous day. In the conditions I couldn't tell the time, but I guessed 7:30, but after comparing notes, it is clear I had arisen very early, which made sense as I went to sleep around 8:00. My choices at this point were two - I could head back the way I had come, over known terrain or I could head forward into the wind and snowstorm, complete the ascent of San Gorgonio, and hopefully hook up with Dean. Back was more certain, but it was a longer day out of the mountain. Dean also was more likely to be ahead of me at the campsite. Hiking is always better when you have someone to share it and I still wanted to share the summit of San Gorgonio with him. The thought that Dean might have been hurt hiking occurred to me, but it seemed unlikely. I knew his capabilities and nothing I had seen would have exceeded them. Running on the assumption that Dean actually reached the camp with the aid of the map, I chose to proceed forward, thinking it the most likely way to join him. |
The Cold Morning Frost |
|
| 7:00 | ||
The wind and snow made going slow, but I quickly emerged again from the cloud layer to be above the snowfall.
|
The search helicopter woke me up at 7 the next morning. Breakfast was nasty. It was a Nut Berry Outdoor Balance Bar. S&R had been given 5 boxes of these things and they warned me beforehand that they tasted like cardboard. Having the poorly discriminating palate that I have, I figured that they’d at least be decent. I was wrong. I couldn’t finish the thing, in part because it was so cold that the thing nearly broke my teeth, but mainly because it tasted like some artificial fruit flavored cardboard. Fortunately, Jack gave me some jerky, too. | |
| 7:30 | ||
Wonders of wonders, I hit the trail almost immediately
after clearing the snow storm! My hopes were buoyed to high levels that Dean and I would soon be
reunited.  |
It didn’t take long to "saddle up" – Alan’s favorite phrase – that morning. We were on the trail within about 20 minutes. I pointed early on to the hill we’d be climbing. After 5 minutes of hiking down the river as Dave and I had about 18 hours earlier, they got to see it firsthand. At the base of the big scree hill again, I smiled at what I’d already gone through and the surrealism of it all. Chris got a GPS reading then they all dug in vain through their packs to find the signal ribbon that they meant to leave at key points along the route. Finally, Doc found that he had some bright purple avalanche string to leave as an indicator. As Alan called in our info, everyone had to repack their backpacks after digging for the ribbon. I overheard that another team had already started at our original trailhead and would be following us up the hill if they didn’t find Dave along their way. | |
| 8:00 | ||
| Following the trail I soon reached the junction to summit San Gorgonio and the trail down to the car. I left my pack at the trail junction for Dean to find and started my ascent of the peak. I figured when Dean found my pack, he would climb as well, or if I returned and he just arrived, I would happily summit again.
I tried to take a drink from my water bladder and
found that the tubing running out of the bladder had frozen solid. I
rigged a way to defrost the tubing for my water bladder by running the tubing inside my
jacket. The travails of the past day behind me, I began the summit
of San Gorgonio full of anticipation that Dean and I would both be able to
stand at the top of the peak. |
Our climb up the familiar scree slope seemed to go much faster the second time around. I took them very quickly to exactly where Dave and I had sat the previous day, eyeing the map. On the way up, I noticed that Jack was keying in on slight displacements in the dirt. He told me generally what to look for, but I definitely did not see it as well. This became much more impressive to me after I took them to the PLS, the point last seen. At this point, I couldn’t tell them exactly what route Dave had taken, though I relayed what I knew of Dave’s patterns – he liked hard rock and, if in doubt, go up. It wasn’t necessary. Jack could see the slightest displacements of rock even on some of the larger boulders we were climbing. I wasn’t so convinced he knew what he was seeing until I saw how what he saw always ended at dirt segments where Dave’s size 13 prints were clearly obvious. |
|
| 8:30 | ||
|
The trail to the top of San Gorgonio is other worldly. It is what I imagine Pluto might look like - stark colors and bleak. Add to this that it was so windy that at times I needed to tack along the trail to move forward. At one point I tried to look over the edge of the cliff to see the clouds being blown up and over the peak and I could not get close enough to the edge to take a look. At the top I started to climb to the crest of one mound thinking that it might be the peak, saw another that seemed to be taller, climbed it instead, and then realized that the first was probably higher to begin with. When I actually climbed the first mound, I found a lock box with a notebook which indicated that it was probably the highest point. I wrote an extensive note to Dean in the notebook, huddling behind some rocks, and headed down to the trail junction.
|
Frankly, seeing those prints were the final assurance I needed to be sure that he was fine. The most technical section was behind us and, frankly, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as what I’d gone up in the wash to the right the day before. I was convinced that he was up and heading toward San Gorgonio. |
|
| 9:00 | ||
|
I returned to the junction and still Dean had not caught up. I left a note with an orange so it would be visible, and headed down the hill to the next campsite.
On the way down, I met the first hikers I had seen since I was separated from Dean. They told me that it was 9:30, about 1.5 hours before I had guessed. Maybe Dean was behind me and had woken up at a reasonable hour compared to what I did. |
We’d ascended quickly and the team was tired. We stopped at probably 9:00 for an hour break, where I had the first MRE of my life. The bread and jam tasted particularly good after the thing I’d eaten an hour and a half earlier. They had eggs and pancakes, too. As we sat there, Alan stayed in communication with HQ. The helicopter flew over us a few times, having heard that we were on Dave’s trail. The wind was buffeting the helicopter so much that it was fishtailing a good thirty degrees the whole time. We talked about having them pick us up and drop off another team at Dobbs’ peak, which I hoped for, though with less enthusiasm as I watched the helicopter struggle with the wind. It didn’t take long to agree that the helicopter wouldn’t be trying to land up there in that kind of wind. | |
| 10:00 | ||
| I decided to wait a while at the lower campground for Dean to catch up.
I spent my time preparing fajitas which I figured Dean would be psyched to
eat when he caught up with me. After the fajita vegetables and
chicken were cut and ready to cook, I passed the time reading a book I had
brought.
|
We began the last part of our ascent following Dave’s prints. At one point, it was difficult to distinguish whether he went off to the right or straight up. It turned out that he had gone straight up, but Jack and I followed the prints off to the right, which turned out to be mine as I had come back down the day before looking for him. Upon that realization, we called the others on the walkie talkies. Alan decided to call it a day. We all sat down at a level segment, trying to get another GPS reading for ten minutes. We sat facing south looking down toward the general vicinity of civilization, thinking food and rest. Doc tied some purple string to the bush nearby. We started surfing down the scree, guessing at the easiest way down, avoiding Vivian Falls, which would have meant either a big fall or a lot of backtracking. | |
| 10:45 | ||
| The scree-surfing was a blast for me, despite my tired legs, because it meant running and generally going fast. I was disappointed when it ended at the Vivian Creek trail. At that point, we talked to the first group of people we saw coming down from the top. It was somewhat humorous to me how the guy tried to impress the two women he was hiking with as he provided his own analysis for where Dave might be. He clearly did not know too much. | ||
| 11:30 | ||
| When I was told by a hiker I passed that the orange and note I had left hadn't been touched either before his summit of San Gorgonio or afterwards, it became clear to me that something serious had happened to Dean. With only a couple miles separating me from the exit, I started hurrying downhill so I could find out what happened. | We hiked all the way down the trail, which was a letdown from all the off-trail stuff we had been doing. But at the bottom, we got a ride straight to a restaurant, where we were all treated to a huge buffet breakfast with omelets, waffles, hash browns, and fresh fruit. I really couldn’t wait to tell Dave about that part. I chatted a lot with Jack, whose wife and kids joined him. He told me about some of his bad S&R jobs; the one where he’d found a dead kid in the river especially stuck in my mind. | |
| 12:00 | ||
| But he also told me that I had done the right thing in doing what I'd done, something I'd questioned from the start. He confided also that most jobs were no real problem. After he had heard my story, he was quite confident that Dave would be fine, but it gave him an opportunity to go backpacking, something his wife didn't let him do enough. I laughed as he told me this and I thanked him heartily for everything, especially his final words, as he went home with his family and I went back to HQ. | ||
| 1:00 | ||
Around one mile from the exit, I ran into a troupe of Boy Scouts, from San Diego no less. While talking to them the following conversation took place between myself (DC) and their scout leader (SL). DC "I am worried about my friend
who I had been separated from."
SL "Let me guess - 6 foot 3 Dave."
DC "No.....but my name is Dave......
and I'm about 6 foot 3...."
SL "Have you been missing for a day
and a half!?!?"
DC "I've barely been hiking for a
day and a half..."
SL "There have been rangers looking
all over for you and they even
had a helicopter!"
|
At HQ, I learned that the rangers had contacted Dave's parents and, worse, had called his aunt and uncle who were at that moment driving up to the park. They then told me of several reported Dave sightings, all of which turned out to be incorrect, unless Dave now has several clones running around San Gorgonio. One of those sightings sounded particularly accurate because of their description of the person, but the location was in a place Dave never actually went. |
|
| 1:30 | ||
|
At the trail head I found a ranger. DC "Hi - I'm 6 foot 3 Dave."
R "David Carta? Are you okay? Do you need
food? Wait...you don't look lost..."
DC "I didn't realize I was lost until
about 20 minutes ago...This is the
time I was supposed to come out."
R "We've had 2 Search and Rescue
Teams, 2 horse teams, and a
helicopter all looking for you!
I have to let them know that
you are okay!"
After radioing into the station that I was "found" he brought me up to date on what had been going on since Dean and I were separated.
|
After no more than an hour at HQ, the true call came in – they found Dave at the base of the Vivian Creek trail and were driving him in.
|
|
| 1:45 | ||
| I cannot remember at all what I said when I saw the wry smile on Dave's face as he climbed out of the truck. We spent the next two hours or so reviewing our separate accounts of the last day. Dave's aunt and uncle joined us and were very relieved at the site of us both. We drove out of the park and, while telling the details of our stories to Dave and Angela in the nearest Denny's, we knew that we'd had another adventure to remember. | ||
|
The Trails around San
Gorgonio |
| It turns out that the first half of the trail
towards San Bernadino Peak had been closed for at least the last 7
years, but none of the maps indicate this, including the ones the
rangers sell, nor do the rangers tell you that this trail is
closed. We should have gotten a clue when the rangers wanted a
copy of our map, which we had downloaded from their own web site.
Below are the routes taken (more or less) along with the trail we had
originally proposed. Looking back on a 1970's map my dad had, it
turns out there is a cross country trail from the point of Dave's Trip
to Dave's Camp, but it is not maintained, which would explain why I
would find and lose it in matters of feet. There is no cross
country trail up the side of the canyon Dean and I climbed.... |
 |
Postscript
The Monday after I returned, I got an e-mail
from my friend Julie in Riverside saying that I was
in the newspaper. This is the article she sent me.
