Cold Truth Is Danger : Mountain Sightseeing Sometimes Is Perilous for Urban Dwellers

When Ryan McIntosh, then 11, and Cynthia Moyneur, 37, went hiking on Mt. Baldy after Thanksgiving in 1991, the ingredients for tragedy were typical, for city people.

Caught in a sudden, howling snowstorm, separated from their friends, dressed lightly and with no food or water, the Orange County adventurers were in serious trouble. What they did have was a few matches for a fire and enough common sense to stay put and build a shelter that got them through two nights in temperatures dropping to 13 degrees.

Members of the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team, crawling to keep from being blown off the mountain by winds up to 100 m.p.h., found them after pinpointing their location from the campfire before it had finally gone out the previous night.

“That was our best save in recent times,” said Jon Inskeep, past president of the team.

The team is a group of 28 civilian volunteers on call from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s station in Temple City. It also works through the state Office of Emergency Services and is called out up to 80 operations each year, from Southern California to the Sierra.

Most incidents are just “sprained ankles . . . some cliffhangers,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Pete Fosselman, the station coordinator.

Others are far more serious. Last month, team members were slogging up Mt. San Jacinto on snowshoes to rescue a pilot who crash-landed his small plane during the series of heavy storms. They were glad to be stopped short when a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter spotted the wreckage through a break in the storm clouds and airlifted the man out.

The team wouldn’t be nearly as busy were it not for two factors: the rugged geology of the San Gabriel Mountains and their proximity to a dense urban population. City residents tend to get into trouble in the mountains, and the San Gabriels are deceptively dangerous.

“People from the city just don’t have enough life experience with the vagaries of nature to understand what the potential threat is,” says George Duffy of the U.S. Forest Service. “Experienced outdoors people are hardly ever the object of a search or rescue. They have the knowledge to recognize what’s going on and to react accordingly.”

Inskeep, who has climbed in the Himalayas and other ranges of the world, said, “I call the San Gabriel Mountains the most dangerous mountains in the world--all decomposed granite with heavy brush. The ground is loose and crumbly, and you can’t see where you’re going.”

His cardinal rule: “Never leave the trail.”

And never, he and Duffy emphasize, try to find your way out of the San Gabriels by following a stream downhill. You could fall over a cliff or, at best, find yourself trapped between waterfalls.

“But one good thing about staying close to a stream is you have a source of water,” Duffy said. “You can live an awfully long time if you have water, particularly in our culture, where most people have a bit of body fat that can carry them for a time.”

With water, shelter and a fire, chances of survival soar. If you have matches or a lighter, a fire can be started with kindling cut from the inside, dry layers of wet tree limbs--if you have a knife or hatchet. Then water can be had by melting snow--if you have a container.

“Once you have a fire, your life is secure,” Duffy said.

Duffy is a snow ranger, based at the Mt. Baldy District headquarters in Glendora, where he manages the wilderness program. Since 1966 he also has been a member of the Sierra Madre team. If you were lost in the mountains with the sun going down, Duffy would be a good man to have around. But if he weren’t, your chances would still be good if you followed his advice.

“If a person becomes lost, their best bet as soon as they recognize that is to stop,” Duffy said.

Given a “point last seen” from which to launch a search, the search area is reduced considerably. That is, if anyone saw the person there, or he was wise enough to notify friends, relatives or authorities exactly where he was going and when he planned to return.

In his 27 years with the team, Duffy has become convinced that outdoor accidents don’t simply happen.

“You can always tie it to somebody’s foolish mistake,” he said. “It could be argued that almost anything but a lightning strike could be avoided with good judgment--and even a knowledge of lightning could limit that.”

The problem with city folk is that whatever judgment they exercise is likely to be based on city experience.

Said Fosselman: “They try to estimate their ability to get to a certain point and back before dark on what would be a reasonable amount of time on a sidewalk. And then they get in there and it gets dark, and it’s easier to get disoriented (or) slip and fall.”

And they probably don’t have food, water, first-aid material, a flashlight, a knife, a compass, a map, a small fold-up tarpaulin, extra warm clothing or any of the other basic essentials a sensible outdoorsman would carry in his backpack.

Whenever Duffy goes into the wilderness, he packs all that--plus a fruitcake. In survival circumstances, he will tell you, one could save your life.

“The stuff keeps forever and has just about everything you’d want,” he said. “There’s plenty of calories in a fruitcake (with) the fats and the nuts. Foods you keep for survival should be highly nutritional and edible without any preparation.”

In cold weather, Inskeep added, “The most important piece of clothing is a hat.”

Duffy agreed, saying: “A hat is worth a campfire. At 40 degrees Fahrenheit, you lose half your body heat from an uncovered head. At 5 degrees, you lose three-quarters of it.”

Duffy recalled a surprise snowstorm about 10 years ago when two- or three-hundred sightseers were trapped in their cars on Mt. Baldy. Few probably realized how much trouble they were in. Nature is not kind to the uninitiated, or there would not be hypothermia--the process of freezing to death. Inskeep called the phenomenon “insidious.”

“You don’t know it’s happening to you,” he said.

It starts with common shivering, then reason becomes erratic, coordination impaired and speech slurred. The victim will seldom complain as his body loses the capacity to heat itself. If his companions don’t warm him up with hot drinks, quick-energy food, blankets or their own bodies, he probably will die.

“People have been known to die within three hours of the onset of symptoms,” Duffy said.

It doesn’t even have to be very cold.

“They’ve found people dead in caves where the temperature never dropped below 40 degrees,” Duffy said.

Wind is also a threat. The so-called “windchill factor” accelerates frostbite. For example, at 10 degrees, a 25-m.p.h. wind has the same effect as a temperature of minus-30 degrees.

“Hair follicles trap still air next to the skin,” Duffy said. “Still air is an incredibly good insulator. But a little zephyr of a breeze is always carrying the heat away. You just don’t recognize how sinister that effect can be.”

Fosselman said the team has a credo to “go anywhere in the wilderness and search for someone as long as they’re missing. They will not quit until every possible means has been exhausted.”

Most searches end happily, but some do not. Jared Negrete, a 12-year-old Boy Scout from El Monte, became separated from his troop on Mt. San Gorgonio in July of 1991. Searchers from the Sierra Madre team joined 2,000 others, but found only the boy’s camera. The father bitterly blamed the Scouts. The Scoutmaster was dismissed.

“That was so disappointing,” Duffy said. “Try as we might, we couldn’t find him. Sometimes we don’t. A missing hiker on Mt. San Jacinto wasn’t found for 10 or 11 years, when somebody stumbled onto his pack and his remains. It’s just so disheartening.”

Team members wear pagers and keep their gear within reach. They are unpaid, but incredibly dedicated. Why do they care about people they don’t know who get into trouble through their own mistakes?

“We’re all part of the community of man,” Duffy said. “But the other part is, it’s like a puzzle. You’re trying to figure out how to solve it. It’s like detective work.

“We’ll get information that somebody is missing, (then) we’ll have people on the telephones calling friends and relatives, finding out about (the missing person): Where did they go? What did they have with them? What was their state of mind? What kind of shoes did they have? What kind of gum did they chew?”

A gum wrapper or a footprint pattern from a certain make of sneaker can tell them they’re on the right trail. Some youth groups make foil samples of everyone’s footprints before a hike.

The key is to concentrate on surviving and let the team find you. Where there’s snow, stay away from clear, steep areas subject to avalanches. Try to stay warm and dry.

“Wet is your worst enemy,” Duffy said.

In short, do as the animals do.

“No animal in his right mind is out in foul weather,” Duffy said.

Big rocks that have been in the sun hold heat well into the night. Animals will hole up there or gather leaves and twigs to build nests in the snow.

Animals will also huddle together for warmth.

“They try to conserve heat and energy so they can devote that energy to staying warm,” Duffy said. “They’ll find out where the sun shone on the earth last and that’s where they’ll spend the night because that’s where the heat is. We’d do well to remember the same kind of things.”

Tips for Winter Survival

Tell someone exactly where you are going and when you plan to return.

Carry a pack with basic survival gear, including high-calorie ready-to-eat food and water.

Dress for warmth in layers.

Have a hat or a cap.

If lost, stay put.

Concentrate on staying warm and dry.

Watch companions for signs of hypothermia.