Shortly after noon a family
group left the south end of Elm Street, a
few miles SE of Cabazon, for a hike.
Included in the group were Allan
Coghetti, his mother, his younger brother
Ross, and two other boys. About
three-quarters of a mile up the dirt road
is a spring where the family split, Allan
and Ross going cross-country uphill, the
others returning home.
About
five oclock Ross returned home
reporting that Allan had fallen off a
cliff somewhere up the mountain (probably
in a side canyon near Jensen Canyon).
Following some checking by Sheriffs
Deputies, RMRU was called. By ten or so
sixteen of our twenty active members were
searching. The nature of the call
(;
a boy hurt in a fall up a canyon
south of Cabazon
;) gave us all the
impression that wed just zoom in
with technical gear and light call-out
packs to evacuate the boy. Little did we
know! Before long Walker and Morris were
going up "Poison Oak Canyon" a
western tributary to Jensen Canyon.
Bridge, Schnurr, and Brown went up some
steep gullies and bluffs just to the
north. Claybrook shuttled latecomers up
to the spring. Soon we had Carlson,
Schmel, McIlvoy, MacIntosh, Quackenbush,
Gillespie, Castilonia, Hill, Stephens,
Pohlers, Frickland, and yours truly,
assigned to various areas. The hours went
by. No luck. Exceptionally difficult to
cover steep loose-rock terrain surrounded
by thick scrub oak, buckthorn, chamise,
mountain mahogany, and many other shrubs.
Three of us bivouacked below poison Oak
Canyon due to our sensitivity to the
poison.
Friday
morning several teams ascended Poison Oak
Canyon, then turned their attention to
the area above. Our party tried to ascend
the 300 high south wall of P.O.
Canyon, finally making it in a direct
line to where Don Landells had landed his
bird in the ;tilt; position. Ray, Hank
and I tried to lift the skids an place
small boulders under for more leveling,
but the engine, which Don had shut down,
refused to re-start. So, with Gary, he
hiked out to base and got a ride to his
base, returning with Reed Jarroch in
another bird and a fresh battery. The
engine started, and Don ;popped; the
machine up from his predicament in
spectacular fashion.
Meanwhile,
the search turned up a few of Ross
tracks about two hundred yards north of
the helispot, but hard gravel and deep
grass deterred our attempts to follow
them. The search area was crisscrossed
and enlarged. With heavy hearts we came
out at dark, sure the boy had fallen to
his death, ;somewhere.;
Saturday,
with many more men from Altadena,
Montrose, China Lake, and Sierra Madre,
we expanded and intensified the search
with the same results. We found
rattlesnakes, Mountain Lion, bobcats,
coyotes, many cliffs and brush patches,
but no trace of Allen.
Sunday,
I took a three hour hike with Ross to see
if he could re-trace his hiking route and
give more information. He stuck well to
the original statements:
;On
our way back from our hike we came to a
place where Allen said he would slide
down to the rock to a tree and then climb
the rest of the way down. I was chicken
to do that. Allen slid past the tree and
missed it. I heard him hit trees below
and saw an orange tennis shoe fly up.;
Our search had been directed to cover
every possibility, especially cliffs that
even remotely fitted Ross
description.
Sunday
afternoon featured more skillful and
spectacular helicopter flying, by the Los
Angeles Fire Department, to search the
canyons and cliffs. Hope to find Allen
alive faded, because we were aware of the
nighttime temperatures and that we had
covered the area so that if he could have
answered even in a whisper, we could have
heard him. If he had been injured and
knocked unconscious, shock and exposure
would have probably killed by the first
night, the second night for sure. It was
a consensus of MRA teams and the
Sheriffs Office to discontinue the
search until the following Saturday.
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