Man lost after making wrong turn
By Jim Garvey
I arrived at
base camp late Friday morning expecting a quick
evacuation of an injured hiker based on the
initial information received in the call-out. As
usual, the situation developed into something a
little more complex, a two-day search involving
not only RMRU, but MRA teams from Southern
California (Altadena, China Lake, Los Padres, and
Sierra Madre), many hours of helicopter
searching, a scent dog and numerous rides up and
down the Palm Springs tram.
Timothy Hoy,
age 20, of Buena Park had hiked the two miles
from the upper tram station to Round Valley to
spend Wednesday night. He was due out Thursday.
This mission,
like most, came at a bad time. RMRU was preparing
to host a joint MRA search out of Idyllwild for
Gregory Tanner, missing since December 20th.
RMRU searched
Friday with ground teams, including Jim Fairchild
and his scent dog. Also helicopter pilot Don
Landells air searched with negative results for
several hours. The decision was made to divert
MRA teams scheduled to arrive Saturday morning
from the Tanner operation to our base at the
lower tram station to search for Hoy.
Field teams
went out early Saturday morning, 30 trained
mountaineers combed all the trails, campsites,
ridges and drainages on the tram side of the
mountain.
Don Landells
arrived at 0700 hours and took off with Don
Chambers and myself. We spent several hours
air-searching Tahquitz Canyon and other areas not
searched the previous day. Just as Landells was
preparing to drop Don and I off in Skunk Cabbage
Meadow for a hiking assignment we heard over the
radio that Hoy had been found.
He had
apparently lost the trail on his way back to the
tram station and ended up spending Thursday night
in the upper end of Tahquitz Canyon. Luckily Hoy
realized his error and spent all day Friday
climbing back out of Tahquitz Canyon. He spent
Friday night near Caramba Camp and was found by
an Altadena team on the trail headed toward
Willow Creek.
Landells
dropped us off in Long Valley and picked up Hoy
at Hidden Lake. He was flown to base and headed
home in good shape, if only a few days later than
he originally planned.
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