Three boys hiking alone
By Walt Walker
Saturday
evening at seven o'clock is one of the all time
miserable moments to receive a rescue call. Wives
and girlfriends of RMRU members, become unhappy,
in a matter of micro seconds. You guessed it,
that's exactly what happened for the second
mission of the new year.
Kevin Walker
and I arrived at Humber Park in the No. 1 Van,
with John Dew and his son Roy right behind us in
their, car. We were met by Mary Bowman and Deputy
Fogel of the Riverside County Sheriff's
Department. They explained the details of the
situation. Four older boys had gone for a hike
towards Tahquitz Rock. One of the boys, due to
poor foot-wear, turned back at about 1:30 p.m.
The other three continued upward and had not
returned. None of them were carrying any
equipment and it was believed that they did not
have any matches with them. There was patchy snow
at Humber Park and it was estimated that there
was about two to three feet of snow in the high
country.
Shortly Joe
Erickson arrived and it was decided that Mary
would be the radio and base operator and Kevin
the Operations Leader. John, Joe and I would
start out as quickly as possible. just as we were
putting on our packs we heard a faint call from
way above us. It sounded like it was coming from
northeast of Tahquitz Rock. We immediately
started up the ridge just south of the Devil's
Slide Trail. About 20 minutes after the three of
us had started searching, Bernie McIlvoy and Mark
Rhoads showed up at base. They became the second
field team.
Near Humber
Park there were literally thousands of tracks in
the snow and it was impossible to start tracking
from there. About 30 minutes into the search, the
team I was leading, came upon three sets of
tracks that seemed to fit the description given
us. We started following them up the ridge. The
tracks, in the beginning, more or less went
upwards with very little variance left to right.
As we went along, about every 10 minutes we would
shout and occasionally we would get a reply.
However, we were having a very hard time trying
to determine in which direction the reply was
coming from.
After
consultation with the 'Ops. Ldr.' it was decided
that we would continue up the ridge and that
Bernie and Mark would head into the drainage east
and north of Tahquitz Rock. Now and then we would
lose the tracks and we would have to stop and
circle about until we found them again. About
1000 feet above Humber Park we left the
intermittent snow coverage and were hiking
entirely on the snow.
The tracks now
began to wander from one side of the ridge to the
other and we were no longer receiving any replies
to our shouting. Bernie and I communicated back
and forth via the radio and agreed that the last
we had heard of the voices was east and
considerably higher than our present elevation.
Bernie and Mark began a traverse towards Saddle
Junction as we continued following the tracks up
the ridge. I radioed to Bernie and asked him what
their progress was and received a classic reply,
"We are in 5.9 brush!"
Earlier it had
been decided to call the associate members for
some extra help. Don Ricker, Mike Daughtery and
Tom Aldrich responded to the call. They were
joined by regular member Craig Britton to form a
team to hike up the Devil's Slide Trail, to try
and establish a perimeter to the north.
Before I knew
it my team was on a very steep slope of very hard
snow which required a good deal of effort to kick
steps into it. About 50 or 60 feet up, the slope
turned right into a chute, that had a large area
of ice that required me to start chopping steps
with my ice axe. When we finally reached the top
of the chute and looked around, we could now only
find two sets of tracks. Some scrambling over and
around boulders brought us to a very large hunk
of granite that we had to circle around. As I
came around the corner I could see the glow of a
campfire shining into the trees. I shouted and
received a reply from above.
As I started
to continue a cramp struck my right thigh and Joe
'sped' by me to grab the bacon. Before I knew it
John had passed me by and I could hear them both
chuckling as I struggled to release the cramp.
When I finally covered the hundred or so feet to
the fire, Joe was doing a great job of passing
out clothing to the three boys. With that
completed, Joe fired up a mountaineering stove to
prepare some hot liquids and food for the weary
trio of boys.
When we
arrived at the campfire we were surprised to find
a tent and two extra people. As the stove was
heating the water we learned that the couple had
snowshoed up the ridge and had not made the top
before dark. They had heard the boys shouting and
called back to them. We also found out that most
of the shouting had been back and forth between
the boys and not in response to our shouting. One
of the boys had slipped on a steep slope and slid
better than 200 feet downward. Luckily his trip
down was stopped by a large snowbanks He lost one
boot in the process and was also separated from
the other two. All the shouting had been done to
try and get back together again. Fortunately for
them the man had been able to start a fire for
them to huddle around.
it was decided
that the best thing to do was wait the two and a
half hours to first light and then head up to
Saddle Junction and then down the Devil's Slide
Trail. The four man crew who had hiked up the
trail bivouacked at the Saddle. John, Joe and I
collected more firewood and took turns keeping
the fire going during the rest of the night.
The next
morning we fabricated a boot, out of John's
insolite pad and some tape, for the young fellow
who was missing a boot. We were met by the four
man crew and then hiked up the short distance to
the Saddle. It was then down the trail towards
Humber Park. The boy with the handmade boot was
having a very hard time staying on his feet so we
radioed down to base to see if they could try and
locate a boot. In a very short time Mary radioed
back to us that a boot had been located and that
Kevin would start up the trail with it.
About half way
down we met up with Kevin and stopped to have the
boy put on the boot. With the boot laced up we
started down once again. As we neared Humber Park
we could hear voices and soon realized it was
coming from people who were playing in the snow.
When we made the final turn and headed to the
parking lot we had to dodge kids on sleds and
snow saucers. When we arrived back at base team
doctor Norm Mellor was there waiting to examine
the boy's foot to check for frostbite. The good
news was that the boy's foot was cold but not
frostbitten.
With the
mission completed we drove down to Idyllwild for
a hot breakfast. After consuming many hot cups of
coffee, milk, juice, eggs, potatoes, bacon, ham,
sausage, pancakes and French toast we headed for
home and some sleep.
|