Continuing search for 19-year-old Evgeniy "Eugene" Lushevskiy

November 14th, 2004
Mount Blady
2004-029

by Glenn Henderson

We were requested to help with a continued search for a missing 19-year-old on Mt. Baldy. The request was for snow and ice qualified personnel so only Dave Webb, my son, Travis and myself were able to respond. We arrived at the command post at 0700 and waited for our assignment. It soon arrived and was a good assignment. We were to be flown to the top of Mt. Baldy and were to search 100' on either side of the Devil's Backbone trail down to the Mt. Baldy ski area. Unfortunately the weather dictated otherwise. It was extremely windy with a cold Santa Ana blowing in from the east and white out conditions on top. After waiting for an hour for the weather to clear we asked to be driven up to the ski area and hike up the trail to do our assignment. Our request was granted and we were driven up as close as possible to the trailhead.

When we got out the wind wasn't too bad until we got up to the trail. The trail follows a ridge from the ski area to the summit. The wind was blasting over the top of the ridge to where we could not safely complete our assignment on the east side of the trail. We searched the trail extensively on the west side and used binoculars to look down the chutes on the east side. When we got near the summit, command requested that we cross country down the Baldy Bowl area to the ski hut and then out to be picked up.

There has been no sign of Eugene and another search scheduled for the next weekend was called off due to more bad weather.