Two men, 64 & 74, on rugged hike
By John Dew
At about one
o'clock in the afternoon the pagers came to life
informing us of a search in the Palm Springs
area.
Three brothers
were visiting each other and two of them had
decided to ride the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
to the high country, stay a day or two and
return. There were two circumstances which made
this excursion unusual. One - They were going to
return by hiking down Andreas Canyon, one of the
most rugged canyons on the mountain, and ... Two
- These two brothers were 74 and 64 years old.
Either of
these items could prove a problem, but to put the
two of them together looked like a sure bet.
One more item
was thrown in to compound the problem. It was
raining and very cold on top of the mountain.
The team
members arrived at the Banning Sheriff's Station
soon after the call Assignments were made and
those making up the various teams went out into
the rain to get their gear together. Soon they
were ready and started to their search area.
One team was
sent to the top of the Tram to make their way to
the top of Andreas Canyon via the regular trail.
Another team was to start up Andreas from the
bottom, while still another was to search from
the bottom into Tahquitz Canyon.
After they
were deployed word came to us that a light signal
had been seen on the side of the mountain the
evening before by someone in Palm Springs and the
Palm Springs Mounted Police had been working on
that since the spotting.
Wondering why
we had not been alerted earlier, possibly when
the signal was seen, was uppermost in our minds
and when the Sheriff's Office was asked about it
they informed us that RMRU had been called just
as soon as they had heard. They had heard nothing
of the signal sighting the night before.
As base was
being moved to Palm Springs, after our search
teams were well on the way to their destination,
a helicopter was seen flying toward Palm Springs
by those running base.
The helicopter
went to a location at the base of the mountain,
made three or four trips up into the hills and
out and was not seen again that afternoon.
RMRU was
informed soon after that that one of the brothers
had hiked out into Palm Springs and given the
general location of his brother to the helicopter
pilot. He was then flown out.
It was a happy
ending to what could have been a tragic episode
simply because the professionals were not called
in time.
|