Re-search for 14-year-old
By Pete Carlson
On Thursday
RMRU received a call from the Sierra Madre Search
and Rescue Team, again asking if RMRU could send
any members, in a last ditch effort to locate a
14 year old girl missing for a week. Four members
were able to respond. Mary Bowman, J.R. Muratet,
Joe Erickson and myself drove into the Van Nuys
Airport and met 25 other MRA (Mountain Rescue
Association) members. We were flown on a Air
National Guard C-130 to Bishop, and then on a
three hour bus ride to Lake Tenaya.
Mary stayed
with the Sierra Madre base truck and the rest of
us hiked 5 miles into advanced base at Sunrise
Camp. The National Park Service had been
searching for the first 5 days along with some
MRA personnel. They had one an excellent job and
turned up not one clue. The MRA had volunteered
to come up on the weekend and do sweep searches
in the prime areas. We did our searching on
Saturday afternoon and evening and again on
Sunday. We also had no luck and did not find any
clues.
We hiked back
to our bus at about 3:00 pm Sunday afternoon and
then took the bus down to Bishop. We were 3 hours
later then we had said, and our airplane had
left. So we went to dinner and then to sleep at
the airport where another plane was coming in at
6:00 am. It was right on time and we arrived back
in LA about 8:30.
We do not like
to end a search without finding a subject but
sometimes it happens. The weather had been
excellent for a week, there was lots of water in
the area, and if someone was up and moving around
they should have been found. I would like to
thank the Air National Guard for flying us up to
Bishop and back. Also the National Park Service
for doing an excellent job in running the search.
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