Hoist Rescue
October 30, 2021
San Jacinto Peak, CA.
2021-034
Written by Glenn Henderson
The team received a call from Sargent Abbe that Rescue 9 was requesting 1 RMRU member to do a hoist rescue. I got the call from call captain, Gwenda Yates and rolled out to the Hemet Ryan hanger. A hiker had set off personal location beacon (PLB).
It seems that he had hurt his knee while hiking up to San Jacinto peak. We flew to the PLB location and ….. nothing. No one was there. We were looking for a man and woman so we started looking around the PLB area and found a man and a woman hiking down the trail.
They were desperately waving to us so I was hooked up to the hoist and lowered down to them. They were not the subjects we were looking for but were totally lost. They went to the summit of San Jacinto but went down the east side and should have been on the west side. They were getting ready to call 911 when we showed up. I asked them if they wanted out and they did.
I hooked them up and we hoisted them both up. We flew to the Palm Springs tram where a deputy drove them back to their car. Meanwhile we got word that our hiker with the “hurt” knee had hiked to the tram. A miraculous recovery.
If you set off a PLB STAY PUT! We flew back to the hangar without other incidents.
RMRU Team Members Involved:
Glenn Henderson