OES Mt. Baldy Search

Written by Glenn Henderson

On April 8 the team was activated to help with an out of county search for 2 missing hikers on Mt. Baldy. They had been reported missing on Saturday night April 6. RMRU responded with 3, Dana Potts, James Eckhart and Daniel Tran on Tuesday morning April 9. They arrived at the IC (incident command) at 7 am and were sent 3.6 miles up Icehouse Canyon to the saddle to run relay. They spent the entire day in cold and wind passing information to the IC from teams all over the mountain. At the end of the day they returned to IC at 7 PM without any sign of the missing hikers.

West Valley Team Members Hiking up Trail to come down Cutes
Photo by Glenn Henderson.

Another call was sent to neighboring teams for another 7 AM start on Wednesday April 10. I was the only one that could respond and was teamed up with 3 members of the West Valley team. Our assignment was to hike up Ice House canyon almost to the saddle and then climb up the many ice chutes on the north side of the ridge. This required crampons and ice axes to complete.

Search Area Ice Chutes
Photo by Glenn Henderson.

The terrain was steep and extremely icy. There was no room for falling. We climbed up the first chute and then across the ridge between chutes and then down the next chute and then up the next one. We did not find any sign and started hiking back to the trail and out to the trail head.

Glenn with Crampons and Ice Axe
Photo by West Valley Member.

Just as we got to the parking lot at 6:30 we heard the call that the couple had been found alive and well. Great news as after 5 days hope was waning that there would be a good outcome to this search. A team from Sierra Madre was descending Cucamonga Canyon and had found two sets of tracks. They followed them down and called for a helicopter. The helicopter found them trapped in the canyon and hoisted them out and back to IC.

A truly great day!!!

RMRU Members Involved: James Eckhardt, Glenn Henderson, Dona Potts, and Daniel Tran.