Incidents:Lost hiker in Rubio
| Lost hiker in Rubio | |
|---|---|
| Date | 2013-3-18 |
| Location | Rubio Canyon |
| Severity | Injury |
| Canyoneering-related | Yes |
| SAR involvement | No |
| Navigation problem | Yes |
| Environmental problem | No |
| Communication problem | No |
| Planning problem | No |
| Skills problem | No |
| Body movement problem | No |
| Rigging problem | No |
| Rappel problem | Yes |
| Insufficient gear | Yes |
| Gear failure | No |
Summary[edit]
A canyoneering group rescued a hiker who had wandered into the canyon but did not have the equipment to descend. Also, one group member rappelled off the end of a rope.
Accounts[edit]
Sonny Lawrence:
This was a much different day of canyoneering. Calius Lawrence stayed home to practice piano and finish income taxes (neither of which I do very well). So Mark Binder, Jeff Lehman, John Metzger (members of the Cave and Technical Rescue Team) and Andrew from UC Riverside and I decided to do the short cut route in Rubio canyon, San Gabriel mountains, SoCal. We were 2 minutes from the car at the exit. I looked at the registry (which I never do). I read yesterday's entry from a person who sounded suicidal. So I used my phone to copy it and emailed the note to a friend on a local rescue team. He activated the Altadena SAR team. Of we went into the canyon, not knowing what we would discover. I missed the short cut by a couple hundred feet. No problem, it just put us higher in the canyon than we originally planned. After all, we love bush wacking! We started the canyon descend and came to the first waterfall. It was already set with a short rope, about 5 feet off the deck. I went first and was trying to stay dry. I screamed off the end of the rope and landed on my back. Instant pain! Lovely. Some day I will grow up. Friends gladly unloaded my pack and off we went. Around the bend we discovered a woman, Ariana, standing there with jeans, shirt, water bottle and cell phone. She had no technical gear. She had climbed Echo mountain and got lost on her way down. She found her way into the bottom of a deep canyon. She was in for an adventure! We asked how she tolerated heights as we supplied her with necessary technical gear for the upcoming 6 rappels. She has a vague answer. However she did well considering she had never performed such feats before. We met up with the Altadena SAR team at the last rappel and walked out uneventfully. Unfortunately nothing was discovered about the possibly suicidal individual. If we had found the proper short cut route, we would have been below Ariana. She would have been spending an uncomfortable night in a deep canyon.
