Montrose Search and Rescue – Busy Thanksgiving Weekend

The pressure on the Montrose Search and Rescue team increases on holiday weekends. This account of two rescues on Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend in 1986 shows how this brave rescue team often sacrifices its holidays to save lives.
At the same moment that particular Sunday, two different groups had joined the hundreds of LA residents enjoying perfect weather in the mountains. One of them was a young family with a baby out for a pleasant drive through the gorgeous San Gabriel Mountains, while the other was a group of novice hikers with ambitious plans mixed with poor preparation. In both cases the MSR would save lives.
Two MSR members on patrol that day were parked at Clear Creek Vista when a car screeched up. The young couple inside screamed that their baby had stopped breathing. The officers checked the 9-month-old boy who the parents said had inexplicably stopped breathing just two minutes earlier. One of the two MSR members later said, “I don’t know why he wasn’t breathing, but he was blue. I tilted his neck and checked to see if anything was lodged in there, and then I administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The color started to return. We were worried. It was critical for the baby because he hadn’t been breathing for two minutes. After six minutes, you start to get brain damage, and we were 15 minutes from help.”
They transferred the child to the rescue truck and took off down Angeles Crest Highway at a high rate of speed while performing CPR. In less than a minute the baby started breathing again, crying in fact, and they met an ambulance at the base of the hill for the trip to Verdugo Hills Hospital. In the craziness of the rescue, they never even got the parent’s names, although they did get tearful thank yous from the young couple. The MSR team member said, “We’ve handled a lot of car and motorcycle accidents, but we never handled a baby who was not breathing. We were really happy he was alright.”
While this was happening, a group of four inexperienced hikers was climbing the trail to the top of Strawberry Peak. They had parked a car at Red Box where they had started and another at Colby Canyon where they planned to come out. However, as they reached the top of Strawberry Peak, the trail began to peter out and they were unsure of where to go. There they met other hikers who inadvertently sent them in the wrong direction. After a while, they realized they were not headed toward Colby Canyon, so they backtracked, but became disoriented. Night began to fall. They were dressed for a typical perfect fall day in LA – shorts, T-shirts and tennis shoes – so as darkness crept in, they began to get very cold. The wind picked up and the temperatures dropped into the 30s. The group had no food and no warm clothes. The hikers wisely decided to stop wandering. They huddled together, shivering.
In the meantime, worried relatives called them in as missing. The MSR swung into action at 11 p.m. Ten team members were called out, including the two who had just saved the baby. They broke into five two-man teams and began to walk the major trails in the vicinity where the hikers were to have gone. But after an all-night search they found no trace of the lost group. At first light, a rescue helicopter joined the team, scouring the dense brush. At 8:30 Monday morning, the four hikers were spotted on a ridgeline, probably trying to warm up in the morning sunshine. The rescue helicopter picked them up with their cable winch, while the search teams were called in. The grateful, but cold and hungry, hikers were airlifted to Red Box, where paramedics were waiting. They were exhausted but otherwise unharmed and were released with parting advice from the MSR.
“I gave them a lecture on mountain safety and the need to be prepared because of the weather. They seemed to understand,” said one MSR member with a smile. “It was very thrilling to find them alive.”

Mike Lawler is the former
president of the Historical Society
of the Crescenta Valley and loves local history. Reach him at
lawlerdad@yahoo.com.