Montrose Search and Rescue – Kid’s Hike to Mt. Lukens Turns Deadly, Part 2

Last week I recounted how in 1972 a group of five neighborhood kids, ranging from 15-year-old Barbara to 11-year-old Timmy, took a day hike to Mt. Lukens to visit the snow that had just fallen. They got too cold, started down the wrong trail, and began to suffer from exposure. They sent one member of the group, Danny, on ahead to bring back help. The youngest of the group, Timmy, froze to death just after sundown, and the remaining three staggered on in the dark without him. They were being knocked down by the wind gusts. Barbara accidently dropped a canteen over the side of the mountain just before they too collapsed.

Danny hiked the four or five miles through the dark in the cold screaming wind, and came out on Haines Canyon Boulevard. He hitched a ride back home from a resident. At 9 p.m. he burst into his house where the worried parents of the group of kids had gathered.

“They’re stuck, you’ve got to help them,” he stammered from frozen lips. The Montrose Search and Rescue Team was called out to find the four kids.

The team had just spent the entire previous night searching the cold mountains above Altadena for some kids who had, unknown to their parents, merely spent the night at a friend’s house. They were bone tired. But the team responded, as they always do. They stopped first at the house where Danny was, interviewed him, then put him in the rescue truck. Under Danny’s directions they drove up the Haines Canyon fire road. When the team picked up Danny’s footprints in the snow, they took the exhausted boy back home while the team continued on foot.

The icy cold wind was screaming. The strongest gusts were actually knocking the team members to their knees. They tracked Danny’s trail for several miles, then spotted tracks seeming to go over the side. (This was where Barbara had dropped the canteen over the edge.) Team member Dan Hensley stepped to the edge of the road overlooking the valley to radio this info in. He was startled when he heard what sounded like a single bark of a dog, distinct over the howling wind. He spun around, playing his flashlight over the snow. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw what appeared to be three tree stumps sticking up out of the snow. But when Hensley shown his light on them, he saw that it was the kids. They were flocked white with snow, completely still and silent, and staring straight at him. The sight scared the hell out of Hensley as they looked dead.

He rushed to them and found they were alive, although barely. As he and the other team members wrapped them in blankets, Hensley made a quick medical assessment. They were all barely coherent, somewhat delirious. But the oldest girl Barbara’s feet were in very bad shape. She had lost her shoes walking in the snow, and was now barefoot. Her feet were black and hard. Hensley sat facing her and put her feet against his bare stomach while he tried to massage them. They were like two cold blocks of steel against his skin. At 3 a.m. they carried the kids down the mountain, while other team members went 300 yards farther up and retrieved Timmy’s body.

The two younger boys were treated for hypothermia and released, but Barbara’s feet were in danger of amputation. After several weeks in the hospital Barbara was released, feet intact. The doctors attributed this to Hensley’s quick action on massaging her feet. Interestingly, she later went on to become a nurse.

The community mourned Timmy’s death, and the Montrose Search and Rescue Team spent time talking to kids at Valley View Elementary, where Timmy had been a student. And in a Hollywood-style ending, Barbara’s older sister Sue was so grateful for her sister’s rescue that she joined the MSAR team herself. She served with them for many, many years, giving back to the team that had saved her sister’s life.