Montrose Search and Rescue – Injured Man Found Via Cellphone App and Facebook

Continuing with the “cellphone rescues” theme I’ve been writing about lately, we get another good story from the Montrose Search and Rescue’s technical expert Steve Goldsworthy. Steve in my last column related that today, Montrose Search and Rescue uses every available technology to find lost hikers. Here’s Steve to tell the story of using Facebook and a fitness tracking software to find an injured bicyclist.  

“On June 17, 2011, around 3 p.m., two friends left for a quick mountain bike ride, figuring it would only take a little over two hours to complete. Around 9 p.m., a short 9-1-1 cellphone call was received at the Crescenta Valley Sheriff Station.

‘My friend fell; he hit his head; I don’t know where we are, but we are near a waterfall and my battery is dying …’ Click. The phone was, in fact, now dead.

“The Montrose SAR team responded, but with very little to go on – not even a place to start looking. The Angeles National Forest is a big place – over 1,000 square miles – with a lot of waterfalls, even in June. All we had was the cellphone number he had used to call us on.

“After a few required documents [were exchanged] between us and the cell company, we had his name and address – [and knew he was] a resident of Rosemead. Rosemead PD did a door knock, and the girlfriend, now very concerned about her almost eight-hour-overdue boyfriend, answered. We learned that the biker had used an ‘app’ on his cellphone that allowed others to ‘see’ his ride map. The app was called EndoMondo, and it was tied into his Facebook account. A quick log into Facebook, and we soon found his ride map, but there were not any latitudes or longitudes listed – just a squiggly line of the trail that he had been riding, and for how long. One of our team members recognized those squiggles as the trail over to Ladybug Canyon, then down the Gabrielino trail into Switzer and the Arroyo Seco.

“By matching that squiggly line up against a Google Earth picture on our monitor, we were able to identify the exact location where his cellphone stopped updating his ride map, which matched the same time that the 9-1-1 call was placed. Now we had his exact coordinates at the time of his call. It wasn’t long before rescue team members reached him and his riding partner, who indeed had suffered a head injury. Due to heavy fog, a rescue helicopter could not make it to the scene, so the team stayed with them until morning, when they were successfully airlifted out. And the nearby waterfall? That turned out to be the Paul Little debris check dam.”

That’s an amazing piece of detective work on the MSAR’s part!

Steve has some basic cellphone advice for hikers to follow when headed off to the wilderness:

~ Turn off your cell or place it in airplane mode when in the mountains to help conserve your battery. Turning off apps, Wi-Fi and GPS can also extend battery life.

~ If you encounter an emergency, call 9-1-1. Even if it does not appear that you have a signal, make an attempt and let it try to connect for at least 20 seconds. Then move four or five feet and try it again. If your carrier is not available but another competing compatible carrier tower is, the phone will connect an emergency 9-1-1 call via the competing carrier.

~ If calls don’t work, try sending a text to someone you trust telling them where you are and what’s wrong, and ask them to call 9-1-1 for you. Text messages are small packets of data, and you only have to connect to a cell tower for a second or two for them to transmit.

~ Remember, always have a hiking plan, tell someone your plan, and write it down. We have a sample you can use at http://file.lacounty.gov/lasd/cms1_163961.pdf, or just search for “LASD hiking plan.” [Editor’s note: The hiking plan is also available for download on the CV Weekly website.]

Follow these pieces of advice, and just maybe you won’t end up in one of my future columns.

  mike lawler