Missing Snowboarders in Coldwater Canyon (1/24/2010)

 At about 10:00pm on 1/24/10, I was driving to Redlands to stay at Sonny Lawrence's house, anticipating teaching BMC on Saturday.  A callout came over the phone, and I responded to Baldy Fire Station to search for the missing 3 snowboarders.  By the time I arrived, teams were already in the field and it was determined that the three teenagers had dropped into a drainage that funneled into Lytle Creek.  Bob Gattas of West Valley declared that the command post was moving to Fire Station #2 inLytle Creek, we packed up, and headed out. 

View Snowboarders Jan 2010 in a larger map

After regrouping, I was put on a team with John Metzger, John Norman, Dave Bullock, Trevor Walton, and Rico Gallardo.  We drove up the snow covered 4x4 road as far as we could go without chains.  Our assignment was to reach a drainage just over from Cold Water Canyon, where the snowboarders presumably came down.  The team started out on snow shoes at 2:30am from the truck.  We were on and off a 4x4 road for a while, crossed the creek, and eventually ended up on a ridge just above the drainage.  It was steep angle snow shoe traverses and crotch deep snow at times in 18 degree F weather.  The team did well, and we didn't take any real breaks because it was cold if you weren't moving.  Radio commuications were hard at times in our area.  The sun came up and we reached Cold Water Camp about 7:00am.   Then we headed towards the drainage, and sure enough we found snowboard tracks (3 sets), so the trail was hot.  

We were excited, running down the tracked out trail, and had voice contact within 10 min.  We found the 3 snowboarders and checked their conditions.  They were cold, cold feet, wet clothes, and hungry, but doing very well for folks stuck out all night in cold weather.  We changed their socks, got them some hot chocolate, gave them dry jackets and gloves, and they were instantly doing better.  They had built a survival shelter out of fallen tree limbs and insulated the floor with pine needles and such.  They were trying to start a fire when we found them.  We decided to hike them out since getting them moving would keep them warm.  The hike out was a little over 4 miles, but the 3 of them were creative and sat on their boards and sort of scooted down the trail so that they didn't sink in the snow.  We found the transport waiting for us back at the road and all was well.