"Don Buchanan (trail name: Don Viejo), then 85, spent a night on a ledge in California’s San Gabriel Mountains on January 25, 2014.
by Don Buchanan, as told to Amanda Hermans "
http://www.backpacker.com/skills/strand ... t-of-time/
".....Instead of hiking 8.7 miles and 2,800 vertical feet to the summit via the PCT, as I’d done every other time, I would go up the backside of the mountain using an old, mostly forgotten trail that I found while scouring maps of the area.....From the Vincent Gap trailhead, I turned left instead of the usual right to hike the 2 miles to the ruins of Big Horn Mine....
In the underbrush beyond the mine, I found the trail I was looking for. The path was only about a foot wide, but the going was easy. After 5 miles[AW: .5 miles?] of cruising, I passed a couple of hikers who had turned around because they were worried about increasingly steep drop-offs. I paid no mind; a little exposure doesn’t bother me. The biggest dangers I had seen were the overgrown patches of Spanish bayonet bushes, a cactus with long and knife-sharp fronds.....
In the early afternoon, I came to a right turn where the trail narrowed and traversed a rock face. A 200-foot drop rested just beyond my left shoe, and, in the middle of the trail, stood a spiky, 3-by-3-foot Spanish bayonet, itself partially hanging over the void. To my right, an old rope hung from a metal piton, presumably to aid hikers through the exposed part...But then only a quarter-mile later, the path disappeared completely and I was still miles away from the top....
The scramble quickly proved harder than I expected. The terrain was loose. I had to pull myself up by grabbing onto bushes. Climbing like this demanded all my focus; I must have been at it for four hours. Finally, I gained a ridge—the first flat ground I’d seen in a while. I expected to see the summit, but I was still 1,000 feet below it, with another valley in between. I was completely exhausted, full of cactus wounds, and dusk was settling in. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized how badly I had miscalculated....
I surveyed my ridge. It was narrow and below was the incline that I had just climbed up. There was no way around it; I would have to wait here for rescue. I took a seat on a triangular rock that was about 2 feet wide and started a vigil that would last all night, at least....."
Via Internet: Stranded on Baden-Powell Jan 2014
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