After an intense night-long search, rescuers have found a father and daughter who went missing while hiking in the mountains above La Crescenta.
Dan Callan, 56, and his daughter, Jenny, said they couldn’t be more grateful to rescuers. The pair were found about 5 a.m. Monday in Arroyo Seco just below Bear Canyon.
“I was in shorts and a shirt and a sweatshirt and I was freezing,” recalls Jenny, 14.
She says what was supposed to be a fun Memorial Day weekend hike took a frightening turn when they found their normal trail closed, ventured onto another path and got hung up in debris from the Station Fire well past dark.
“We couldn’t see anything and we were just tripping over rocks left and right,” Jenny told Kara Finnstrom, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9.
Dan says the pair was never lost but felt it was safest to hunker down until daylight.
But when Jenny’s cell phone couldn’t get a signal, the worried wife and mom who dropped them off at one end of the trail and never saw them show up at the other, called for help.
“A helicopter came over about 2:30 in the morning and had its spot beam right on us. And we waved and we waved and we waved but it just went right by,” Dan said.
Rescuers say that while the Callans were prepared with food and water, a flashlight would have allowed them to signal that helicopter.
“The thing I regretted the most was not having a space blanket. They’re light. They’re cheap,” Dan said.
The pair said they’ll take the lessons they learned from this experience with them when they hike in the High Sierra this summer.
other info:
The pair slept on a sandbar and “shivered all night,” equipped only with his daughter’s sweatshirt, Callan said.
“She’s a real trooper,” he said of his teenage daughter.
Callan and his daughter planned the trek from the Switzer campground to east of JPL along the popular Gabrielino trail.
The pair set off on a hike just before noon on Sunday.
They were supposed to meet another group of hikers around 5 p.m., but they never showed up.
