EISPIRATEN

This was posted on ODC by Tim Bui:

Hi Everyone,

I received this email about Robert Hagner:

****URGENT****San Bernardino Co Sheriffs Department is currently 11/1/08 searching for one of your club members Robert Hagner (Rob) who was reported over due by his wife. His hike was to include the Ice House Canyon, and Sugarloaf areas of Mt Baldy.

If any members who know Mr. Hagnar or were involved with this hike please respond to this message. call 909-985-9736

He and his partner have been found and rescued:

http://cbs2.com/local/climbers.rescued. ... 54728.html

Rob has hiked with me from time to time. He's apparently done a lot of hiking, done C2C, etc... don't know what happened here, I'm just hoping he didn't attempt going up or down FRC after our group did it a few weeks ago...

I emailed the female hiker and got some details on what happened.

Basically the story is that they went up FRC, encountered fog at some point, decided to go down, and mistakenly went down Sheep Canyon instead. Eventually they reached an impassable cliff above IHC (probably the Sheep Canyon Headwall) and they were forced to spend the night there.

Before the hike she said they checked the weather at the Visitor Center and the rangers told them it wouldn't rain until the evening. It seems like they continued with the hike partly because of this information that bad weather was not due until later.

Rob was leading since he was familiar with the peaks in that area. She believes he has gone up this way before, although she has not. She doesn't know exactly how far up they went because of the low visibility. They made it up to some unknown peak and the weather started to move in. They could have gone higher but she asked Rob to go down towards some trees because of the worsening weather. They spotted a canyon and went down that, which turned out to be Sheep Canyon. When they got to the cliff, they were stuck. They did not know that you could contour west to Fir Draw and go down that to IHC but even if they did, they would not have been able to navigate in the fog. She said they did not have a compass, GPS or altimeter. She said it was cold that night, but it wasn't that bad because they had already descended quite a bit. They had an emergency blanket. The cliff overlooks the IHC trail so they were able to shout down to people below.

Some thoughts:

It's easy to mistake Sheep Canyon for FRC if you're near Ontario. It happened to Christopher Brennen. So I can see how they got lost, especially in the fog. But going down an unknown canyon is also risky because you might get cliffed out, as they found out.

Their biggest mistake was probably depending only on visual navigation on a cross-country route on a day with marginal weather and increasingly bad weather. The other mistake was hiking during a small weather window, which means your margin of error is almost zero.

Other people have made these mistakes before (especially the small weather window) so I'm not trying to pick on them. But it's good to learn from these mistakes so you won't be next.

Good analysis Tim; thanks.

Yeah, Sheep Canyon Headwall is big. 8) 8) 8)

BTW, heading EAST a couple of "canyons" (draws, maybe), there are very easy scree slopes to get off the mountain. I think it's the second or third one. Terrain looks easy from up there, and continues DIRECTLY DOWN to the big boulder and the wilderness boundary sign in Icehouse. Lotsa buckhorn/thorn growing just off the trail.

As far as what a ranger says about what weather conditions are going to be....well...I say take it with at least a second thought....just saying...I know they can be incorrect as the one time I depended on a rangers advice at Yellowstone, they missed it completey..couldnt have been more wrong(dangerously so)...so I know they arent right 100% of the time.

I think they may have been able to escape Sheep canyon but it appears there was a real short time leash to call in a rescue...the Fir Draw drainage is nearby but not recommended for a person who finds themselves in that predicament...but I assume they would have been able to regain the Ontario Pk trail that day.....I applaud them for being calm enough to get through it together in a way that didnt endanger anyone further.....

Listening to rangers? ha! They once told me that Heaton Flats was flooded and of course I got there and there was nothing.