Pair Are Rescued With Aid of Lost Hiker
Published: May 11, 2006
Two people who were lost for three nights in the San Jacinto Mountains were rescued after they stumbled across the campsite of a long-lost hiker and used his matches to start a signal fire.
Brandon Day, 28, and Gina Allen, 24, of Dallas said they found a backpack of supplies in the deserted campsite of John Donovan, a little more than a year after he vanished.
Donovan’s matches “gave us the means to get out,” Allen said in a telephone interview Wednesday, a day after the couple were rescued.
Day and Allen were visiting the desert east of Los Angeles for a financial convention. They got lost Saturday after wandering from a trail during a two-hour stop with other tourists who took the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.
They wore light windbreakers and tennis shoes and had no food, spare clothing or cellphones. Though during their ordeal they were cold, hungry and sleepless, they kept going, with “the mantra from night one: ‘We’re going to get out of here. We’re not going to die,’ ” Day said.
Monday, they said, they discovered a campsite in a dead-end gorge. They found a foam sleeping mat, a poncho, a backpack, disposable razor, spoon and tennis shoes but later realized the place was deserted.
They found identification showing the camper was Donovan and learned later the retired social worker from Virginia and experienced hiker had been trekking the Pacific Crest Trail before vanishing May 2, 2005, in icy weather.
They found salvation in his backpack — a warm sweater for Allen and dry socks for Day — and the matches.
They eventually came to a large culvert choked with dried-out vines and other foliage and set it on fire. “The whole acre or two caught fire, created a really big smoke signal” that alerted a helicopter crew, Day said.
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