Posted on 05/19/2023 2:13:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The hikers, who were lost on a Southern California trail for about three hours Friday night before they were rescued, lacked proper hiking clothing, water and lighting equipment, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy said. \ Ten teenage hikers who spent their Friday night lost on the trails of a Southern California canyon before a search and rescue team found them with the help of an iPhone feature "were not prepared" for their climb, officials said.
Members of the group — who are all 16 to 18 years old — spent about three hours Friday stuck on the trails of Santa Paula Canyon, in Los Padres National Forest, without proper hiking clothing, water and lighting equipment before they were rescued, Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Mackenzie Spears said in a text message.
"Most had t-shirts and shorts," Spears said. She added that temperatures were in the 60s and that "there were multiple water crossings and they needed to scramble" in certain sections of the hike, or climb steep terrain by hand.
Spears said in a news release that "most of the hikers were not prepared" and that the search and rescue team supplied them with food, water and equipment to light the trail on their way back.
The teens reached out to the sheriff's office around 8 p.m. Friday when they found themselves lost on the trails, the news release said.
The group made contact with emergency officials using Apple's emergency SOS feature, which allows iPhone users to call or text local emergency services, sometimes even without cell service or Wi-Fi access. The feature allowed them to share their possible location and conditions with emergency personnel, said the sheriff's office, which added that the teens' parents also reported them missing.
More than a dozen members of the Upper Ojai Search and Rescue team, a group of local volunteers, headed out to look for the hikers within 30 minutes of having received their plea for help, the sheriff's office said.
After an approximately three-hour, 4-mile hike into the canyon that included "low visibility, multiple stream crossings and trails that had been previously damaged from the heavy rains," the rescue team found the missing teens on the so-called Last Chance trail around 11:15 p.m., the sheriff's office said.
NYC hospital employee seen in viral video appearing to take bike from young Black men has receipts showing she rented it, lawyer says The hikers and the search and rescue team returned to the Santa Paula Canyon Trailhead around 2:40 a.m. Saturday, it said.
The search and rescue team tweeted that the teens were the "biggest group we've rescued in a while." None required medical aid, the sheriff's office said.
The search and rescue team recommends that hikers and campers always take essentials, including navigation, light sources, first aid supplies, food, water and a smartphone. It also recommends that hikers fill out hiking plans detailing where they plan to travel and what equipment they plan to take with them and leave them with someone not accompanying them in case of emergencies.
Over half of the 990 deaths in national parks from 2014 to 2016 — the most recent years for which data is available — were due to unintentional causes, according to the National Park Service. Drowning, motor vehicle crashes and falls were the leading causes of those deaths, it said.
WHATTTT!!!!!!?????
HA!!!
People tend to underestimate their ability to get lost when they go off trail. It’s surprising how easy it is to lose a trail even when you’ve gone just thirty feet off of it.
It happened to me in Jasper. I was on my way back to my car and I could see the trail across a relatively small patch of wilderness that I thought I could save some time by heading straight towards it. I lost the trail that I was heading toward and I lost the trail I had left. My compass app on my cellphone saved me that day, even though my phone died after 15 minutes after that.
I learned to carry a power bank with enough charge to recharge a phone completely.
Ten or more teenagers, from 16 to 18 y/o, and they weren’t better prepared? Some California Natives!
Either they are children of Limosine Liberals or they spent the first half of the hike smoking, jokin and tokin. Not paying attention to their direction or landmarks.
There are no Lions down there except for Mountain Lions.
There are no Tigers, but we do have different kinds of Bears in many of the backwoods.
ChatGPT
‘Either they are children of Limosine Liberals or they spent the first half of the hike smoking, jokin and tokin’
Probably both.
The hills can eat you up. Salt Lake County has a full time tech team to fetch lost souls from the canyons.
It’s good that they were found safe, and didn’t run into a hungry cat.
“...who were lost on a Southern California trail for about three hours Friday night before they were rescued.”
Lost for three hours. Pikers.
Rescued by an app!
Maybe I'm just a pompous jerk but... I grew up on a farm with hundreds of acres of land to play in, as kids can get away with trespassing on the adjoining spreads. I regularly hiked and camped with the Boy Scouts through all weather and seasons, with the pièce de résistance of my outdoor life being a week portaging our canoes between lakes in the Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada with my brother, only a couple of weeks after high school graduation, our last activity with our Explorer Scout Post.
How can anybody live without recognizing Poison Ivy at a glance?
Guess they learned something useful.
I do not know what that means.....Frankly do not give a flying piece of pizza!!! LOL!!
The iPhone “Find My Teenager” feature saves the day again.
they might have run into Julian Sands, missing since 1/13.
“””I learned to carry a power bank with enough charge to recharge a phone completely.”””
A little shirt pocket power bank and a cell phone when lost in the woods sure make for a lot of good, it would take a good writer to even get close to how useful that combo is.
"I was never lost. But I was once confused for three days."
-- Daniel Boone
IF ONLY they made a compass that wasn’t powered by batteries or a phone.
LOL.
Daddy always said “You gotta be tough, to be dumb.”
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