May 30, 2006
In April, 2005, John Donovan set out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Owing to the huge amount of snow that year, friends who had planned to hike with him urged to to postpone the trip by a few weeks, but he was intent on attending the annual PCT kickoff party at the Mexican border, so ended up hiking solo. On May 3rd he picked up a cache of food near Anza, intending to pick up his next cache on the other side of the San Jacinto Mountains near Cabazon.
On May 26th, RMRU was called out to begin searching for John. The details of the RMRU search can be found here. Despite a huge amount of searching, the team was unable to locate him.
One year later, RMRU was running a search for Gina Allen and Brandon Day, two day-hikers who got lost at the top of the Palm Springs Tram. After days of being stranded in the wilderness, they were spotted by an RMRU field team and airlifted to safety. Almost unbelievably, they had stumbled on the final camp of John Donovan. Reading the journal he wrote in his final days, they realized that he had been stranded there almost a year to the day before they were.
RMRU worked with Riverside Sheriff’s Office to organize a search near the lost camp for Donovan’s remains. The location is extremely difficult to get to. The mountains behind Palm Springs shoot up precipitously, going from about 500 feet to over 8,500 feet elevation at the top of the tram. Within this steep rise are buried canyons that are very steep, vegetation-choked, with numerous dry falls that are only negotiable with ropes. Donovan’s last camp was in one of the worst of these.
After much planning and several delays, the operation finally began on June 4, 2006. Glenn Henderson, William Carlson, Jim Manues, and I were flown one at a time to an landing zone about 1/4 mile above the camp. The LZ had been hacked out on a steep slope by Glenn, working so furiously that he actually bloodied his hands on the brush hook. It was a one-skid LZ and it was so warm there that the helicopter could only land one of us at a time.
I’ll keep the description of the camp minimal out of respect for friends and family of John, but it was a real beast just getting there. We had to hack our way through thick brush and there was no sure footing anywhere. Finally at the campsite, we started looking around and within about 15 minutes Jim had found what we had come for. After some logistical negotiations with the flight crew, Johns remains were recovered and flown back to the Command Post.
Since Glenn and I were the slower of the four, Glenn though he and I should head back to the LZ first while Jim and William collected the gear at the recovery site. Glenn decided we would tack a “shortcut” that ended up having us doing Class 4 scrambling and heading up side canyons that were dead ends. By the time we got to the LZ Jim and William had already got there and been airlifted out. Nice call, Glenn!
Due to the heat and exertion of moving through the incredibly difficult terrain, we were all exhausted. It was one of the most strenuous rescues I ever participated in. We were pleased, however, to have been able to bring closure to John’s friends and family.
