Outdoors: Reuniting after mountain rescue over 50 years ago

Ah, to be young and invincible.

That’s how I felt a half-century ago as I bounded out of the small helicopter in the middle of a remote wilderness with only a smoke grenade to signal my location when the craft returned to hopefully pick me up.

This was the start of an adventure that would not end for decades.

It was a chilly January day and only a few hours before sunset, but I was focused on getting to the stranded hiker we had spotted waving from a boulder in the rugged wilderness of the San Ysidro Mountains, northeast of Warner Springs.

I was riding as an observer in an aging Bell 47G, better known as a two-seat Korean War MASH helicopter, the first in the San Diego County Sheriff’s ASTREA program.

I was there because I was a Sheriff’s Reserve Deputy, Search and Rescue team volunteer and an avid outdoorsman who happened to be familiar with this vacant terrain where rugged mountains break off into desert.

My day job was as a reporter for the San Diego Evening Tribune.

A blizzard had stranded Lou Shrinkle for six days after he had hiked into the wilderness seeking a dark sky view of comet Kohoutek.

Our lives would soon connect, but we would not meet.

A powerful storm had dumped waist-deep snow trapping the 21-year-old in the wilderness and preventing effective aerial or even ground searching.

This was the first day clear enough to launch an all-out search effort, and a base was established in Coyote Canyon north of Borrego Springs with hopes that the missing hiker might be trying to hike down into the desert where there was also snow, but far less.

Ground teams, airplanes and the helicopter had no luck in the morning, and since I had hiked through this area and was aware of the limited routes due to enormous boulders, walls of brush and deep ravines, I offered to go up in the helicopter as an observer to help focus the search effort.

Sign spotted

The 5,000-foot mountains were still blanketed with deep snow as we skimmed along at a low level when we spotted “help” stamped in the snow next to a tent.

Hovering down near the sign, we saw no sign of activity and our hearts dropped.

Getting closer, we saw footprints leading away and followed them until finding Shrinkle on a large boulder waving frantically.

The pilot, the late Sgt. Roger Grissel, said he would have to land some distance from our subject because of the boulders, and told me to go and get him, handing me the smoke grenade to signal my location if needed when he returned.

I was excited and had my camera ready to get a photo of the young man who had survived in temperatures that dropped to 14 degrees and with few supplies.

I got to the boulder and he was gone.

A moment later, the helicopter spun up and drifted away, dropping out of sight into the desert below.

Our stranded subject had followed a different route to the helicopter, and I’d just have to meet him when I got back to the search base.

The helicopter returned to pick me up and as we dropped down the mountain into the desert, I could see a vehicle leaving.

Shrinkle was being taken home.

Since joining SAR in 1966, I have been on hundreds of missions.

I’ve privately wept for some of those we have been unable to rescue, shared joyful tears with terrified parents when we handed their toddlers safely back to them, exchanged high-fives with teammates after successful missions, and have never forgotten our search for U.S. Border agents Theodore L. Newton Jr. and George F. Azrak that were found murdered in an abandoned cabin south of Anza in 1967.

Each of those missions had closure, but the snow rescue remained open in my mind.

Fate connected us, but we never had a chance to meet.

Fate intervenes again

Over the 52 years since his rescue, and still as an active SAR team member, I’ve often wondered what happened to this adventurous young man.

Fate had one more move. San Diego historian John Fry, a friend since high school, located three newspaper articles about the rescue and forwarded them to me recently, along with a possible Encinitas address for Shrinkle.

I reached out and got an email reply, and we arranged to meet.

I wanted to hear Shrinkle’s memories, so our first meeting was a phone call.

Like mine, Shinkle’s recollections are hazy, but together we connected memories of that event.

Things turned bad for Shrinkle when it began to snow on the first night.

“That first night was freaky, with high wind and snow and branches breaking. I woke up with a weight on me and realized my tent had collapsed and I was buried under snow,” he said.

As the snow and howling winds swirled around him, he was able to find a rock shelter under nearby boulders and enclose the opening somewhat by building a snow wall.

The storm continued for several days, and he stayed warm by burning the pages of a book he was reading.

“I was a music minor and had brought a book on the theory of music and would burn each page after reading it,” he said.

He lost track of the days as the storm raged on.

He tried to see if he could make the half-day hike back to his car, but the snow was waist deep, and he was exhausted after post-holding through the deep snow, sometimes stepping down into hidden cactus thickets.

“It snowed for days, and I realized this is not good and I am not in a good place,” he said.

One of his lowest moments was discovering his matches had gotten damp and would not work.

“That was the worst and put me into a dark space realizing I could not make fire,” he said.

Overnight he put the matches into the pocket of a wool shirt, and apparently that helped dry them out and they worked the next day.

After several days, the gravity of his situation became clear, and while not worried about himself, he worried about his parents and friends.

“I did not want to leave them like this and that laid heavy on me,” he recalls. “I did pray a lot during the time I was snowbound, and though I might not have realized it then, I now know that was key to my survival, so I strive to stay a faithful Christian today.”

Water was not an issue since melting snow was dripping down from the boulders, providing a regular source of clean water. He rationed his food.

When things cleared, he realized the best route to safety would be down the rugged eastern side of the mountains into the desert, a trip he had never made before.

Had we not spotted him that day, he had at least two more days before reaching a place where he might be found.

He did not realize he was suffering from frostbite in his toes until he began experiencing severe pain when in a warm car heading home.

That condition could have made his hike down into the desert hike nearly impossible.

I had done a similar hike a year before, and that trip had taken me three days.

“I was feeling pretty happy when you found me,” Shrinkle said.

As the helicopter landed, he scrambled around boulders and we missed each other, but he was now safe and headed home.

Face-to-face-meeting

Thanks to Sheriff Kelly Martinez, we would meet face-to-face. She arranged for a reunion at the ASTREA helicopter base in El Cajon.

We hugged and it was good to meet and hear his story of survival after so many years.

Shrinkle survived because he used common sense and good judgment.

Often, the searches that have ended badly were due to those not prepared for the outdoors or overcome by panic when challenges appeared.

Shrinkle did everything right and was fortunate that he only suffered minor frostbite from the experience.

After his recovery he continued with his studies at UC San Diego and became an engineer working in the development of computer hard drives and eventually battery technology.

He’s still passionate about music, playing as part of a group known as the Volcan Mt. Boys.

The most rewarding thing as a SAR volunteer is a positive outcome. This took a few years but was an incredible finish to a long story.

If you have any interest in serving as a Search and Rescue team member for the Sheriff’s Office, you can request information at search@sdsheriff.org.

Cowan is a freelance columnist. Email ernie@packtrain.com or visit erniecowan.substack.com.