Scout Hike Ends With Helicopter Rescue : Adventure: 12 boys and four adults were trapped by a fast-moving river in Angeles National Forest, near the site of a woman’s earlier death in the waist-deep current.

Sheer rock walls rose on either side of them, an impassable river lay ahead, and the only way out was by helicopter rescue, members of a Boy Scout troop recalled Monday.

The 12 Scouts and four adults were hiking in Angeles National Forest on Saturday when their hiking trail ended at a fast-moving, rain-swollen river. They were rescued that evening after worried parents notified park rangers that the troop was three hours late.

The hikers were evacuated from the Sheep Mountain Wilderness Area, about four miles from the site where an 18-year-old Fontana woman was swept down the river for miles the previous weekend by a swift, waist-deep current. She later died of her injuries.

The trip began Friday afternoon, led by Scoutmaster Brian Chapman. It was planned as a two-day, 17-mile hike for the boys, most of them from Yorba Linda or Anaheim.

During the hike, the group had to cross the San Gabriel River about 40 times, Chapman said. “When we first started crossing, the water was only up to our knees,” Chapman said. As the troop continued along the trail there “was four times the amount of water to begin with. It was a hot day. The snows were melting faster or something.”

The troop used ropes to cross the river, tying them to trees and holding on as they crossed.

“Half the kids got knocked down every time they crossed,” Chapman said. As the waters got more difficult they tied a rope around their chests, but that became unsafe after a while.

“We got to a point where the water was running so fast and deep we couldn’t risk sending a kid across,” Chapman said. A couple of boys were almost washed down the river. One boy was rescued by Chapman’s 11-year-old son Jeff, who himself was washed 30 yards down the river before he could grab a branch and hold on.

“Everyone was calling me hero. . . . I feel pretty good that I could actually do something like that,” said the Travis Ranch Middle School eighth-grader.

The group was prepared to bed down for the night when they were spotted by a helicopter pilot from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Larry Steward. “We saw about 15 flashlights waving about,” Steward said.

Balancing one of the three wheels of the helicopter on a large rock that jutted from the riverbed, Steward pulled the Scouts out of an area a parent described as the size of a “Dodge Ram van” just before dark.

The rescue was made more difficult by the small size of the helicopter, which had to make four trips to get everyone.

Chapman, 36, said Monday that he had talked to a park ranger before the Scouts began the hike but hadn’t been told how high the river was.

Byron Kimball, firefighter at another ranger station, said that during the drought the trail would have been passable, and the water would have been “probably no more than knee high.” But “we’ve had approximately 30 inches of rain, so you got a lot of water coming out of the hills. . . .”

“It’s a very rugged, unforgiving terrain,” said Kimball, who added that had he been called he would have discouraged the hike. “If you make a mistake, you don’t tend to get a second chance,” he said.

Nancy Martin, 44, was among the parents waiting at the station. “We were elated when the first group came in,” she said. But, she said, “we weren’t really concerned because our Scoutmaster is phenomenal.”