Cyclist Who Was Lost in Storm Is Pulled From Rugged Canyon

A 23-year-old mountain biker was airlifted out of a remote canyon in the Angeles National Forest on Friday after surviving 48 hours of penetrating wind, chill and sleet by burying himself in a cave he dug in the mud.

“I just wanted to live,” said Jeremy Galton of La Canada Flintridge. “I felt death real close.”

Doctors who examined him at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena reported Galton talkative and in excellent condition. He was released about 7:30 p.m.

“He is perfectly fine,” said spokeswoman Connie Matthews. “He couldn’t be better.”

“This is huge,” said Mike Leum, a spokesman for the Montrose Search and Rescue Team, which led the effort to find Galton. “His chances were dwindling exponentially every minute he stayed out there.”

Galton, who was supposed to be headed back to the Philadelphia area this week to begin his senior year at Eastern College, got lost Wednesday. He said that by the time he heard sheriff’s helicopters echoing through a canyon Friday afternoon, he doubted that he would survive another night.

Galton had been wearing three layers of clothes, including a heavy jacket, but he was soaked and shivering violently by the end of the ordeal.

“I’m not used to struggling to survive,” he said.

Galton’s problems began during a bike ride with his older brother on a steep trail near Big Tujunga Canyon. The two had ditched their bikes and begun hiking to the top of a 4,500-foot peak when they got separated as heavy fog rolled in.

Rescuers were quickly alerted and scoured the remote canyons for the next two days, with no sign of the avid outdoorsman. Increasingly desperate, Galton’s father and brothers set out both days to find the young man themselves, hiking almost 30 miles in the cold rain.

With waning hopes of finding Galton alive, the Sheriff’s Department sent out a call seeking assistance from search teams around the state.

Then a rescuer spotted a clue: a footprint in a stream bed far below the spot where Galton had ridden his bike. Radios crackled and a sheriff’s helicopter rushed to the spot. There he was--the young man’s athletic figure standing on a rock, waving to the rescuers in gloomy light.

It was the second time that Galton had been rescued in the San Gabriel Mountains, he said, although he provided no details.

His mother, Grace, had been thinking the worst just hours before, listening to classical music in their living room and waiting for any news from the rescuers. She arrived at the hospital in tears. “This is an emotional time,” she said. “We’re so relieved.”

As a frequent mountain biker fascinated with the writings of John Muir, Galton knows well the mountains above his home. He knows how deceptively remote they can be, how the loose terrain can give way underfoot and how fast a Pacific storm can turn a fine Southern California afternoon into an Arctic winter.

The Galton brothers had ridden up the trail for seven miles Wednesday when they decided to walk the remaining three miles to the top of Fox peak. Neither of them knew the path, which cut through thick chaparral at an angle too steep for riding, rescuers said.

“They found out it was not a great place for mountain biking,” Leum said. .

Wind-whipped fog moved in quickly as the two trudged toward the top. Somewhere along the way, Jeremy began walking ahead of his 30-year-old brother, Brad, and took a separate fork in the path, officials said.

Jeremy would later tell authorities that the fog was so thick he could barely see a foot in front of him. He became disoriented and got lost.

When Brad got to the peak, Jeremy was not there, and his name was not in a log book. Brad signed the book, waited for a while and then began heading down to their bikes, officials said. He got to a phone and called rescuers.

The Galton family said Jeremy had learned survival skills on regular jaunts into the Angeles National Forest and travels around the world. He has hiked most of the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail, is a certified white-water rafting guide and is fascinated by naturalist Muir, who wrote about his 19th century hikes through the very mountains where Galton got lost.

The night he disappeared, search and rescue teams arrived about 6:30. In their full cold-weather gear, they started hiking the 10-mile trail from the bottom at Big Tujunga Canyon Road. There were no roads to give them easy access to the point where Galton had been last seen, and with the bad weather and darkness, it was too dangerous to drop the rescuers in by helicopter.

Wind howled up the gorge at more than 30 mph, with rain in the bottom and snow flurries at higher elevations, Leum said.

Galton, meanwhile, was following a stream down a canyon, hoping it would lead to civilization. That night, he dug a hole in some mud and covered himself to stay out of the rain and keep warm.

He didn’t want to die in what he considered his backyard.

Thursday morning, he headed farther downstream, he said. He tried to conserve his energy and rest. By nightfall, hemmed in by narrowing canyon walls and stopped by an impassable cliff, he found an overhang for shelter and tried to get a little sleep.

The rescuers had already scouted the trails and clearing and were now hacking through the chaparral into remote corners of the forest. Spreading out roughly in concentric circles, they traversed loose scree, steep escarpments and canyon bottoms.

They were still optimistic that Galton would be alive, rescuers said.

Leum remembered the case of Jeff Thornton as an example of how long people can survive inclement weather.

Thornton snowboarded off the back side of a ski resort in 1998. Rescuers, presuming that the 14-year-old was dead, called off the search two days after his disappearance because of bad weather, only to find him alive and conscious four days later. The next week, he died in a hospital because of complications from his injuries, officials said.

Leum said the search for Galton was going to continue until they found him. Galton, who had slept most of Friday, had taken a drink from a pond when he heard the chopper.

“I’m through with hiking and mountain biking,” he said.

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Times Staff Writer David Pierson contributed to this story.