Toll of Dead Hikers Hits 6 in Region’s Icy Mountains

Two more high-mountain hikers have been found dead in the Southland, including a man who set out Sunday on his own up Mt. San Jacinto near the Palm Springs aerial tramway, despite news reports about the dangers of hiking icy areas alone.

The man, whose name was not immediately available pending notification of relatives, phoned his girlfriend about 9 p.m. Sunday to say he was in an icy patch and would phone back in an hour. He never called, and she phoned for help. With the aid of helicopters, the Riverside County Mountain Rescue Unit found the man’s body deep in a ravine about 10:15 a.m. Monday, 7,800 feet up the mountain.

On Sunday afternoon, another hiker found the frozen body of Ronald Barbour, 69, of La Crescenta, a Sierra Club leader and lifelong hiker. He had set out on his own Jan. 16 for a three-day, 21-mile hiking and biking marathon from Wrightwood to Cajon Pass.

His body was found about 4:30 p.m. on a side trail near where he had parked his car, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokesman said. Barbour appears to have fallen several hundred feet down an icy ravine and struck his head on a log, according to relatives.

The latest finds bring the death toll in the new year to six hikers in area mountains, none of them novices. One hiker remains missing.

Barbour’s wife of almost 45 years, Marjorie, said her husband “loved the mountains. He just could hardly wait to get out there and see the scenery.” She said she had regularly urged him not to hike alone, and did so before his last trip after reports that three hikers had died. He assured her he was more experienced. A retired accountant who had hiked since he was a boy, Barbour had a goal to complete the Pacific Crest Trail, and this trip would finish one section of it.

“He left early in the morning, just smiling and happy and raring to go,” Marjorie Barbour said. “He left at 5:30 in the morning because he could hardly wait to get there.”

When he had not returned that Sunday, she called for help.

Two sons and friends who had gone on hiking and camping trips that her husband had led joined the search during the week, to no avail.

“He was a dear, dear man,” said one of those friends, Cathy Kissinger, 52. “We will miss him terribly.”

Kissinger and her husband hiked about 10 miles Thursday and Saturday trying to retrace Barbour’s steps.

“We hiked close together, and we agreed that if there was any possibility of icy conditions, we would turn around,” she said. “He’s our friend. I know he would do that for me, so I wanted to do that for him.”

Kissinger said she had gone on numerous backpacking and camping trips led by Barbour and had never met a person who knew more about trails in area mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Last summer he hiked in early to a campsite in the Sierra, emptied his pack, then hiked back to meet others and help them carry their loads. The last time she saw him was on a Sierra Club hike in the San Gabriel Mountains this month, when he made sure to stay at the back of the group, where she was going more slowly because of a knee injury.

“He never said anything, but I know that’s why he did it. He was a fast hiker; he could have been at the front easily,” she said. “He was a kind, compassionate man.”

Four other area hikers have died this month.

Chung Hun “Charles” Koh, 53, of Buena Park left home Jan. 1 to hike on Mt. Baldy. His body was found Jan. 17, nearly 1,000 feet below a spot where a partner thought he had fallen.

Ali Aminian, 51, of Newbury Park was an experienced Sierra Club member who went hiking alone in the same area Jan. 11, while Koh was still missing. Aminian’s body was found Jan. 14.

Matthew L. Jones, 15, of San Bernardino tumbled about 400 feet to his death from a steep, burned slope near Devore on Jan. 11.

Kenneth Smith, 66, of Yucaipa died Jan. 5 while ice climbing in the Forest Falls area, not far from where Eugene Kumm, 25, has been missing for more than a week.

Search operations for Kumm were suspended during weekdays this week but will continue on weekends as weather permits, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Beavers.

“Our resources are very limited at this point,” Beavers said. “We have called on search-and-rescue members from basically all over the state to help with the number of searches that we’ve had in the last several weeks. Obviously, we’ve needed highly trained [rescuers] to go into those conditions.”

A skilled rescuer seeking Kumm in the Forest Falls area fell several hundred feet Sunday and was taken to a hospital, she said.

Even experienced hikers should understand that winter ice hiking requires alpine mountaineering equipment and skills, authorities said, and that there are no guarantees of a safe return.