When his 17-year-old son and friend headed off for a 10-day trek in the Southern California mountains, Cesar Ramirez said he wasn’t too worried. The teens were avid hikers with ample foods in their backpacks, a tent and snowshoes, plus extensive training and aspirations to join the military. But when the snow began pummeling the mountains east of Los Angeles by the foot-load and Ramirez lost contact with them through a tracking app, he called the San Bernardino County sheriff’s department. They dispatched a helicopter to the boys’ last known location, followed their foot tracks, then spotted and rescued them. By then, Ramirez’s son had lost his jacket to the wind, and their tent had broken, Ramirez tells the AP.
“They’ve told us, ‘We were already convinced we were going to die,’” said Ramirez, of Cypress, California. The dramatic rescue came as California has struggled to dig out residents in mountain communities from as much as 10 feet of snow after back-to-back storms battered the state. San Bernardino County sheriff ’s Sgt. John Scalise said the boys were slightly hypothermic and lucky to be alive after huddling together for three nights to stay warm. He said they were well-prepared for the hike but not for the massive amounts of snow. “They knew there was weather. But I don’t think they expected the amount."
In a separate rescue operation further north in Inyo County, a man was found waving inside his partly snow-covered vehicle Thursday after the California Highway Patrol identified a cellphone ping linked to him and sent out a helicopter crew. He drove out from the community of Big Pine and was last heard from on Feb. 24, said sheriff's authorities in the county on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada.
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