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by
Robb Fulcher
Stranded for three days on the side of an 8,831-foot mountain north of Los Angeles, Constantinos Chamis built and fortified a snow cave by night and struggled to find his way down the slopes by dim daylight. He braved a bitter snowstorm, suffered frostbite, chased a rescue helicopter that he could hear but not see, and watched a Valentine’s Day "rescue angel" descend from the sky.
"I’m feeling pretty good," the 25-year-old Hermosa man said following his return.
‘Three-hour tour’
It all began Sunday, Feb. 11 when Chamis, who works as a manufacturing engineer at a Boeing Co. plant in Long Beach, drove his pickup truck north to Mt. Pinos, about midway between LA and Bakersfield, for a day of skiing.
A practiced outdoorsman experienced in skiing, rock climbing and ice climbing, he carried along three pairs of socks, four pairs of gloves, three warm hats, three layers of clothing for his lower body and six for his upper body, sunglasses, goggles, a miner-style headlamp, a knife and a shovel. He also brought two quart bottles of water, and food: two "everything bagels," a block of Gouda cheese, fruit, two Mrs. Fields macadamia cookies, pastrami, salami, a log of sausage and some beef jerky. He stopped at a U.S. Forest Service station to pick up a topographic map.
"I intended to go for a three-hour tour," he said.
Arriving at a parking lot around the 8,000-foot level of the mountain and "kicking" uphill on his skis beginning about 11:30 a.m., Chamis soon found himself alone on Pinos, with snow falling all around.
"When I got to the tree line the people around me disappeared," he said.
Chamis moved uphill past the dense pines for which the mountain is named, then past sparser stands of the trees that would hinder his navigation on the way back down, and through two meadows on the mountain’s eastern face.
As he enjoyed the view he looked to the south he saw the next peak, called Sawmill, and decided to make his way there before going back down. But visibility was limited to about 250 yards and Chamis’ perspective was reduced to nearby landmarks. About the time he should have been reaching Sawmill, he realized he had come full circle and was back at the point where he had started off from Pinos.
"I realized I was kind of confused, directionless," Chamis said. "I had no compass with me, I just couldn’t find it before I left."
In dimming light, Chamis tried to descend the summit, through rolling hills and meadows, hoping to find the mouth of the trail that brought him up past the denser tress. The area of sparser trees made it tougher to find his way, hiding the trailhead from his sight.
Along the mountainside, ridges and ravines threatened to divert him, sloping down and away into the evergreen thickness of the Los Padres National Forest to the south and Lockwood Valley to the north. Chamis knew that if he followed those routes to the bottom, he would wind up amid thick trees with no recognizable landmarks, and would not be able to find the parking lot on foot.
"I kept trying until about 3:45 or 4 o’clock, then I realized I wasn’t going to make it down the mountain," he said. "I decided to set up a shelter for the night and hopefully in the morning have more visibility."
His three-hour tour had turned become a serious matter.
"It got kind of frantic," he said.
Following his own tracks, he kicked back uphill to a ridge with a little cove ringed in pines, and used his shovel to build a snow cave, digging down three feet to earth and piling the snow into walls. He slung his skis, poles, shovel and some pinewood across the walls to serve as ceiling beams, then used his knife to cut ice into blocks that he placed atop the makeshift beams. He used snow as a mortar to fill the gaps in the ice.
He changed his clothes, placing the day’s wet gear against his body so it would not freeze.
Fearing the worst
"The first night was the worst by far," he said. "It was the coldest, scariest night. It was mentally quite demanding. You’re at your lowest point."
He tried to remember whether he had told his friends or family where he was going, whether he had written his destination down for anyone.
"Even the really gory thoughts cross your mind," he said. "You might be trapped up here awhile, there might not be a good outcome."
Mentally facing that possibility, and accepting it, helped to calm him down, Chamis said.
He spent the night huddled in his cave as the snow blew in at a slant, peppering his eyes through his ski mask-style hat.
"I didn’t sleep much at all," he said. "I woke up in the morning and ate some food, and I was pretty much determined to get off the mountain."
With no sun visible in the sky and sorely missing his compass, Chamis descended again. To replenish his water supply, he would drink one bottle most of the way down, fill it the rest of the way with snow to make slush, then carry it against his body to melt it to water.
"By about noon Monday I was starting to get a clearer picture of what was where, but I still had no sense of direction," he said.
Once again disheartened, Chamis wrote a note with the word "help" for whoever might come along.
"I wanted at least to leave a trace," he said.
Then something happened to brighten his day.
"The sun peeked through. That was huge. It gave me south."
Armed with a sense of direction, Chamis aimed to reach the road south of where his truck should be.
"I got into the forest but I ended up in a ravine," he said. "I went really far, but I didn’t find the road."
In the snowstorm
About 2:30 p.m. or so, tired and disappointed, he kicked back up to his shelter, which he reached by 4 p.m. Before he slept he fortified his cave. He expanded the walls, placed 80 or 90 pine bought on the earthen floor and laid down his backpack and a thin gore-tex layer for insulation underneath. He used pine sticks only for his ceiling beams, so he wouldn’t have to break down his roof in the morning to retrieve his skis, poles and shovel.
"I had a very, very solid cave," he said. "I didn’t lose heat like that first night. The first night I froze."
The fortification came in handy, as a storm moved through and dumped more than four feet of snow, dropping the temperature to 32 degrees in nearby Frazier Park and probably to about zero where Chamis lay.
"I really slept well that night," he said.
Tuesday morning came amid torrents of snow.
"Things that were visible before were buried by the storm," Chamis said. "I got out of the cave once around 10 o’clock and got about 30 yards, and I was blown over."
Then came a turning point, when the storm appeared to break about 3:30 p.m. Chamis knew that if the skies cleared by morning he could find his way down the mountainside.
Meanwhile, his coworkers in Long Beach and his sister in Huntington Beach had alerted authorities to his whereabouts, and he was being sought by members of a volunteer ski patrol and the Kern and Ventura county sheriff’s departments.
A road-plowing snow cat was dispatched from Frazier Park and chugged its way 12 miles to the Mt. Pinos parking lot, where rescue workers scraped snow from the pickup’s license plate to determine that it belonged to Chamis.
As Chamis sat in his cave he heard the chopping sound of a rescue helicopter overhead. Forgetting himself, he charged outside and floundered in the deep snow before going back to put on his skis. While his ears rejoiced at the sound of the chopper, it did not come into view.
"I could hear them flying over but I never once saw them," Chamis said. "But I had two important clues. I knew someone was looking for me, which is always uplifting, and I knew the weather was breaking, because they wouldn’t fly unless it was clear."
The skier made one more downhill run, then bedded down for the night.
He ate no food until sunset, then he ate as much as he could, slept as much as he could and drank as much water as he could, replenishing his supply with snow slush all the while. He woke only to peek outside and check the weather.
"It was a clear night, and it was cold as sin," he said. Weather watchers recorded a temperature of 8 degrees at a point some 4,000 feet below where Chamis was holed up.
"It was pretty ‘hellacious.’ That’s when I got frostbite, because that night I didn’t swap out my socks. That’s kind of a bummer, because it could have been prevented."
The way down
Valentine’s morning broke crystal clear, and an elated Chamis got up at first light. No longer needing to ration his food, he feasted.
"I pounded down a beautiful breakfast of frozen pastrami, Gouda, half an everything bagel and half a Mrs. Fields macadamia nut cookie. That was a gourmet breakfast for me."
Chamis packed up and left his cave for the last time. He did not go directly downhill, but instead kicked his way uphill, to Pinos’ summit.
"I thought, I’ve been up here too long not to go up and appreciate it for a while," he said. He was rewarded with a perfect view, experienced through senses made keen by his travails.
"It was majestic. Clear, pristine snow, a great view of the mountains. It was absolutely astonishing. Well worth the journey."
After 10 or 15 minutes he started down, shushing alone through untracked snow.
"I
had perfect visibility, and I really looked at that topographic map and watched
the features on the mountainside."
The descent was easy this time, and as he skied down he was the only person on the mountainside.
"That’s what I go up there for this time of year," Chamis said. "I was just enjoying it. The snow on the trees was melting and it started to drip, and that makes the most soothing sound you can possibly hear."
He made his way through the sparser pines, and found the trail to the parking lot.
"It turned out the day before I had come within about 30 yards of the trail," he said.
He found his truck buried in four feet of snow, and as he dug it out the helicopter from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department reappeared, its blades churning the snowy parking lot into a blizzard and forcing Chamis inside his vehicle.
Then the chopper dropped a line, and a rescue worker dropped into the lot.
"She was a rescue angel. I didn’t catch her name," Chamis said.
His rescuer told him he had no hope of driving out over snow-covered roads, and offered him a helicopter ride. The line carried him upward in a spiral and, safely inside, the chopper brought him to "some guy’s back yard" in Lockwood Valley.
"That was a beautiful day up there in the helicopter," Chamis said. "I had never been in one before."
From Lockwood Valley a Ford Explorer carried him to Frazier Park, again courtesy of the sheriff’s department, where paramedics decided he would go to Henry Mayo Hospital in Valencia. His sister picked him up there and took him home.
His
parents in Cleveland, Ohio "were very ecstatic. They know I have this reckless,
adventurous streak, and these things do happen," Chamis said. "I wouldn’t
want it to happen again, but if this is part of your life, what makes you happy,
if it’s who you are, the risks will catch up with you."
Just the same, he carries away at least three lessons: carry a compass, "try" to have a partner along, and carry a cell phone even in areas where it probably will not work.
On Friday evening Chamis sat in his apartment. A dark, warm blanket covered his knees, Girl Scout cookies beckoned from the coffee table and a rental copy of the movie "Gladiator" stood paused in mid-frame on his television set.
He had been given burn cream to treat first-degree frostbite on the two largest toes of both feet. He was recovering well, and full feeling was expected to return, but his toes will be more susceptible to frostbite in the future. He wasn’t sure when he would be able to recover his pickup.
But he was thrilled to be home.
"There are a lot of things worth living for," he said. ER