Palm Springs Tramway Lost Hikers
In 2006, Brandon Day and Gina Allen, from Dallas, rode the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway for a quick sightseeing stop in California’s San Jacinto Mountains, wandered off the trail in light windbreakers and tennis shoes, and ended up lost for three freezing nights with no food or cellphones. They huddled in a small cave between boulders, shivered awake through the nights, drank from a creek, and kept each other moving with the mantra that it was not their time to die.
Late on the third day, they stumbled into the deserted camp of missing hiker John Donovan, found his journal with a final entry dated exactly one year earlier, and scavenged a warm sweater, dry socks, and a pack of matches. After a small signal fire failed to get attention, they set dried brush in a culvert ablaze the next morning, sending up a huge smoke column that finally drew a rescue helicopter, and they were flown out with only blisters and bruises.