WESTWOOD—On Sunday, February 8, eight members of the UCLA Hiking Club got lost in Throop Peak, a cold and icy, 9,138-foot-tall mountain, located in the Angeles National Forest, which also encompasses the San Gabriel Mountains.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department indicated in a statement that the students had become lost and hypothermic, a dangerous condition in which the body’s core temperature plummets.
“The search area was near Throop Peak at an 8,200 foot elevation,” said the statement. “The conditions were snowy and icy, with some drifts causing the rescuers to plunge thigh-deep into the snow drifts.”
According to SummitPost.org, “Throop Peak is the second highest summit in the group which stretches from Vincent Gap to Islip Saddle. [Throop Peak] offers an impressive 360 degree view, which includes both Mt Baldy and Mt Baden-Powell, the Mojave desert, and on clear days, even the Pacific Ocean.”
The Peak’s namesake was Amos Gager Throop, a staunch abolitionist politician who founded the California Institute of Technology, formerly know as “Throop University.”
The hiking team apparently split up, being that five members of the group were able to navigate their way out of the snowy forest, while the other eight remained on the icy slopes and called for help.
Responding to the 911 calls, rescue teams from San Dimas, Crescenta Valley and Palmdale Sheriff’s Stations located and extracted the hikers at around 12:30 a.m., Sunday morning, nearly six hours after the call was made.
The rescue teams placed harnesses and ropes around the students and carefully lowered them down the peak, according to the statement.
None of the students required medical attention, and returned home safely.
