MOUNTAIN SEARCH: Lost Redondo Beach Man Found Safe, Hospitalized as Precaution

A Redondo Beach man who got lost in deep snow near San Jacinto Peak and spent two nights in below-freezing, post-blizzard conditions survived in part because he dug a shelter to keep warm.

Brian Carrico, 57, was found safe and apparently uninjured Monday just before noon, and he was taken to a hospital to get checked out.

Searchers on the ground spotted Carrico's footprints about 11:25 a.m. near Wellman Cienega in the Willow Creek drainage, above 9,600 feet elevation, Riverside Mountain Rescue volunteers said.

They also found a snow shelter and three X's in the snow, a sign of distress, said sheriff's spokeswoman Melissa Nieburger. Confident they were on the track of the missing man, they called in a helicopter crew, who spotted Carrico waving at them, Nieburger said.

Two hours later, a hoist-equipped helicopter flew Carrico down to a temporary landing zone next to the Palm Springs Visitors Center on Highway 111. He walked on his own to an ambulance, where paramedics checked him out for several minutes, then took him away without lights or sirens.

"They're taking him just as a precaution," Nieburger said. "Sometimes they say, 'I'm okay,' but they aren't. They just want to be on the safe side."

Carrico was on moderately steep ground when he was located Monday above Wellman Divide, and he was fortunate to survive in conditions where others have died from hypothermia.

A cold winter storm blanketed mountains on both sides of San Gorgonio Pass with more than two feet of snow at higher elevations Friday and Saturday. Carrico went up Saturday during a break in the storm, but forecasts indicated more severe weather was expected later that day.

He took the tram up to the mountain station Saturday morning and he had a permit to climb San Jacinto Peak, about a 12-mile roundtrip, authorities said. When he did not return later Saturday as planned, family members called State Park authorities, who contacted the sheriff's department.

The first volunteers to join the search Saturday night went up into the mountains in "white-out" conditions.

"If you were out Saturday night you definitely would have built a shelter," Donny Goetz, a Riverside Mountain Rescue volunteer, told Patch.com Monday morning before Carrico was located. "With the windchill it was below zero. I was out that night and the storm kept going until early Sunday."

Search-and-rescue personnel from across Southern California and from as far away as Bishop took part in the search for Carrico.

The Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit and other search-and-rescue teams have found hundreds of lost and injured victims in the rugged San Jacinto high country over the past five decades.

Some missions end tragically with the discovery of a body, or the missing are never found. Monday's search ended on a high note for dozens of volunteers and law enforcement personnel who took part in the search for Carrico.

The Riverside mountain team formed about the same time the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway was completed in 1963, when suddenly crowds of outdoor novices could step off a cable car into alpine terrain that alternates between gentle valleys and stark, treacherous steeps.

The summit of San Jacinto Peak, at 10,834 feet above sea level, is the second-highest point in Southern California. The highest point is 11,499-foot San Gorgonio Mountain on the north side of the Pass, above Banning and Beaumont.