-This program contains dramatic re-enactments and material that may be disturbing to some audience members. Viewer discretion is advised. -
Young lovers Gina Allen and Brandon Day are on a day trip from hell. Lost in a freezing mountain wilderness with no way out. The city dwellers are trapped, in a nightmare they can not escape.
Gina: We were stuck. We were completely stuck.
And just when it seems it can't get any worse, they're plunged into a tale of death and despair, which threatens to engulf them, too.
Brandon: If we make a mistake, we probably will die.
Gina (screaming): Brandon! Hurry!
Brandon! We're lost!!! We need help!!! Brandon! Run, run!!!!
Day 1
Gina (on phone): (Tashe)? I'm at Palm Springs!
(interview) We met in Spring of 2006. And, he had seen my MySpace profile. And, within a couple of weeks, (we) went on our first date. And, we immediately hit it off - we were almost inseparable at that point. And, a few days later, he asked me to go with him to California.
Gina: Oh, he is totally gorgeous…and he has been such a gentleman.
Brandon (interview): I'd qualified to go to a national sales convention - I'm a financial adviser - I was allowed to bring a guest with me, and thought, uh, it would be a really good time, and, uh, invited her with me.
Brandon & Gina: Hey!
B: Hard day at the office:
G: Oh, so hard. You have no idea.
B: You know, I just looked at it as hey, you know, look, How would you like to go on an all expenses paid vacation to a resort? How bad could that be?
At the end of the convention, Brandon and Gina head out on a day trip to a local beauty spot. Intending to be back well before nightfall, the couple dress light.
Gina: Um, I'm going to leave my purse here, so maybe you can take these for me?
With no more space in his pockets, Brandon leaves his cell phone behind.
Gina: We didn't think anything of it. We were only going to be gone a couple hours or, I guess, so we thought.
Tour Guide: At ten thousand, eight hundred and thirty four(10,834) feet above sea level, Mount San Jacinto is the second highest mountain in southern California.
Brandon: And as we're going up she mentions, you know, there's, uh, this is, uh, mountain lion territory. Uh, there's also a lot of rattle snakes in this area.
Guide: But as long as you stay on the trails, you should be okay.
Among the most rugged wilderness regions in the US, Mount San Jacinto is the second highest peak in Southern California. With no access road, the only way up, or down, is by cable car. And while temperatures can hit the eighties(80s) and nineties(90s) on the desert floor during May, the summit is still dusted with snow.
Gina: Somebody mentioned it's going to get cold. Cause you're going up eighty five hundred(8500) odd feet, and there's going to be a wind, so you might want to grab a sweatshirt or a jacket. Something like that to have with you. So we got up to the top, and bout to head out for our walk.
Gina: Wow! Brandon...
Brandon: Hmm? What..?
Gina: I just kind of turned to him and, and just nailed him right, right in the head with this snowball and, at that point it was on. It was just so fun, just throwing snowballs at each other in, in May.
Brandon: Wait! Stop...listen.
Gina: What? What is it?
Brandon: You hear that? Sounds like a waterfall.
(Gina laughs.)
Brandon: Don't get me mad!
Gina: So we headed off to go find this waterfall.
Gina (in a whisper): Oh, I can hear it! Can you see it yet?
Brandon: Not yet...
Unused to this kind of environment, the city dwellers from Dallas, Texas don't realize that the mountain is playing acoustic tricks on them. While the sound of waterfall seems nearby, it is actually rebounding off the hard rock walls and echoing around the mountain.
Gina: It didn't sound far, but I guess, you know the sounds play with you. Play with your mind and play with your head.
Brandon: Gotta be here somewhere.
Gina: Are we there yet? I mean, this is getting to be like a real hike.
Brandon: A little further, Gina. Should be really cool.
Brandon: We eventually did find the waterfall, which was not impressive.
(Brandon pulls out camera)
Gina: Did you get one?
Brandon: Oh! Maybe you don't want to see this one!
Gina: (overlapping) I wanna see! Let me see it!
Brandon: We had took some pictures whic- Which didn't turn out very well at all. But then decided to turn back.
Brandon: Time to be getting back. Come on. Yeah, we should.
Gina and Brandon have twenty(20) minutes to meet their tour party at the cable car station. But going back the way they came is not easy.
Gina: It seemed so simple when we walked off the path to get to the waterfall. It felt like all we did was around two boulders, behind a tree, and over the top of another boulder, and there it was. So we kind of, you know, retraced our steps and it was seeming to take much longer.
Gina: Hey, can you hear that?
Brandon: This way. Can't be far.
Gina: We could hear voices, but we couldn't really match up with them.
(got to 7:30)
It's now less than 10 minutes before the tour party leaves. Brandy and Gina can hear the other tourists but they cannot reach them.
Brandon: This way.
Gina: We couldn't get to them... they seemed to be just right there, and we lost the voices. We couldn't hear anyone else talking, and at that point...you kind of.... ok something might not be right here.
Narrator: Meanwhile, the rest of the tour party has descended without Brandon and Gina and will soon return to the hotel. Despite Brandon's determination to find the mountain station, the dense pine forest and steep rock faces block their path -- they're tantalisingly close to the station, but they just can't see it.
Brandon: I think we're close, we just.. need to go a little bit further in this direction or this direction -- we'll see something we recognise... we'll be fine. That went on for a while. Then I realised... that no, I think, actually I do think we're lost. And so at that point, we decided ok.. we have to start yelling for help.
Brandon: Hey, is anybody there!?
Gina: Heyyyyyyyy
Brandon: Helloooo
Tour Leader: We're two short -- must've taken a taxi back. OK.
Brandon: We've now passed the rendervous time, now we have a real problem. Ok, before it was err... something that was very manageable... now it's sinking in... I think we an issue.
As night falls, Gina and Brandon are lost in one of the most desolate and unforgiving parts of the San Jacinto wilderness. But even worse, no one knows they're missing.
Gina: Brandon!!!
Gina: Can anybody hear us?!
Narrator: For Gina Allen and Brandon Day, it's the date from hell -- they have only known each other for a few weeks, and are now lost in a hostile mountain wilderness... stranded at high altitude in the freezing cold.
(got to 10:07)
Brandon: It starts to dawn on you ok, you might be spending the night out here...erm, and you're also with this person who you care about.. but you haven't known very long. You know, you're, you're there to show her a good time... and you've helped her to get lost and spend the night in the freezing cold on top of a mountain. Way to go! Hehehe, erm, I'm not sure I can bring her on another date after this one - hehehe.
Narrator: The most immediate danger for Brandon and Gina is hypothermia. Lightly dressed, they are at the mercy of the plunging mountain temperatures, which can hit zero at night. They must retain body heat, or frostbite exposure... an eventual death may follow.
Gina: Brandon, I'm so cold.
Brandon: We can't stay here. We'll freeze to death -- I've got to move.
Gina: But where?
Brandon: We passed a cave a little way back. It's better than being out here in the open.... c'mon..... c'mon.
Narrator: Stumbling their way through the darkness, Gina and Brandon are aware of another very real mountain danger.
Brandon: We have been warned that there's mountain lions and rattlesnakes..in, in.. these mountains.
Brandon: There it is.
Gina: Wait, don't go in there!
Brandon: Why not?
Gina: Um, I don't know... anything could be in there.
Brandon: I can't see a thing.
Gina: I don't know... if it was just a gut reaction or instinct, or how he knew to do it. He took my camera, which I thought was genius, I don't know how he thought of it.
Brandon: Gimme your camera.
Gina: My camera?
Brandon: Has a flash, doesn't it?
Gina: Ohhh, let me see, let me see.
Brandon: It's clear. There's nothing in there.
Narrator: Although no longer out in the open. Brandon and Gina are still at the mercy of mount San Jacinto's bitter cold.
Brandon: Well, that night, it really.... got to a level of cold that I've never experienced before. I'm looking at my watch, and it's 11 o'clock at night. And I'm thinking... ok, we have seven more hours of this? You know, it was already freezing... shivering. Yeah...how much longer can we endure this..
Narrator: Brandon and Gina survive a long cold night in their makeshift shelter. Exhausted, they have had nothing to eat or drink in the last 24 hours. Even so, Gina's mind is on more everyday anxieties.
Gina: This was by far the most awkward.. date I had ever been on in my life. Um, here I am with this guy I barely know, and I'm stuck. But now.. he's going to, you know smell... my morning breath. And he's going to see me without my makeup on. And I'm gonna, I have dirty hair. And it's all those classic girl things you think of.. when you're in a new relationship.
Narrator: Brandon and Gina climb further up the mountain, thinking they need to go higher to reach the cable car station. They're in for a shock.
Gina: Oh my God.
Narrator: There's no sign of the station. Gina and Brandon now realize they've crossed to a different ridge of the mountain.
Gina: Hey look... look at that tree.
Brandon: There are a lot of trees.
Gina: No, no, that... it's that dead one we passed on the way up from the cable car.
Brandon: We climbed a hell of a long way up.
Gina: Yeah, we did.
Narrator: They now know they're more lost than they thought, and facing another freezing night at this altitude could kill them. The young couple need a plan.
Gina: Do you see that creek? That creek running there?
Brandon: And that heads down towards Palm Springs.
Gina: Yeah
Brandon: We mad the decision that we're gonna try and walk our way out of here. We're going to try and follow the, uh, mountain river, and it has to lead out somewhere.
Gina: Let's go.
Narrator: What Gina and Brandon don't realize is that between them and the river is some of the most treacherous terrain the mountain has to offer.
Gina: So we kind of look at each other and say 'Well alright, we have nowhere to go but down.' And it's steep, it's very steep at that point. We slid on out butts, I guess, with one leg straight out in front of us, the other leg bent up. And we moved. Definitely shook loose some of the rocks around us, which got a little frightening.
Brandon: A boulder, about half the size of a, uh, suitcase, goes tumbling, tumbling all the way down. And then you hear it just hit the bottom of, uh, of this rock face. If we make a mistake, we're either dead, or we're hurt to the point to where we probably will die. Gina, as she was trying to slide down, had kicked a rock or some rocks.
Gina: Brandon, watch out!
Brandon: And here it's coming straight for me, straight for my head.
Gina: Brandon!
Narrator: On the second day of a vacation that's turned into a battle for survival, Gina Allen and Brandon Day are stranded on a remote Southern California mountain. Now as they try to escape, the day-trippers are in over their heads, and plunging themselves ever deeper into danger.
Gina: Brandon, watch out! Brandon! No no no, where are you?
Brandon: This thing probably missed me by, by about a foot, foot and a half.
Brandon: I'm ok.
Brandon: That was really, really close.
Gina: Oh my God. Oh my God.
Brandon: It takes us, the better part of a day, and around four or five o'clock we finally make it to the bottom.
Narrator: It's the first water Brandon and Gina have drunk for over twenty-four hours. Water could prolong their survival. But with no source of food, their health is already deteriorating. And their judgement, too. They think that following the river will lead them to safety. They have no idea what lies ahead in this hostile wilderness.
Gina: The stream we were following would get really narrow, to the point where you could almost jump jump across it, to really wide, to the point where we had to look for, like, four and five rocks to hop across. And you essentially kind of play leap-frog trying to just hop on rocks to get your way over. You know, the last thing you want is wet feet.
Narrator: In normal circumstances, getting wet would be an inconvenience. But with night approaching in the chill mountain terrain, it could spell disaster for Brandon and Gina.
Gina: And we get to a point where I'm leading. Um, and I'm going down, like, a downed log. And I guess it's something that I learned through my years of, of cheerleading is that you think light. That you train your body to think light. I made it down safely, but you know, he's, you know, sixty pounds heavier. It might not support him the way it supported me.
Brandon: Instantly I'm soaked, from the uh, the thighs down.
Narrator: In wet clothes, Brandon is now at real risk of developing hypothermia. With no cave to shelter in, the couple need to think fast to prevent the creeping cold of night from freezing Brandon to death.
Gina: We've gotta get these shoes off.
Gina: So at that point, I guess my, my nurturing instinct kind of kicked in, I guess. Um, to take care of him.
Gina: Okay, okay.
Brandon: And we huddled up again, to keep us warm. And she sat on my feet throughout the night. Uh, trying to keep, help keep them warm. 'Cause I was shivering pretty good throughout the night.
(got to 20:01)
Narrator: After two nights stranded in a savage mountain wilderness, with no food or way out, all Brandon and Gina have left is a determination to keep going.
Brandon: You know, we, we're not going to die here. And also, we just really didn't want to sleep another night out in the freezing cold. Um, we wanted to get ourselves out of there.
Brandon: What did you say?
Gina: Oh, nothing, I was just praying, is all.
Brandon: You don't think we're going to get out of this on our own?
Gina: Yeah, I do, just - it just gives me hope, that's all.
Narrator: But Gina's prayers are going unanswered. Their hotel's computerised booking system has automatically checked them out. But the rooms have not been made up. No-one knows they are lost at ten thousand feet, fighting for their lives.
Gina Allen and Brandon Day have spent two days lost in the Californian wilderness. With little sleep, nothing to eat and no sign of rescue, they've been driven on by grit and sheer determination. Then, suddenly, signs of life appear in the distance.
Brandon: Well first, I'm making sure I'm not hallucinating. You know, we haven't eaten, we haven't slept, um, and, at this point I'm sure that, you know, my judgement is starting to not be as sharp as it once was.
(got to 22:23)
Brandon: You see that?
Gina: What?
Brandon: That!
Gina: Oh my God... Hey! Hey!
Brandon: Hello? Anyone there?
Brandon: All of a sudden you just get this feeling of hope. "I think we made it."
Gina: Is anyone in there?
Brandon: No.
Narrator: Brandon and Gina realize, this is not your average camp site.
Brandon: We definitely know, right off the bat, that something's wrong.
Gina: Stuff had been buried a little bit by dirt. And at this point we're realizing this is not a good situation. We don't hear anybody, we don't see anybody. It's just a very ominous feeling.
Gina: Hey. Hey, Brandon. Look. Look at this.
Gina: So we start going through the bag--the contents of the bag. We're discovering, um, these maps. We had know idea, really, what we were looking at, but just that they were some sort of maps. And there was obvious writing in the white space.
Gina: Brandon. Brandon look! This is today! This is May 8th. Someone's here.
Brandon: Let me see that, let me see... No, Gina. This diary's a year out of date. It's May 8, 2005.
Gina: It was just a blow, that, for one, how have we found this exactly one year ago, to the day, and in seeing everything that he had, he was obviously prepared for something--y'know, he was an experienced climber, experienced hiker--that, his camp site's abandoned? You don't know what the hell is going on.
Brandon: May 8th, 2005. Took a fall. Too weak to climb out of canyon. Down is gorge. No way out. Gorge, what... What gorge? Listen, here's another one. Listen. May 11th. I'm sixty today. Down to last two crackers. God, this is... This is... Here, May 14th. Heading down to creek for water. Goodbye, and love you all.
(got to 25:09)
Gina: I'm looking through the bag and I come across all of his identification. I see his name is John Joseph Donovan and he is in his 60's, from Virginia. And I come across a driver's license, his credit cards, his debt cards... his everything.
Brandon: Gina these are- these are someone's last words. Gina we've just read someone's last words.
It was exactly a year ago to the day that we found this campsite of someone saying goodbye to the world and here we are in the same place exactly a year ago to the day. And uh... to go from such a high to such a low in such a short amount of time was something that shakes you. This stuff, this doesn't happen. This is stuff that people make up and- and put into a movie.
Gina: And digging through all of his cards I see um- the prayer card that has the St. Christopher prayer. And that's when just too many- too many loose ends were tied at that point that- St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers and I had been praying to St Christopher my whole way along. His penmanship was very much like my father's and my dad's birthday was May seventh. And its just all kind of coming to a head at that point I just can't take it, its too much. And Brandon is continuing to read and I'm starting to freak out. Um at that point I took his bag and I gathered up everything I could. I gathered up his glasses, his shoes, his jacket because in my mind that's somebody's dad and somebody's dad didn't come home. And it was just important to me that any of his family have his things. I can't think of anything but getting the hell out of there.
Brandon: Gina! Wait! Gina wait! Stop! Gina!
Gina: Its just a mess, we're loosing all sense of cool which we had maintained our composure the entire way and that was a breaking point.
Brandon: Gina!
Gina: And you know Brandon came up and grabbed me and said it "Breathe, just breathe. And settle. We have to settle." And you know, just that look in his eye I knew he was afraid for me. And we kinda just took a moment to maybe try to- try to gather ourselves a little bit. And all you can hear is just this rush of water.
Narrator: For Gina and Brandon the horror story they find themselves in is unrelenting.
Gina: What's...?
Brandon: What?
Gina: Just listen.
Again the water gets us every time.
That's a waterfall.
Brandon: Yeah. C'mon.
Gina: So we get closer we make our way back around some big trees that were close to the water. We make our way
around. And that's where we see the gorge that John had talked about. We were stuck, we were completely stuck. He had the maps, he had the compass he had everything. He couldn't get out. So how the hell are we?
Narrator: Stranded on a mountain, Brandon Day and Gina Allen find an abandoned campsite and a missing hiker's diary containing the hiker's last words. And now they've just discovered why.
Brandon: And then we see what he had written about there was just a 140-150 ft waterfall and no way to get around it. At this point it's sinking in we can't walk our way out, we're trapped.
Gina: To know something so beautiful was so dangerous is just so hard to put into words. That feeling of seeing all of this tremendous beauty and I'm stuck.
Narrator: They thought the river would be their escape route instead it's lead them into a trap. Now after two days struggling against fear they were losing the battle.
Gina: At that point we knew we were not getting out. There's no way. There's no way we can get out. This man was prepared. He had everything he needed, we were not prepared for anything we just had on our running shoes. We had chapstick, a digital camera, sunscreen and running shoes. And this man was prepared and he couldn't get out. It just- its very defeating, very defeating.
Narrator: But the missing hiker, John Donovan has left Brandon and Gina a life line.
Brandon: Yes! Matches! I think they still work!
Gina: I don't know we missed it. That throughout all of his things bag inside a bag inside a bag inside a bag, he had another little bag of wooden strike anywhere matches that were still dry. By some miracle they were still dry. And uh, we decided okay let's start making a fire.
What's that noise?
Brandon: Fire?
Gina: No that!
Brandon: What?
Gina: Its a helicopter.
Brandon: Its the waterfall, I know its the waterfall.
Gina: Its a helicopter!
Both: HEY! HEY! *yelling*
Gina: Are you serious?
Narrator: The young couple had no idea if the helicopter was carrying tourists or searching for them Whatever the case, Brandon and Gina might have just missed their only chance of being rescued.
Gina: That night we were alone. It was the one night that we weren't side by side. We slept a good- Well I say slept- we rested a good 10-15 feet away from each other. He did his thing and I did mine. You would think at that point you'd need each other even more so than you ever would but we didn't and I don't understand that. That point is when I started to really lose my faith. I lost hope and I lost faith that um, that we really weren't going to get out. At that point I started letting go just resigning all hope and accepting it and realizing it's okay. But I had spoken to my mom and I had spoken to my sister, I had spoken to my best friend and it was okay. I had spoken to everyone that I love in the last few days and it's okay. Its okay that I- Its okay that I don't come home.
(got to 34:29)
DAY 4
Brandon: Tuesday morning, we felt by far the worst we'd felt since we'd been out there and just, just standing up from a crouched position was difficult.
Narrator: Over four days the young couples physical resilience has driven them on, but not any longer. Although they now have a means to collect water starvation is having a dramatic effect on their health.
Brandon: Our bodies are starting to tell us that they don't have much more. We had turned some type of a physical corner and it was down hill.
Narrator: But at the river he makes a chilling discovery, a discovery that confirms his worst fears.
For four days Gina Allen and Brandon Day are trapped in the same remote mountain range as missing hiker, John Donovan. Exactly what happened to John has been a mystery, until now.
Brandon: I think, really, maybe part of me knew what it was, but the other part of me didn't want to know, at least not at that time.
Narrator: For Brandon, the discovery of John Donovan's body is the last straw.
Brandon: That's when I made the decision I'm going to light the whole damn place on fire, the whole place. We only have so many matches we don't know how many times, if any, we will see another helicopter, so this was our last bullet, this was our last shot.
(Whispers) C'mon c'mon, yes...
And it took, much faster than I anticipated, I made sure the fire caught and within 60 seconds it's a large fire and getting larger.
Gina: Brandon?... Brandon?... BRANDON?
To see the fire and the smoke and not see him, I'm, I'm loosing it again, I'm I'm like running around on this rock trying to get any vantage point I can see, to see if I can find him anywhere in there.
Brandon, where are you? Brandon?
And finally I see his little, his little head moving through, through the mess and the flames are getting bigger, and I'm just hurry up, get up here, get to me.
Brandon hurry, faster, run run Brandon c'mon, Brandon Brandon hurry hurry
Brandon: I'm ok
It burned for about 45 minutes or so, ah, it produced a great deal of smoke, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and thought was I mean they have to see this, if they don't see this, what next. We just kept putting our hope into this, this was kind of our, this was our last shot.
And we uh watched the fire begin to smoulder and eventually wasn't putting out near the same smoke. It basically burnt itself out.
And now about an hour's gone and we still don't hear anything, we don't see anything and so the thoughts start to creep in both of our minds, that was our best shot, what are we going to do next?
I'd always try to be positive, that we were going to find away out, there's going to be a search for us, there's going to be something, we just have to keep ourselves safe and we'll be fine, but now here we are in a spot where we know somebody has died and what are we going to do?
You know, a lot of things run through your mind, when you're really faced, with you know, this could be it.
And, and, it was the most beautiful sound we'd ever heard, coming up from the valley floor, was the sound of a helicopter...
I think, uh, we both would've cried it we had tears, but we both were so dehydrated that we didn't have enough moisture in our body to come up with tears, the pure joy of knowing you're we're going to make it out.
Gina: We were just, we were hugging and kissing, and it's just, we know we're going home, it's just such a feeling of just pure just joy that I don't even know how to formulate the words.
And I remember turning to him and saying, 'you saved my life' cause he lit that fire, and if he hadn't lit it, I don't know, I hate to even think I don't let myself think, I don't go there.
Brandon: We are just so thankful to John Donovan, for you know his sacrifice and you know his last action, even not being on this earth anymore was helping two people. So um, certain people just have a way of leaving their mark.
Narrator: John Donvan's remains were recovered three weeks later, the navy veteran was buried with full military honours.
Gina and Brandon stayed together for two years after the ordeal, and then separated.
Go online for an in depth look at more extreme stories of survival you don't want to miss, visit animalsurvival.com/isba
