It Was an Off-Road Truck Ride That Went Bump in the Night for 7 Teens : Accident: The youths were stranded overnight in Trabuco Canyon after their pickup skidded and took a nose-dive.

TRABUCO CANYON —  Sean Manary’s first instinct was to stay home Monday night. Several hours later, huddled with his friends in the back of a mangled pickup in Trabuco Canyon--hurt, cold and bewildered--Manary wished he had.

Manary, 19, of Orange and six friends had turned a late-night, off-road truck ride into more of an adventure than anyone had bargained for. While following the dirt pathway called Trabuco Creek Road near the edge of Cleveland National Forest about 11:30 p.m., the truck skidded on water, took a nose-dive into a ditch and stalled, stranding them in the dark wilderness.

Manary had been knocked unconscious for a while, and Candius Dossette, 15, of Orange suffered minor injuries. All seven teen-agers in the truck suffered bumps and bruises, but their biggest fear was the cold and dark.

For the next nine hours, until help finally arrived, the group huddled together in the back shell of the pickup, told stories and tried to stay warm. Like many of the others, Manary had been dressed only in jeans and a T-shirt, never thinking he would need to prepare himself for a cold canyon morning.

“I was scared and everyone thought I was hurt,” Manary said after being flown by helicopter to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. “All we could think about was daylight--when was it going to come.”

Daylight came before help, which finally arrived when a canyon resident and his children drove by in a Chevy Blazer, Manary said. He loaned them a blanket and contacted the Fire Department, which showed up minutes later from Station 18 in Trabuco Canyon.

Manary, a recent graduate of Orange High School, and Dossette, both of whom were riding in the back of the truck with two others, were flown separately to the hospital’s trauma center. Manary had a bruised back and ribs, while Dossette suffered back and neck pain.

Sitting in the warm and quiet of the hospital later, Manary could not help but think it could have been even worse. The seven friends had been “just off-road cruising,” laughing and having a good time until they skidded on a cement bridge and lost control.

“We hit a tree that stopped us from going into the creek,” he said. “Somebody said we did a couple of flips, but I don’t know. I was knocked out.”

He awoke in the back of the truck to the sounds of his friends groaning from their bruises, but everyone thought he was the most seriously hurt. “I was having trouble breathing; I knew I was hurting, but I didn’t really know how bad,” Manary said.

To pass the long hours of the night, the teen-agers took turns telling stories “about a one-armed man with a hook, stuff like that, until the girls got scared,” Manary said. But as the night grew later and colder they just huddled together, “sharing body warmth,” Manary said.

Trabuco Canyon has had several crashes lately, mainly attributed to the creeks teeming with water from the March rains, said Officer Greg Morehead of the California Highway Patrol.