Snowboarders Rescued After Overnight Ordeal

For the second time in three days, authorities rescued snowboarders Monday morning who allegedly strayed out of bounds at a Wrightwood ski resort and found overnight shelter from the cold in the same remote summer campsite restroom.

Brothers Michael Dunning, 14, and Andrew Dunning, 12, of Glendale survived freezing temperatures Sunday night by huddling in a restroom at the Cabin Flats campsite, 3,000 feet below where they were last seen.

The boys were dropped off at 10 a.m. at the resort and reported missing about 4 p.m. by their father, who was expecting to pick them up, authorities said.

The two youngsters, and a Canyon Country man who was reported missing Friday afternoon, had reportedly been snowboarding out of bounds on the opposite face of the Mountain High Resort.

All three found it impossible to get back up the mountain and were forced to continue down the steep slope, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials said.

The brothers were unhurt despite wearing only light snowboarding gear and enduring temperatures as low as 19 degrees and a wind-chill factor of minus-5 degrees, according to rescuers.

“If those kids had not sought shelter, it might have been a different outcome,” said Sgt. Vincent Burton of the Palmdale sheriff’s station. “There’s a good possibility they might have [died].”

The brothers’ ordeal came on the heels of a weekend rescue.

Charles Cetto, 22, was found Saturday by a sheriff’s helicopter at the same Cabin Flats campsite restroom after he had snowboarded too far down the mountain Friday to climb back up.

It was not the first time Cetto had snowboarded out of bounds, Sheriff’s Deputy David Miklos said. Several weekends before, Cetto had been expelled from Mountain High resort for the same behavior, the deputy said.

Before he was found, Cetto told rescuers, he stuffed his jacket with toilet paper to stay warm and ate raisins and snow.

“People have a total disregard for their safety,” said Miklos, who noted the resort’s boundaries are well marked. “They have an attitude that something like this couldn’t happen to them.”

In 1998, a 14-year-old snowboarder died of infections from injuries he sustained while stranded in the San Gabriel Mountains near Wrightwood during a winter storm.

In the search for the Dunning brothers, rescue teams followed tracks made by the boys, who traversed a canyon through the snow to make it down the slope.

They were spotted about 7 a.m. Monday waving frantically at a sheriff’s helicopter.

Their father, Clay Dunning, said Monday that his sons had nothing to eat on the mountain and were exhausted by the event.

The Sheriff’s Department was assisted by the Antelope Valley Search and Rescue Team and the San Bernardino County Fire Department.