Trapped California Hiker Rescued by Man and His Dog
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Comstock/Thinkstock(RIVERSIDE, Calif.) — A man who was out for a walk with his dog early Monday morning ended up rescuing a severely dehydrated hiker who had been trapped for days on Mount Rubidoux in California.
Raymond Llamas regularly hikes the area in Riverside, Calif., with his dog, Mole, for company.
On Monday, the year-old dog spotted something in the rocks.
“He likes to go look in the rocks, and he kind of pulled me over, pulling and crying, and I said, ‘What’s going on, boy?'” Llamas told ABC News Los Angeles station KABC-TV.
At first, Llamas feared it was a coyote lurking in the outcropping of rocks but, instead, he saw a man staring at him.
When Llamas asked the man if he needed help, he said the man replied, “I need water. Please don’t leave me.”
“So I gave him water from my backpack and in a minute he said, ‘You got more?’ So I [gave] more water,” Llamas said.
The man, 44, was caught between some rocks that had obscured him from view.
The man told Llamas that his name was Paul.
“He said he’d been there between four and six days with no food,” Llamas said.
Llamas and other hikers called police, and firefighters with the Riverside Fire Department’s Technical Rescue Team hiked to the location and pulled the man to safety.
“In talking to him, we think he came up here at nighttime. So we think he was unaware of his footing, slipped in between some rocks and slid down to the location where he was at,” said Capt. Bruce Vanderhorst of the Riverside Fire Department.
KABC reported that the hiker was recovering at Riverside Community Hospital.
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