As Mt. Baldy trails reopen, county sheriff slams feds' 'lack of concern' for visitor safety

As Mt. Baldy trails reopen, county sheriff slams feds' 'lack of concern' for visitor safety

Alex Wigglesworth

Thu, January 15, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

3 min read

SEAL BEACH CA. - JAN.11, 2013. A helicopter hovers along the Southern California coastline as a snow-dusted Mount Baldy provides a wintry background miles in the distance on a clear and blustery Friday morning, Jan. 11, 2013. Snowfall in Southern California mountains has snarled traffiic in the Grapevine while daytime temperatures along the coast dipped into the low 50s. — Mt. Baldy has claimed 23 lives in the last decade, with 345 search-and-rescue calls over the same period, according to the San Bernardino County sheriff. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Trails on Mt. Baldy reopened after the deaths of three hikers who fell from an ice-slicked ridge last month in what investigators believed to be two unrelated incidents.

That doesn’t mean conditions are safe, warned the agency responsible for handling rescues there: Snow, ice, limited visibility and the potential for sudden storms persist.

Twenty-three people have died on the mountain outside Los Angeles over the last decade, and crews have responded to 345 search-and-rescue calls on its slopes, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release that criticized the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the area, for not doing more to prevent injuries and deaths.

“The frequency of rescues our department is involved in annually, and the lack of concern for what’s happening on Mt. Baldy by those who are responsible for maintaining visitor’s safety needs to be addressed,” San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said in a statement. “For the last several years, our department has been trying to have the U.S. Forest Service more involved in keeping people safe while they recreate on Mt Baldy.”

Dicus said that he continued to meet with representatives from the agency and Congress to express his concerns. In the past, he’s called for the Forest Service to temporarily close the mountain during unsafe weather conditions, and to put in place a permitting process to track the number of hikers and educate them about the risks they face. San Bernardino County supervisors still support those measures, Supervisor Dawn Rowe said recently.

The Forest Service did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the sheriff’s statement. The agency said recently that it was evaluating a range of options to improve visitor safety as part of a visitor use management effort, and that it already shuts down trails when conditions warrant. “When considering closures, we must balance public safety with continued public access,” a spokesperson for the Forest Service’s Region 5 wrote in an email Jan. 6.

The Forest Service also said that signs warning of extreme weather conditions and recommending winter mountaineering gear and training are posted at several high-use recreation locations, including the trailheads for Icehouse Canyon, Bear Canyon and the Devil's Backbone, the steep ridgeline route where the hikers fell and died last month.

Instantly recognizable as the backdrop to the L.A. skyline, Mt. Baldy attracts both experienced hikers and novices to its picturesque alpine trails. Yet some of those trails, most notably the Devil's Backbone, can become deceptively difficult in the wintertime, transforming from moderate hikes into dangerous mountaineering routes that require specialized equipment and training.

Marcus Muench Casanova, a 19-year-old college student home on winter break, slipped and fell the afternoon of Dec. 29 as he hiked near the south-facing slope of Mt. Harwood days after winter storms dumped snow and rain that hardened into ice, his family said. While attempting to find him, search helicopters happened to spot the bodies of two other men, Juan Sarat Lopez, 37, and Bayron Pedro Ramos Garcia, 36, who had earlier been seen hiking together.

High winds initially prevented crews from hoisting the men up, but later that evening, investigators confirmed all three had died. They were believed to have fallen on the same day, along the same section of trail.

In the wake of the tragedy, Casanova’s parents spoke out to memorialize their son as an exceptionally kind and adventurous young man and to warn others of the dangers of hiking the trail in the winter without a helmet, ice axe and crampons.

The Sheriff’s Department urged anyone considering a hike on Mt. Baldy to “carefully assess conditions, carry appropriate gear, and understand their personal limits.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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