A search for a lost hiker on Angeles Crest Highway turned into a race against a motorcyclist's severe blood loss on September 27, when Montrose Search & Rescue volunteers already deployed to find the missing man were among the first to reach a crash scene just miles away. The motorcyclist suffered a partially amputated leg and was losing blood fast. Rescuers applied a tourniquet, and a Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter got him to a hospital within minutes.
The chain of events began when the Montrose team responded to an iPhone SOS message sent by a solo hiker stranded on Angeles Crest Highway, according to CBS News. The hiker told rescuers he had set out that morning from Sierra Madre, but by the time crews mobilized he had been hiking for more than 12 hours and was lost roughly 15 miles from where he believed himself to be. Montrose deployed three units to track him down.
While those units searched, a motorcyclist collided with a car about five miles ahead of the rescue team along the same highway, per the outlet's reporting. Volunteers Mike Leum and Sean Morrisroe were the first to arrive at that crash scene, which the report describes as very dark and chaotic, with debris scattered across the road.
A Tourniquet Against the Clock
Leum and Morrisroe found the motorcyclist suffering from a partially amputated leg and severe blood loss. They applied a tourniquet on the spot, a step the station's report credits with preventing potentially worse consequences from the extreme bleeding. The motorcyclist needed emergency care within less than 15 minutes, and a Los Angeles County Fire Department crew would otherwise have been responding from 35 minutes away.
Montrose Search & Rescue instead called in the Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter directly, and the aircraft flew the motorcyclist to a hospital in just four minutes, according to the same account. Leum said the hiker's SOS activation had put rescuers in position to save the motorcyclist, while fellow rescuer Jay Balagna described the team's proximity to both emergencies as miraculous.
Conflicting Details on Timing and Location
Accounts of exactly when and where the crash happened do not line up. A separate report from Local Accident Reports states the collision was reported shortly before 7 p.m. near mile marker 38, about a half-mile before Mount Wilson, and says it involved two vehicles and a motorcycle, shutting down the highway's northbound lanes near Mount Wilson Red Box Road. That outlet also reported that Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel requested the helicopter and directed it to a landing zone near mile marker 37.5, close to a turnout.
A separate CBS News report, however, placed the crash a little after 8:45 a.m. near Mile Marker 37.11, just south of Mount Wilson. That account adds that California Highway Patrol officers found the rider on the ground bleeding from the nose, and that Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department crews airlifted him to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, with his condition not immediately known. The discrepancies in time and location have not been resolved.
Lost Hiker Found Dehydrated but Safe
Search-and-rescue teams eventually located the lost hiker off Rincon Red Box Fire Road. He was found dehydrated but otherwise fine after activating the rescue response through SOS 911. A separate iPhone feature, Crash Detection, notified authorities about an August 2025 car crash in Altadena that plunged roughly 1,000 feet off Angeles Crest Highway, an incident covered by ABC7 Los Angeles.
A Small, Round-the-Clock Volunteer Force
Montrose Search & Rescue is a nonprofit affiliate of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department founded in 1947, now made up of 25 volunteers certified as EMTs and mountain rescuers who remain on call 24/7, according to Road & Track. The team covers roughly 500 square miles of the Angeles National Forest, terrain that regularly produces both wilderness emergencies and highway crashes along the winding Angeles Crest corridor.
The outlet's earlier reporting on a December 2024 single-car crash involving an orange Porsche 911 GT3 RS described Montrose rescuers getting that victim up to the roadway in about 15 minutes and to an emergency room within another ten. Angeles Crest Highway's history includes other serious incidents involving the same rescue organization; a 2007 report from the Los Angeles Times described a fatal crash in which a motorcycle collided head-on with a Montrose Search and Rescue Team vehicle. Local Accident Reports also notes that statewide motorcycle fatalities fell from 649 in 2022 to 583 in 2023, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety, even as the road's steep grades and tight curves continue to test riders and rescuers alike.
