Four energy bars and stream water.

That's all Eric DeSplinter, an Iowa native, and his hiking partner, Gabrielle Wallace, had for sustenance for four-plus days while they were missing in the San Gabriel Mountains in California.

"One of us would say something like, 'We're not gonna make it out,' and the other person would pump the other one up," DeSplinter, an experienced hiker, said Saturday, about a week after his terrifying adventure began.

"There were other times where we thought that we were screwed, and it was most likely that we weren’t gonna make it out alive. Those times were a little tougher."

The two had planned a hiking trip to reach Cucamonga Peak in southern California. The journey would span 4,000 feet of elevation and take about 10 hours.

Instead, a fall near the summit changed their plan and they were in the mountains for five days, with hardly any food, and hiked more than 20 miles in search of safety.

"There was a real danger of ‘Get down or you’re going to die,'" said DeSplinter, formerly of Johnston and a National Guard veteran who served about a year in Afghanistan.

DeSplinter, 33, and Wallace, 31, were rescued via helicopter Wednesday night after being reported missing the previous Saturday.

When discovered, they were stuck between two waterfalls, each about 20 feet high. The aircraft was just 10 feet from trees and rocks during the mission, according to the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department.

Their hiking trip was derailed near Cucamonga's peak on April 6, when Wallace slipped on ice, sliding more than 100 feet and landing in mountainside brush, DeSplinter said. She was injured, with cuts to her leg and hands.

The two looked for a safe place to call for a ride back instead of continuing to the top.

"We looked down and saw if we descended 200 feet, we can get into a dry valley and it was just walking down large boulders and rocks," DeSplinter said. "So we thought, instead of having to go back on the snow and ice where we might have another slip… the easiest path would be just to go down through that canyon."

It proved a far more difficult trek, and the two found themselves rock-climbing in the mountains and the surrounding area for the better part of four days, with no cellphone service to alert friends or family of their whereabouts.

DeSplinter said he expected to get out of the mountains without any help, even after Wallace's fall and the plan to climb down the Upper Cucamonga Canyon. That canyon — which neither had previously hiked — has an elevation gain of 2,800 feet that takes about 13.5 hours to traverse, according to a webpage on the California Institute of Technology's website.

“We didn’t anticipate that we were gonna be rescued. At the end of Day One, we knew where we needed to go — and we were gonna do it," he said.

Day 2: 'Going the wrong direction'

The duo set out to complete their plan to climb down the canyon into the valley Sunday morning. A search-and-rescue team wouldn't be necessary, DeSplinter thought, if they could just get down the Upper Cucamonga Canyon.

Back in Iowa, Desplinter's family were just becoming aware of his predicament. His older sister, Nikki Deardorff, said her mother found out at about noon Sunday that Eric hadn't returned from the hike.

Karen Ziebarth and her daughter didn't talk about it, but understood what needed to be done.

Deardorff put her mother and brother, Tim, on the first flight she could to California, while she tended to her own children and worked at her mom’s business.

Back in California, DeSplinter and Wallace were hearing the sounds of helicopters, unsure if a search had been put together.

It had been only one day.

But by then, the fruits and snacks DeSplinter had brought for the original 10-hour trip were gone, save those four energy bars. All the filtered water the two had brought with them had been consumed, as well. For the next three-plus days, they would fill their jugs with stream water and filter it, using a LifeStraw.

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To make matter worse, they became lost while trying to reach the bottom of the canyon.

“We thought we were going the wrong direction and had to go back up the canyon," he said of that Sunday. "So Day Two was actually spent … trying to get back to the point where Gabrielle fell so we could descend down the way we came up on Day One.”

But once they neared that point at the end of Day Two, they realized they were going the right way originally. An odd-flowing river had confused the situation.

"It was extremely unlucky that that’s the place that we stopped and we checked the compass," he said. "That was the one place in the canyon that the river did a 180 and, for a slight moment was actually flowing to the north."

They started back down the canyon but couldn't get far before nightfall. As temperatures dipped Sunday, the pair readied for another night in the mountains.

Day 3: 'Give the rescuers a better chance to find us'

On Monday, DeSplinter and Wallace stayed put.

“We started to descend, but our bodies were pretty beat up and tired, and our feet were really beat up," DeSplinter recalled. "We thought, since we had a near-miss with a helicopter on Night Two, it might be easiest if we can wait here in a nice, open valley.

"Give the rescuers a better chance to find us."

By Monday, DeSplinter's mother and brother had arrived in the nearby unincorporated community of Mount Baldy, California, and were greeted warmly by people who lived in the area. The number of volunteers and responders from six counties gave them hope.

"Morale was high. The locals were providing so much heartfelt support for my mom and my brother," Deardorff said. "It was so uplifting to know that these strangers who don't even know (DeSplinter and Wallace) are giving everything to find people that we love.”

But those feelings of optimism weren't being felt by the two still on the mountain. The day came and went with no sight of helicopters.

"We decided, as a team, to take matters into our own hands," he said. “We weren’t too hopeful on the search and rescue at that point."

For Deardorff, the optimism of the day tapered as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. It was becoming hard not to imagine the worst.

"Day Three was, like, ‘Wow,’” because of all the support, she said. “My mom was, like, 'That the best day of all five days.'

"But as soon as the sun set and I called out there ... it was a 180-" degree turn.

Day 4: 'Desperate to find him'

Day Four kindled more fears for Eric's family. A dreary Tuesday replaced the sunny Monday full of activity at the mission control center at the Mount Baldy Fire Department. Fewer volunteers had shown up, and some of the rescue efforts were affected by the cloud cover.

"The weather was such a reflection of how my family was feeling on the mountain that day," Deardorff said. "Very desperate to find him.

"(DeSplinter's) so mentally strong, he's so physically strong, he has the ability to make the right decisions — you're just, like, 'What happened?'"

The situation was desperate for DeSplinter, too. They were determined to reach a better place to alert authorities or make it out of the canyon.

But that canyon has a level 3 rating, according to the American Canyoneering Association. A hike of that nature requires multiple rappels and could take a full day when done with the right tools, per the ACA formatting guidelines.

And DeSplinter and Wallace didn't have the equipment necessary to safely make it to the valley, he said.

The two encountered towering waterfalls and dangerous ledges that couldn't be scaled using just hands and feet on their way down. They had nothing but their clothes, a survival kit, lights and a signaling mirror.

They tied a makeshift rope from the jackets they were wearing to help them get down the more dangerous drops.

“It just continued to get more and more difficult," he said. "Then we came to a place where the canyon got extremely narrow, and it was just like a waterslide. You had to sit down on your butt, slide down, and you end up in a pool at the bottom.”

There, it looked like they were trapped. A waterfall upwards of 75 feet high was in front of them and the "waterslide," now impossible to climb up, was behind them. They went to the side of the waterfall and began to climb.

When they made it to the landing, they started a fire. After hearing the sounds of vehicles all day, they saw a helicopter. Could he have seen them?

"(We) signaled, he came over to us, circled us three times and he even stuck his head out the window," DeSplinter said. "At that point, we were very hopeful … we thought there was no way he could not have seen us."

But no one immediately returned. They had almost no food left, and now were wet and had even fewer clothes left than they set out with. They were losing hope.

"We were, like, 'There’s no way search and rescue's gonna find us if they didn’t see us on that one," DeSplinter said. "They’re not coming for us.'"

Day 5: 'Fear of the unknown'

By Wednesday, it had been five days since the pair had lost contact with their family and friends.

DeSplinter said the two are not rock climbers, but they decided they had to get to the bottom of the canyon if they were going to survive.

"It was the fear of the unknown," he said. "We didn’t know what more obstacles were down there, and we didn’t have a lifeline."

They pulled off some treacherous maneuvers near a waterfall, including scaling two "pretty vertical" drops that totaled 300 feet — about the height of a 30-story building — all without any safety equipment.

"This was definitely beyond what our comfort level was and what our abilities were," he said.

They discovered some ropes tied to trees, connected those to their jackets and made a rappel long enough to scale 40-foot drops.

Some of those jackets remain in the wilderness, DeSplinter said. They were too high for him to retrieve once they'd reached the valley floor.

That night, the two found an area to build a fire. Their signaling devices — a flash light, a mirror, glow sticks and a reflective blanket — were ready.

Shortly thereafter, a chopper appeared overhead. The pilot made contact.

Within a few hours, they were hoisted upward and taken to a helipad, where medical personnel were waiting for them.

Meanwhile, Deardorff was on her way to California. She had decided she had to be with her family, and had learned during a layover that search personnel had found footprints. As she was getting off the plane in California, she learned that her brother was alive.

“I think I cried more when I found out that he was alive rather than hearing the news of him being missing," she said. "The news of him being missing took my breath away. The news of him being alive that was true happiness.

"That's what true happiness is."

Her brother lost 12 pounds over the five days. Going half a week with extreme physical exertion and only energy bars to eat will do that to you.

DeSplinter is grateful for the rescuers, but said he thinks they could have made it out safely on their own within a day or two. He's researched the area more since getting back home and says they were near the end of their journey.

That's just like her brother, Deardorff said.

As for future hikes, DeSplinter said he may buy a beacon that would notify emergency services or other contacts of his location in case of a future mishap. Hikers should always consider taking more safety equipment than less when preparing for a trip, he said.

"Go into a situation assuming it’s not going to go as planned," he said. "You don’t have to necessarily plan for being out there for 60 days or something — you don’t want to carry 100 pounds of gear for a day hike — but have some sort of (backup strategy).

"Think of things that can go wrong and try to plan for them."

The veteran hiker said he'll be traversing that area of the mountains again to retrieve some of the items he and Wallace left behind, including the cellphone Wallace lost when she fell.

He was back in the mountains Sunday, his sister said.And, yes, in a couple of weeks, he said he plans to reach Cucamonga Peak.

Just don't be surprised if he brings a few more snacks along next time.

Follow the Register on Facebook and Twitter for more news. Tyler Davis can be contacted at 515-284-8378, tjdavis@dmreg.com or on Twitter @TDavisDMR.