“An outing in the mountains can be many things — fabulous, pleasant, unpleasant, harrowing, or disastrous,” outdoor writer John W. Robinson wrote in his “San Bernardino Mountain Trails” guide.

And for 60 years, people experiencing disasters in those mountains often were saved by members of the San Gorgonio Search and Rescue Team — currently a group of 55 volunteers that handles calls for a rugged patch of high country that includes 11,500-foot Mount San Gorgonio.

The rescue team, one of several volunteer groups that help first responders in San Bernardino County with mountain and desert searches, rescues, recoveries and other duties, started in 1958 after a tragic hiker death above what is now Forest Falls. The event was book-ended this year with a successful rescue at the same site.

Skills among rescue-team members include first-aid, mountaineering and technical climbing, as well as rigging basket litters for rescues, abilities to navigate in the back country, and reach locations in ice, snow, rain or heat or in the dark. Volunteers provide their own equipment.

They also participate in safety-education programs, and they helped with evacuations for the recent Valley Fire near Forest Falls.

“When I call them at 2 in the morning and say I need them, I get them,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Franklin, the group’s coordinator. He said he has heard members call clients on satellite phones from the back country to re-arrange business meetings.

Tragedy sparks creation

In February 1958, Donald Burns, 13, identified as a Colton Junior High student in news accounts, fell down the face of Big Falls and landed on an icy ledge above what was then called Fallsvale.

He could not be reached, but those who tried during the next 24 hours said there were signs of life. Burns had survived the fall.

San Bernardino County Sheriff Frank Bland called for help from nearby Norton and March Air Force bases, as well as his own deputies, and put in a request to the Los Angeles County Sheriff for aid from the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team.

But time was essential, and Burns ran out of it.

“Thirty hours after the boy had fallen, a Sierra Madre rescue member knelt beside the boy on a narrow ledge of the sheer cliff of Big Falls and radioed just one word to the rescuers on theledges above, ‘Negative.’ ” Bland wrote in a June 1959 article for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

“This tragedy prompted immediate action to preclude a repetition. It was decided that an expert crew of trained mountain men on call at all times for emergency rescue missions … would have to be organized,” Bland wrote in the vernacular of the day.

On Sept. 2, a Forest Falls resident heard calls for help. A 15-year-old Fontana boy was badly injured at Big Falls, unable to help himself, and could not be reached by helicopter.

Members of the San Gorgonio Search and Rescue Team used ropes to reach the hiker, then stabilized him, and lowered him several hundred feet down the face of the waterfall to an ambulance that took him to Loma Linda University Medical Center. He was badly injured with multiple fractures.

But he was expected to make a full recovery, Franklin wrote in an account of the incident.

The mountain rope skills are part of the team’s legacy. It has never lost its certification for rope climbing since its inception, he said.

Franklin said members are mindful of the successful Big Falls rescue two months ago that mirrored the 1958 episode except for the outcome.

“They are here to make a difference,” he said of the team members.

A different team in the 21st Century

In his FBI article, Bland described a rigorous shakeout for the team’s first members — “Volunteers were bluntly advised that if they were over 30 years of age or had a family, they should not consider training for the rescue unit.”

The modern version still includes several steps of training, qualifications and physical fitness endurance before a volunteer can fully join the team, Franklin said in a recent telephone interview.

But the “mountain men” tag no longer applies, nor the under-30 age restriction.

“It would be very tough to characterize the volunteer search and rescue members. They are women and men, mixed in age.The only thing consistent in all of them is their heart,” said Franklin, whose wife, Barra, is a team member. Son Shane is the group’s current commander, and another son, Jake, has been on the team. Franklin was a rescue-team volunteer for 16 years before he became a deputy.

The San Gorgonio Search and Rescue Team’s liaison with the San Bernardino County Sheriff is based at the Yucaipa station. In addition to Mount San Gorgonio and Big Falls, the general territory for the team includes the San Gorgonio Wilderness, Santa Ana River drainage and Barton Flats.

They also help other search and rescue teams in Southern California, Franklin said. Their volunteer work includes talking to schoolchildren and civic organizations about outdoor safety.

The hazards of its assigned area, including the tall peak of Mount San Gorgonio, has put the team in the news over the decades.

It recovered the bodies of Frank Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, and three others in 1977 after her chartered jet crashed into Mount San Gorgonio while en route to Las Vegas.

On that same mountain in 1987, the team helped recover California Air National Guard Capt. Dean Paul Martin, son of entertainer Dean Martin, and Capt. Ramon Ortiz after both men died in the crash of the F-4C Phantom that Martin was piloting. Ortiz was the weapons officer.

There is less attention when the team rescues, rather than recovers.

Franklin is confident its members have saved hundreds of lives and performed thousands of rescues over the decades, the numbers pushed up by the team’s first decade, when it answered far more calls than now.

The team now averages about 50 calls a year, “but back in the day, when they first started, they had a lot more because there were no fire (department) responses for rescues and falls,” he said.

If a vehicle went over the side of Highway 38, it was the search and rescue team that got the call, Franklin said.

He said 100 calls a year was more typical during that period.

The team has lost two members in action — Scott Johnston and Phil Calvert died in 2004 when a drunken driver struck their car while they were heading to search for a missing hiker.

The volunteers’ encounters with the people they help is often brief, with no time for anything but the rescue, Franklin said.

“Many times the victim is treated and flown off by helicopter, and they don’t see them again.” But “they have that inner drive to help the community,” he said of the volunteers.

San Bernardino County is the nation’s largest with more than 20,000 square miles, including desert, mountains, passes and wilderness.

“There is no way any government agency could provide the search and rescue service that the volunteers do,” Franklin said. “There is not enough taxpayer money to do that.”

Read all about it:

“San Gorgonio Search and Rescue Team,” by Bob Lehmann and Bob Blanck, part of the Images of America series, was released in 2008 to coincide with the team’s 50th anniversary.