Mendocino hiker is back on the Pacific Crest Trail after rescue

Days after being rescued by helicopter while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, a Mendocino man set off again Wednesday recharged and ready to trek 1,100 more miles to the Oregon border.

Charles Brandenburg, 55, who was forced to summon help last week after becoming overheated and dehydrated, had to wait even longer when two search and rescue volunteers who were bringing him water were robbed of their radios by two gunmen along the trail.

Brandenburg, a veteran hiker, said he ran into trouble on the popular hiking trail between Mexico and Canada when temperatures spiked and he ran low on water in the mountains between Mojave and Tehachapi.

“It was 110 (degrees). It took everything out of me,” he said, adding that he was down to less than a cup of water. His silver, reflective umbrella and the sparse vegetation provided no respite from searing heat.

Brandenburg decided to activate a rescue device that allows him to send text messages to authorities.

“Normally I would have waited it out, but I hadn't seen people for two days. I went ahead and pushed my SOS button,” he said in a telephone interview from a Sierra Nevada camp, where he went to resume his journey.

Initially, Kern County sheriff's officials said rescuers would bring water to him within a few hours. But that changed after two search and rescue team members coming to his aid went down a wrong trail and were held at gunpoint by two men who took their equipment and escorted them out of the area.

Brandenburg had to wait until that evening before sheriff's rescuers finally reached him. Fortunately, several others hikers encountered him before that and shared their water.

“I would have probably not made it. It would have been close. It was super hot,” Brandenburg said, adding that by the time the helicopter arrived, another hiker who had joined him was also showing signs of distress from the heat, cramping and vomiting.

A Kern County Sheriff's spokesman said Wednesday that the two armed men were still at large and the investigation was ongoing.

Senior Deputy Tommy Robbins said it's very possible the pair may have been guarding an illegal marijuana grow, but he wasn't aware of any in the area.

The two armed men were the subject of a manhunt with SWAT team members that briefly closed down a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail before it reopened Monday.

Brandenburg's ordeal and the robbery of the search and rescue workers made national news, as it's extremely rare for rescuers to be assaulted. But last year, a volunteer rescuer searching for a missing hiker was shot and wounded in Northern California near the South Yuba River.

Brandenburg, who owns Didjeridoo Dreamtime Inn, a Mendocino bed-and-breakfast, and Mendocino Peace Pipes, which makes wooden pipes for smoking cannabis, considers himself an experienced hiker.

Last year, he spent more than two months hiking the Annapurna Trail in Nepal, which involved crossing the Thorong La mountain pass at more than 17,700 feet.

Brandenburg said he'd been wanting to hike the Pacific Crest Trail since he was 11 years old and heard about it from a motivational speaker - Eric Ryback, the first to complete the 2,650-mile trek in 1970 - who came to his school.

Brandenburg set off on the Pacific Crest Trail on April 30 near the Mexican border, hiking northward for almost 600 miles over six to seven weeks, when he decided to take a break near Mojave.

Not only would a hiatus help him wait out the melting snow pack and raging rivers and streams that have made hiking the Sierra Nevada portion more hazardous this year, but “I've found I really miss my wife too much to think about being away another four months,” he said in a Facebook post.

After a return to Mendocino to his wife, Mary, and a three-week break from the trail, he headed back on a bus last week to pick up where he'd left off.

On July 6, he hiked 19 miles on a 100-degree day and had no trouble. The next day, he hiked the same distance with about the same elevation gain, but the mercury jumped to 110.

“The second night I was a little dehydrated,” he said.

His plan was to get up early to make it 9 miles to the next water stop. But at 4:30 a.m., it was already 90 degrees and he was down to less than a cup of water.

He only made it a few miles.

“I sheltered in place,” he said, but the torrid, escalating heat was too much.

After activating his emergency device to summon authorities, two hikers happened by with extra water.

“They had me drink one liter. It made me pretty much better,” he said. Then another hiker joined them.

“We were trying to stay out of the sun. We really had very little shade,” he said. “It was high sun, little trees, not like our redwoods at home.”

It was in the afternoon, he said, that the sheriff's official sent a text “that his men had been robbed at gunpoint on the trail and that we should all sit tight” until more help arrived.

Brandenburg said the helicopter took turns ferrying him and the hikers who were with him out. He finally touched down to safety at around 8:30 p.m.

Over the next couple of days he made his way by bus and hitchhiking to Kennedy Meadows, at 6,500 feet elevation and about 50 miles north of where he left off on the Pacific Crest Trail. The wayfaring spot was featured in the movie “Wild” starring Reese Witherspoon, based on Cheryl Strayed's 2012 memoir about hiking the trail solo.

In a phone interview from the general store where hikers stop to get supplies and have packages mailed to them, Brandenburg said he was ready for the next phase of the journey.

“I'm all good now. I will be heading into the High Sierra tomorrow,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

Brandenburg expects to reach Oregon by early September before hanging it up for the year and coming back in 2018.

“It's hours sometimes of misery, but then there's times of bliss,” he said of the appeal of backpacking, adding that when it's right, “you feel perfect, and you are in the most beautiful places in the world.”