Lost Va. Hiker's Point of Despair
A Year After Adventurer Disappeared in Calif., A Couple Saved by His Campsite Also Uncover The Thoughts of a Man Preparing for the End

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006

The shaky handwriting in the margins of the hiking map was that of a desperate man, lost in the wilderness 2,600 miles from his Virginia home, out of energy and out of hope.

He was down to his last three crackers, he scribbled. He knew that nobody was looking for him. And he expected that here, alone in this treacherous gorge in California's San Jacinto Mountains, he was about to die.

His last entry was May 8, 2005. He packed his maps into his new orange and yellow backpack, along with his navy blue fleece and the Ziploc bag containing the Virginia driver's license that identified him as John Donovan, 60, of Petersburg. And then he vanished.

On Monday, exactly one year later, Brandon Day, 28, and his girlfriend, Gina Allen, 24, also lost, hungry and desperate, blundered into the same rugged gorge and, through John Donovan's apparent demise, found their survival.

The Dallas couple had wandered away on a nature outing and had been stumbling with no food, little sleep and flagging spirits for almost three days. They began following a stream, just as Donovan probably had the year before, and as they rounded a bend, they spotted a campsite in the distance.

They were ecstatic. Here, perhaps, was salvation. "Hello!" they called. "Is anybody here?" There was a green tarp spread over branches for shelter. There was a pair of tennis shoes and a black winter jacket on a rock. There was also an orange and yellow backpack.

But their calls were answered by silence, and as they examined the backpack, they saw that it was sodden, weathered and had been there for some time. When they looked inside, they found Donovan's journal and realized, to their dismay, that his fate might well be theirs.

But Donovan was a meticulous hiker. He shaved on the trail every day, and he had carefully stored a pack of matches in a waterproof bag. Day and Allen were rescued the next day after using his matches to start a signal fire that was spotted by rescue crews.

Yesterday, Day recounted the ordeal while friends of Donovan -- who has not been found -- recalled a joyous hiking companion whose trail name was "El Burro" because of his streak of stubbornness.

The story began last spring when Donovan, who friends said was single and a Navy veteran, turned 60 and retired as a counselor at Petersburg's Central State Hospital. A dedicated and experienced hiker, he had logged thousands of miles on the Appalachian Trail and was a longtime member of the Richmond-based Old Dominion Appalachian Trail Club. He had two trail names: "Seabreeze," whose origin, one friend said, was unknown, and El Burro.

"Everybody knew him," hiking colleague Coleen Kenny said yesterday. "He had a laugh that you could hear across the room. He just had a personality that drew people in. He was single all his life, but he had more friends than anybody I knew."

His hiking friends were his family, she said.

He was also a spiritual man, she said, although not a churchgoer.

Last spring, he decided to hike the bulk of the Pacific Crest Trail, a majestic, often mountainous 2,650-mile route that goes from northern Mexico to Canada. He planned to start in Mexico and hike to Oregon.

"It was just like, 'I'm retired. I'm turning 60,' " Kenny said. "It was just a dream. . . . As a long-distance hiker, it's 'Can I do it or not?' "

Before he left, he gave Kenny, who was to be his contact while he was on his trek, a San Cristobal candle that bore a prayer for travelers. He asked her to light the candle and pray for him on his journey. "I did it a few times," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Glen Allen, Va. "I did keep him in mind. I didn't always light the candle, but I always prayed for him."

Donovan began hiking the trail in northern Mexico on April 22, 2005, investigators said at the time, and was last seen May 3, 2005, near a remote spot in the forest called Saddle Junction, where the northbound Pacific Crest is crossed by the Devil's Slide trail. He had covered 178 miles.

The area is about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles and about 30 miles south of Palm Springs.

"Through" hiking the Pacific trail can be tricky, according to Patrick McCurdy of the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit, which searched for Donovan. Leave too early, and you can encounter spring snow, he said. Leave too late, and you can encounter bad autumn weather.

Last year, there had been record-setting snow in the San Jacinto Mountains, and an early May snowstorm struck just as Donovan was passing through, McCurdy said.

When word reached Virginia in mid-May that Donovan had not been heard from in a while, Kenny phoned several rural post offices along the trail where she knew Donovan had mailed packages to. When she learned that he had not picked them up, she alerted authorities.

Searches were launched, McCurdy said in a telephone interview Wednesday, but no trace of Donovan was found. Back home, his hiking friends mourned for him and held memorial services. Summer, fall and winter passed. And in California, whenever members of the Riverside rescue team headed into the area, they were always told: "Keep an eye out for John." A broad-based search for Donovan is planned for this weekend.

On Saturday, Day and Allen, who were attending a convention in Palm Springs, took a tram up into the mountains, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. It was about 2 p.m. "We weren't planning a hike," Day said by phone from California. "We were just there for a one-hour little nature walk."

But they soon became lost, and without food and appropriate clothing, wandered deeper and deeper into the wilderness. They huddled together at night for warmth and got little sleep. On Monday afternoon, tracing a stream, they spotted Donovan's last camp. Day said they had not been aware of his disappearance.

Among the other items, there was a fork and spoon and shaving razor around. "This was the first human contact we had in 60 hours," Day said. "So we're thinking, 'Great. Somebody can help us.' " Moving closer, they realized that the site was abandoned. "It was kind of an eerie moment," he said.

They rummaged in the backpack and found Donovan's writings. Allen noticed the day of the final entry.

"This is dated today," she said.

"But that's '05," Day replied.

"That's when it hit us," he said.

"That last journal entry was him talking about [how] nobody knew where to look for him, basically his last words that he was preparing for his demise," Day said. Donovan wrote that he had become trapped in the gorge, just as Day and Allen had. "He was running out of food . . . preparing for the end, and had some regrets."

Day did not want to be too specific, "out of respect for a guy who helped save our lives." The writing covered the margins of several maps, he said. And there were about a dozen entries.

"I didn't want to read everything," he said. "I'd read enough to know what had happened. I didn't want it to happen to us."

The pack also contained wet socks and the fleece, which the couple dried in the sun, and over-the-counter painkilling medicine. There was also a corroded radio and flashlight. Donovan's identification documents were in the Ziploc bag. So were the matches.

The reality of what Day and Allen found hit them hard.

"We definitely knew that we were looking at somebody's grave," Day said. "The thought was, 'Is this going to be our grave?' "