Staying safe on LA's hiking trails, Latino owned businesses thrive in US economy, ‘LA LA Land’ dance classes

Always, number one: have a plan. Have a plan as far as having enough time in the day. A lot of people might start too late in the day and they end up in the darkness. They're not ready for it and don't have a flashlight. So, it's always good to be conservative in your plan and in your estimation of your own ability. 



Tell someone a plan and stick to the plan. It's not going to do any good if you change your mind halfway up the mountain after you've already told someone you're going to go hike some other place.

If you Google "LA Sheriff Hiking Plan," the very first thing that comes up is a two-page document that we designed specifically to help us find someone should they get lost. This is a two-page document that you could give to a loved one or family member. 



A lot of guidebooks are out of date. The most current information usually is found on social media. There's also websites you can go on to verify the trail status. But social media has caused a resurgence of interest in our local waterfalls and hiking areas. Before you go, it's always good to read reviews, and you'll get an idea of how difficult the trail is that way. 



The problems come when they post video of them jumping off a waterfall and, let's say, that video is three months old. Well now, that waterfall may be a trickle so that pool they jumped into could have been 10 feet deep. It's now 4 feet deep. So, people get hurt. 

Ninety-five percent of people we go out looking for are men out by themselves. So that's a big problem, going out hiking by yourself. Because if someone's with you, they can assist you if you get hurt, or go for help. 



Local areas like in the Hollywood Hills or the Santa Monica Mountains, you could go running on trails that are very well established and well trafficked, so you wouldn't be out in the middle of nowhere necessarily. But I don't suggest that. 

There is a thing called the 10 Essentials. That's designed for keeping yourself warm, being able to signal a helicopter.... Basically, plan for the worst and just assume you may have to be out there overnight, which means taking some type of a jacket. Take enough food. There are millions of energy bars out there that could sustain you overnight. 



Because of the increased coverage areas that we have, we're able to send our subjects a text message from a search-and-rescue app. All they have to do is click on it, and we will get their exact location and GPS coordinates. And we find about 20 percent of our missing persons based on our cellphone technology.



But the bottom line is, if you're hiking along and you come across some snow, and you don't have an ice axe and you don't have crampons, turn around. Some people think that if they have it inside their pack and they think that's enough. But if you're not using it, it's not going to help you. 

LA County Sheriff's Department winter rescue

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Courtesy of the LA County Sheriffs Department

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One of the most difficult searches we get is a call for a missing hunter, because hunters do not follow trails, hunters follow game. Anyone going off-trail has just reduced their chances of us finding them. We are trained in tracking, so we will track people from their car into the forest. But once you go off trail, it becomes much more difficult. 

I always tell people all the time, if you're going to get lost, do it in Los Angeles County. Because in Los Angeles County, you're going to have rescue teams racing to find you. You're going to have the sheriff's Air Rescue 5 coming to look for you. You're going to have the Forest Service and you're probably going to have the fire department. You're going to have multiple agencies coming to look for you, so the best thing you can do is stay put. Don't try and find your way back thinking you might come across the trail, because that's likely not going to happen and you'll end up further and further into the forest. Staying put is the most important thing.



Creating some type of shelter to keep you warm, because hypothermia is the number one thing that is going to immediately impact you. Once you've done those things, make yourself visible from the air. Whether that's bright clothing, or taking some tree limbs and forming letters in the trail. Anything that is not naturally occurring will pop out to an air crew that's looking for you.



If you sprain an ankle, don't try and walk out with it. Stay put. And if you've done the things like having a plan and telling someone the plan, someone should be making a phone call once you're delayed in coming home.

Courtesy of the LA County Sheriffs Department rescue at altitude

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Courtesy of the LA County Sheriffs Department

)

"If we go back 10,000 years ago, almost every agricultural community in the world was eating something different. But slowly ... through time, people figured out things that you can grow more of. That started to be coupled with transport. We're now sort of in the pinnacle of that progression, but the version we have today is really pretty astonishing. We can package things out from almost any place in the world and ship them to your dinner table because we've figured out how to make that a cheap thing."

"You think about what you eat ... you probably think about, 'Well there's the green stuff around the edge. That's pretty varied.' But I think the reality is the vast majority of our calories are not coming from those whole foods around the edge; they're coming from processed foods. And those processed foods really are very, very few things. And we sort of combine them in every possible way."

"Fewer people are hungry right now as a proportion of the global population than at any other moment in history. [But] because we depend on so few of these crops, what happens to them matters a lot. When we farm to produce as much as we can, those are almost always the same variety and so the problem that sets up is if you're a pathogen and you can figure out a way to eat one of those crops, you've discovered the holy land. You can eat from one end of a field to the other end of the country. That sets up this race between us and the pests and pathogens and it's really sped it up dramatically."