Officials have identified one of the three hikers found dead on Mt. Baldy this week as 19-year-old Marcus Muench Casanova of Seal Beach.
Casanova fell 500 feet on Monday while hiking Devil’s Backbone, a sharp ridge with steep drops on either side, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
Two other hikers were then spotted on the mountainside by a helicopter sent to rescue Casanova, but crews were unable to conduct the operation due to high winds, officials said. An airship later lowered a medic, who found that all three men had died. A sheriff’s air rescue team recovered the bodies at about 2 p.m. the following afternoon.
The identities of the two other men have not been released. Investigators said they were not hiking with Casanova, and it’s unclear when they died, how long they were on the mountain or whether they were reported missing prior to the discovery.
The hikers’ deaths have reverberated through the Southern California hiking community, where outdoors enthusiasts found themselves explaining, in online forums and to reporters in phone interviews, the dual nature of conditions on Mt. Baldy as observers speculate about what could have happened to each of the hikers.
Officials have not provided any details on what they think caused Casanova to fall or how the other two bodies ended up in the area.
In general terms, the climb to the top of Mt. Baldy is considered an entry-level mountaineering experience during warmer weather but dangerous during the winter, said Kyle Fordham, a 36-year-old hiker from Lakewood who has summited the highest peak in Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains at least 10 times — twice in snowy conditions.
The mountain’s close proximity to Los Angeles, coupled with social media content promoting the hike, encourages inexperienced adventurers, Fordham said, with “zero regard to the actual danger they’re putting themselves in.”
There are two popular routes, Fordham said. The Baldy Bowl Trail is shorter but requires a steeper climb. The Devil’s Backbone trail is typically considered the easier option, but it becomes a “a death slide” in the winter, Fordham said.
“It basically becomes a giant ice cliff,” Fordham said. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can very easily die on it.”
Allen Giernet, director of the So Cal Snow Avalanche Center, said the mountain tends to get storms that initially drop rain at high elevations before the rainline drops, the wet ground freezes, and snow falls on top of the ice, obscuring the slippery hazard. The Devil’s Backbone is a particularly troublesome spot, he said.
“We had something like 13 rescues in 14 days one winter,” he said.
With such a long drop on either side of the trail, even an experienced mountaineer with an ice axe and crampons would find it difficult to stop themselves from sliding, said Giernet, who once turned back from the route due to icy conditions years ago.
When hiking Mt. Baldy last month, Fordham opted for the Baldy Bowl Trail, he said, noting that it provides more stability, something inexperienced mountaineers often don’t know.
Similarly, veteran hiker George Rojas, 53, said some people unfamiliar with the terrain will take Devil’s Backbone because it’s not as steep as Baldy Bowl. But the trail is narrow and exposed, with some areas just six feet wide and flanked by 1,000-foot drops on either side, he said.
And snow can obscure the trail entirely, he said — “you think you’re stepping on solid ground and, literally, your whole body drops all the way down to your chest” or, worse, down an embankment. “If you’re not familiar with the area — and I mean extremely familiar — it’s very easy to fall off the trail.”
Rojas lives near Mt. Baldy and estimates he’s climbed the mountain 20 to 30 times. More than once, he’s started down Devil’s Backbone from the peak but has had to turn back and go down the other way because a shift in the winds has made the trail unsafe, he said.
Although it’s important to check the weather before a hike and bring the right equipment and supplies, many judgment calls need to be made on the spot in response to changing conditions, he said. That requires knowledge only experience can impart.
“Most important is to know when to turn back,” he said.
“A lot of the local hikers tend to stay away from that area in the snow because it is so dangerous and there’s been a lot of deaths there before,” he added. Hikers have also died elsewhere on the mountain, he said, including Crystal Gonzalez, who fell about 500 feet while hiking up the Baldy Bowl Trail in 2023. Rojas was not there at the time but occasionally hiked with Gonzalez, he said.
Momo Dovalina, 47, is an experienced hiker who organizes regular meetups to summit local peaks. She climbed Mt. Baldy twice in 2024 — in June, then again in September. She needed only solid hiking shoes and trekking poles.
In the winter, the mountain is a whole different beast, she said. “Even though I’ve hiked a lot of places, I know that would be a really technical hike that I don‘t have enough experience for.”
Since she’s been active in the local hiking community, she said, “I sat back and watched every year people go up there and not return.”
Loura Favis, who routinely hikes Mt. Baldy, took the Baldy Bowl Trail on Sunday, a day before the bodies were found. She encountered three young hikers who looked to be in their early 20s, she said, and warned them against continuing because they didn’t have the proper equipment. They didn’t listen and insisted on trying to summit, she said.
When she hiked up the mountain a week prior, on Dec. 21, she descended through the Devil’s Backbone Trail and ran into a group of teenagers, one wearing Nike Dunks — basketball shoes. “One lost the sole of their shoe. Only one was wearing hiking shoes. They [didn’t] have flashlights with them,” Favis said.
Favis, of Anaheim, urges hikers to refrain from taking the Devil’s Backbone route during snowy conditions. “That trail is very, very exposed. One strong wind can knock you over,” she said. “Not a lot of hikers go that route in the snow. That’s why it makes it more scary, because you can fall and nobody sees you.”
Sunday’s hike was tough, she said, with very windy conditions and snow up to her knees. Favis has hiked the mountain every Sunday for the last two months, and various times before that. She’s scared to go again, she said, a question now clouding her mind: “Am I going to discover a dead body?”
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