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British actor Julian Sands has been missing for nearly a week in a snow-capped mountain range in California, authorities said Thursday. The weather is hampering research, they pointed out.
The 65-year-old actor, made famous by films like “Room with a view” and “Warlock”, “was reported missing (…) on Mount Baldy” last Friday, a spokeswoman told AFP. from the office of San Bernardino County Sheriff Mara Rodriguez.
This mountain, also called Mount San Antonio, culminates at 3068 meters above sea level and is the highest peak in the San Gabriel range, near Los Angeles. The area is a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts, but recent serial storms to hit California have brought with them lots of snow, making it dangerous.
Rescue teams began a ground search on Friday, but had to suspend it Saturday evening due to trail conditions and the risk of avalanche. “However, we continue to carry out searches by helicopter and using drones when weather conditions allow it,” said the spokesperson. “We will launch new ground searches when the weather improves and when the safety of our ground teams is assured,” noted the spokesperson.
mountain enthusiast
Born in Yorkshire, Northern England, Julian Sands calls California home and is a mountain enthusiast. In particular, he climbed the Andes in the early 1990s and got stuck in a storm at more than 6,000 meters above sea level. In 2020, he told the British daily The Guardian to find happiness “near a mountain peak on a beautiful cold morning”.
San Bernardino County authorities reported harsh weather conditions last week on Twitter and warned on Wednesday that hiking on Mount Baldy is dangerous during this period due to high winds and ice.
Hiking there is “extremely dangerous, even for a seasoned hiker,” the local sheriff’s office warned in a statement, saying that in these weather conditions, it was “very difficult to deploy resources to this area when a hiker is carried. gone”.
In recent weeks, rescuers have had to carry out a dozen rescues in the region. At least two people have died, including a woman who fell more than 200 meters after slipping on a frozen path. After ‘Room with a View’, Julian Sands starred in many other popular films and television series, including ‘Warlock’ (1989), Arachnophobia (1990) and ’24 Hours Flat’ (2006).
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