Stranded Pair Watched Search in Wrong Area : Rescue: Mountain bikers hike to safety after helicopters, firefighters spend hours combing wrong canyon trail.

Two mountain bike riders who were stranded in the rugged mountains of Cleveland National Forest say they watched from a remote peak as search teams combed the wrong canyon trail for them for about five hours.

“We saw a helicopter around dusk coming up the trail we were on,” one of the stranded bikers, Michael Piper, 27, of Newport Beach, recalled Monday. “We got our hope up, but it turned away.”

Orange County firefighters Saturday combed a rugged canyon with helicopters and ground search teams for Piper and his companion, Sara Ann Arav, 33, of Costa Mesa. But after about five hours of fruitless searching, rescuers realized they were in the wrong place.

“There was some disappointment when we realized that, damn, we had searched the wrong trail,” said Battalion Chief John Howlind of the Orange County Fire Department.

But as the search was being refocused, the missing riders strolled into the search command center at San Juan Hot Springs just after 11 p.m. Neither had suffered injuries.

Piper’s and Arav’s misadventure began Saturday after they set out with two friends, Craig Clairmont, 27, of Irvine and Mary Mikels, also 27, of Dana Point, along a rarely used trail in Hot Springs Canyon, off Ortega Highway.

The Los Pinos trail they rode is overgrown with brush and is steep and rocky. The group had biked the backcountry in the past, but were riding the Los Pinos trail for the first time. Piper said they had maps of the canyons, bicycle tools and water but were not prepared for an overnight stay.

Late in the afternoon, Arav began suffering the effects of heat exhaustion and couldn’t make the ride back to their car, Piper said. It was decided that Clairmont and Mikels would ride back down the trail to summon help, Piper said.

The two rode for an hour before finding a pay phone at a ranch. They called firefighters.

The rescue effort began about 4:30 p.m., but instead of searching the Los Pinos trail for Arav and Piper, firefighters and helicopters were dispatched along the San Juan trail, which runs along the opposite edge of the canyon, Howlind said.

“We were following (Clairmont’s) instructions the best we could,” Howlind said. “Looking at those maps, it can be real confusing.”

The search grew increasingly urgent as darkness filled the canyon. Fire officials called in four helicopters and dispatched five firefighters with flashlights along the wrong trail.

Meanwhile, the cold and hungry pair sat near a fire and told bad jokes while watching the sun set and the helicopters circle in the distance.

“I was not confident I could keep the fire going all night long,” said Piper, who is an environmental consultant for Conner Environmental Management in Irvine. Arav works as a geologist for the same company.

“I am a wimp when it comes to cold, so I thought that it would be better to be walking than sitting up on the peak shivering,” Piper said.

When darkness fell and Arav felt strong enough to begin walking, the pair stashed their bikes in the brush, snuffed out the fire and began the 5-mile hike toward the end of the trail where Arav’s car was parked.

It was not until after 10 p.m. that fire officials realized that they had combed the wrong area. Clairmont told them so after hearing a firefighter describe the search area.

But just as searchers were regrouping, the missing pair showed up.

“I felt strange walking into the command center,” Piper said. “All the people looked kind of dumbfounded.

“We will never do that trail again. It was much more exhausting than we expected.”