The 15 missing hikers in California who went astray from a church group over the weekend were found Monday morning, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said.
The group went hiking in the Eaton Canyon section of the San Gabriel Mountains Sunday when they got lost.
According to The Associated Press, the local sheriff's station received a call from someone in the group later that evening and, when officers went to investigate, they found relatives of some of the hikers who said they, too, had received messages saying the group was lost.
The overnight search yielded nothing but helicopters were able to spot the group Monday and
rescue them, NBC Los Angeles reported. In total, there were 11 adults and four teens.
The hikers were part of a larger group of 30 people that had come to the canyon for the day, sheriff officials told the television station.
The hikers were reportedly carrying helmets, ropes, and other climbing gear to scale the gorge's rocky face,
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Dan Paige told The Los Angeles Times. The hikers also were supplied with extra clothing.
There have been five deaths recorded in the Eaton Canyon area since 2011, NBC Los Angeles noted. In July, the police had to close a section of the canyon after a 19-year-old woman fell 50 feet down the steep terrain of a mountain and had to be rescued by helicopter.
"We continue to get people dying, falling off the cliff, having to be rescued, all at the cost of the taxpayers," forest service spokesman Nathan Judy told reporters in June. "We're closing a small portion of the upper waterfalls, to close off the area where people have been dying."
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