A family hike went downhill fast yesterday when the family dog chased a bottle someone threw and ended up skidding off a 300-foot cliff and landing on a precipitous next-to-nonexistent ledge about halfway down. A 19-year-old family member, Ivan Salas, tried to rescue the dog, Lola, but slipped and was also left clinging to the sheer cliffside.
“It was extremely scary, dangerous. I don’t know what I was thinking when I went down,” he told Los Angeles station KABC. “It’s not just a dog, it’s family and my best friend at the same time, so I had to do it.”
The rocks “were hitting me in the face and my dog too, and then my dog started panicking, she was going crazy. I just grabbed her tight, Salas said.
Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighters performed a white-knuckle rope rescue that took 90 minutes. They harnessed the German Shepherd and lowered her down with a firefighter. Another firefighter brought Salas down.
Miraculously, Salas and his dog were unharmed. And his father will probably think twice before tossing bottles off cliffs (or anywhere) on future hikes.
