The group of local hikers who found the body of British actor Julian Sands in California’s Mount Baldy region have spoken about the discovery for the first time.
The 65-year-old’s remains were discovered in late June more than five months after he failed to return from a hike on 13 January.
Coroners recently ruled Sands’ cause of death as “undetermined”. An extensive search was launched for Sands, who was an avid hiker, but it was hampered by poor weather conditions that lasted through spring.
The hikers told the LA Times that they first discovered a boot, then hiking poles, before stumbling upon the actor’s remains.
“It was surreal,” Bill Dwyer, one of the hikers, said. They declined media requests out of respect for Sands’s family but agreed to speak to the Times in order to educate others about the dangers of hiking and the necessity of proper equipment.
“He was dressed like a ninja,” one of the hikers said, noting that bright colours are encouraged to help hikers stand out to rescuers if they are in trouble.
In addition, the hikers noticed that Sands was wearing microspike shoes, not crampons, which would have provided more grip on the steep, icy terrain that the actor was facing.
Julian Sands— (AFP via Getty Images)
“I was a little shocked to see the microspikes,” Dwyer said. “They were just the wrong tools for the job at hand.”
There was also no sign of a helmet or an ice axe, they said. During the time of Sands’s disappearance, much of California had been pounded by severe winter storms, leading to the deaths and disappearances of multiple other hikers.
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While Sands had his cellphone, the Mt Baldy region rarely offers hikers signal and those who found him were able to call for help using a GPS device, which Sands did not have.
A week before his remains were found, Sands’s family released a statement saying they were continuing to keep him “in our hearts with bright memories”.
“We are deeply grateful to the search teams and coordinators who have worked tirelessly to find Julian,” the statement, issued by the sheriff’s department, read.
“We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.”
Throughout his life, Sands appeared in more than 150 films and TV series, including several Oscar winners.
“Julian is wild and never contained by rules or boundaries,” a close friend of Sands told The Independent after his disappearance. “He’s a Byronesque romantic and an adventurer drawn to the extremes of nature, relishing the freedom of mountains, which he conquers all over the world.”
He was best known for his role in the 1985 Merchant Ivory romance A Room with a View, opposite Helena Bonham Carter.
He is survived by his wife, the writer Evgenia Citkowitz, and their two sons; and another son, Henry, whom he shares with his first wife, journalist and editor Sarah Sands (née Harvey).
