The 11 boys and four adults started at 8:30 a.m. Just one mile from the trail head, most of the troop was already exhausted and decided to turn back.
The scoutmaster pressed ahead with five boys, including Luis. Three hours later the troop was waist-deep in snow. The boys were cold and their feet soaked. Luis was tired, his seventh-grade hiking partner said later.
The group turned back, and soon spread out along the trail, leaving some boys on their own. They began taking dangerous shortcuts between switchbacks. After stepping off the trail, Luis lost his footing and slid out of control over an edge. He plunged 300 feet to his death.
The account of the accident comes from a park investigation, which took statements from the scoutmaster and the other boys.
"They told me they were going to the forest," Marta Anguiano, Luis' mother, recalled in an interview.
"They never told me what they were doing was dangerous," said Anguiano, a field laborer in Modesto.
In an examination of law enforcement reports, lawsuits and news accounts, The Times identified 32 Scouts and Scout leaders who have died in the last five years in various outdoor activities. Investigations by rangers and sheriffs have documented deaths resulting from heatstroke, falls, lightning, drowning, electrocution and burns, among other causes.
In many cases, adult leaders appear to have miscalculated the abilities of individual boys to handle the risks and difficulties of outdoor activities, and failed to follow Scout rules and recommendations on adult supervision, safety equipment and trip planning.
Andrea Lankford, who was a district ranger in Yosemite in the mid-1990s and has worked at national parks across the country, said many adult Scout leaders "are not that physically fit themselves. They are not that knowledgeable. They are complacent. They are naive about the hazards. They bite off more than they can chew. As rangers, we would be extremely concerned. I have seen it time and time again with a gamut of consequences."
The Boy Scouts of America, the parent organization based in Irving, Texas, would not release its own records of the incidents, say how many fatal accidents it knows about or discuss the causes of specific accidents. But the group defended its general practices, saying safety is emphasized. After a rash of deaths in 2005, the Boy Scouts ratcheted up its safety program, including hiring a new safety director and imposing new fitness guidelines.
In the five years prior to 2005, The Times identified 16 fatalities in outdoor Scouting activity, based on news accounts and public records. Boy Scout spokesman Deron Smith said "the overall number of incidents has not increased and does not reflect a trend."
"Thousands of Scouts across the United States safely explore the outdoors every day," Smith said in a statement. "There are just too many variables to be able to predict how an accident might occur."
Paul Moore, the Scouting executive for the Los Angeles Boy Scouts council, said he believed the fatality rate during organized activities for the 1 million boys in Scouting is below the national average for boys going about their daily lives. But Moore also acknowledged that parents have an expectation that the organization knows what it is doing, and that fatal accidents are unacceptable.
No agency tracks outdoor deaths in all the state and federal mountains, forests, lakes and rivers, let alone the fatality rate for Boy Scouts compared with other visitors. The U.S. Interior Department reported 151 fatal accidents in national parks in 2008, including 49 boating and swimming deaths and 33 hiking deaths. There were about 275 million visitors to the parks that year.
Since its founding 100 years ago, the Boy Scouts of America has introduced millions of boys to the wilderness, giving them a unique opportunity to learn outdoor skills. In the process, the organization has promoted an agenda of honesty and good civic conduct. Currently, there are 1 million Boy Scouts, led by thousands of volunteer scoutmasters and assistants.
What concerns outdoor experts is the experience level of many of those volunteers. Local Scout leaders said the only requirement set by the national office for escorting a day hike, for example, is that volunteers take the youth protection program to prevent sexual abuse, and that they file proper tour permits, health forms and other documents.
"I wonder if these adults are qualified, if they are prepared," said Matt Sharper, the statewide search and rescue coordinator for the California Emergency Services Management Agency. "If you don't have the skills, you have a recipe for disaster. Your group is only as strong as your weakest member. You should never let the group separate. You should have a leader at the front and a leader at the back."
The national organization has issued ironclad orders in some cases, such as a ban on paintball play and extensive rules on water safety. But the organization's manual "The Guide to Safe Scouting" contains many nonbinding recommendations that give local councils wide discretion on safety issues. Adding even more rigid rules would increase bureaucracy and make activities even harder to organize, some parents say.
Some councils take the initiative to increase safety. In Orange County, Boy Scouts executive Jeffrie A. Hermann said his organization would "hound volunteers" until they took a number of optional courses that help prepare them to lead hiking and other outdoor activities. He credits Orange County's training program for a safety record untouched by a fatal accident for many years. In other cases, individual troops have created strict rules on physical fitness, equipment and training that exceed national guidelines.
Under Boy Scout rules, two adults are supposed to be present with boys. In the accident involving Luis Ramirez, Yosemite National Park investigators found the scoutmaster was alone in leading the five boys, including his own son, after the other parents turned back. The scoutmaster, who has been involved in Scouting for 36 years, said later that he did not regard the hike as risky or inappropriate for a beginning hiker, noting that he had taken his family on it in the past.
Lankford said even rangers would turn around before getting into waist-deep snow, unless they were carrying snowshoes.
The Scouting safety manual warns leaders to "conservatively" estimate the stamina of a hiking group and match outings to "fitness of unit members." Exhaustion can demoralize hikers and be the first step to a tragic consequence, rescue experts say.
Corey Buxton, a 17-year-old Scout from Las Vegas, disappeared while backpacking last July at Zion National Park. Corey was having a tough time and told an adult leader to leave him alone, according to a National Park Service incident report. The leader hiked 100 yards ahead, the report said; when he turned around, Corey was gone. His body was recovered a day later in thick brush about 225 feet from the trail. His death was blamed on hyperthermia, or unusually high body temperature.
Such mishaps frequently trigger costly public safety responses.
One of the biggest search-and-rescue operations in Southern California history occurred in 1991, when Boy Scout Jared Negrete, 12, became separated at the back of his troop on the strenuous Mt. San Gorgonio trail in the San Bernardino Mountains. Negrete's body was never found after a search that included 2,000 people and went on for 16 days. Forty-four people suffered injuries in the search.
News of the tragedy led Mike Leum to seek a career in mountain rescue, and today he is the reserve chief for mountain rescue at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, where he preaches outdoor safety to Boy Scout troops. A search and rescue is conducted for lost Scouts at least once a year in the Angeles National Forest, Leum said. The Riverside County Sheriff's Department rescues lost Scouts two or three times each year, officials said.
"Just because you are in Scouting or are a Scout leader doesn't mean you know what you are doing," said Leum, a former Boy Scout. "If somebody calls themselves a leader, I hold them to a high standard."
Some parents think the organization should not depend on local councils and troops to comply with voluntary national safety recommendations.
One such recommendation is that Scouts wear helmets while sledding. But earlier this year on an outing with his troop, Ian Joshua Miller, 12, was allowed to slide down a Pennsylvania ski slope on a plastic dish without a helmet, recalled his father, Ron Miller. Ian flew backward head-first into a ski lift tower and was killed.
Miller is not suing the Scouts, but recently met with Richard Bourlon, a senior safety advisor at the Boy Scouts, to urge that the organization require helmets and ban nonsteerable sleds, such as plastic saucers. In an interview, Bourlon declined to discuss individual accidents but said the organization was always working to improve safety.
The federal government is active with Scouting groups, advising them on outdoor safety.
While the Boy Scout training program is good, it is no substitute for years and decades of experience by adult leaders, said Dean Ross, deputy chief for emergency operations at the National Park Service.
"Training doesn't develop competency," Ross said. "I am not saying they are incompetent, but to reach a level of competency requires not only training but experience."
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