Lauren Elder

Lauren Elder is an American artist and designer. Throughout the mid 80s to early 90s she worked with the interdisciplinary performance ensemble, Contraband, as a set designer and performer. Currently, she lives and works in California, teaches at California College of the Arts, and works with environmental art, as well as continuing in set design.

She is known for being the sole survivor in the crash of a light airplane in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the 1970s. On April 26, 1976, Lauren decided to take up an offer to be the third passenger in a Cessna 182P N52855 on a trip from Oakland airport in the San Francisco Bay area to Furnace Creek in Death Valley. The 36 year old pilot had 213 flight hours [46 on type] experience and was not instrument rated. He probably flew east, up Bubbs Creek and sought but missed Kearsarge Pass [12,598'] through the Sierra. Instead he flew SE into Center Basin, the eastern side of which is ringed by three peaks over 13,000 feet tall [Mt. Bradley 13,289', Mt. Keith 13,977', and Junction Peak 13,888']. Lauren Elder, sitting in the back seat and enjoying the view of mountains all round, turned forward to see a wall of granite moving towards them. When she woke up, she realized that they had crashed. The crumpled plane was lying on a precarious slope a few feet away from a ridge in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains at an elevation of 12,460 feet, one-half mile south of Mt. Bradley.

The pilot and one other passenger, sitting in the front of the airplane, survived the crash but subsequently died by the following morning. The evening of the accident, Elder could see the lights of the Owens Valley below, but miles of wilderness, elevation and sheer, icy cliffs separated her from it. She was wearing nothing but a blouse, a wraparound skirt, and boots with two-inch heels. One of her arms was fractured. The morning following the accident, with both her companions dead and with no real possibility of rescue, Elder decided to climb down from the mountain to the valley below. At one point it was necessary to lower herself down a 100-foot-tall dry waterfall. She suffered from hallucinations on the way because of lack of sleep and shock. Her descent took 36 hours.

Finally, as Elder reached civilization, she had trouble finding help when she walked late that night into the town of Independence, California. People saw her disheveled appearance and were afraid; Charles Manson had recently been put to trial in the area, and his female followers spent a lot of time hanging around.

Lauren Elder wrote a book about the crash [with Shirley Streshinsky] entitled "And I Alone Survived", which was later made into a TV movie with the same title, as well as a documentary aired by the Discovery Channel.

The National Transportation and Safety Board [NTSB] ruled the accident was caused by the pilot in command [PIC] who, "continued flight into known areas of severe turbulence." The NTSB also judged the PIC made, "improper in-flight decisions or planning." The National Park Service continues to remove pieces of wreckage from Elder's flight. There are nearly a dozen private and military airplane crashes in the immediate vicinity.

External links

• Lauren Elder's website
• And I Alone Survived at the Internet Movie Database
• NTSB report for the crash