Climbers, Hikers, and Runners Share Survival Stories from the Los Angeles Wildfires

The big oak tree that stood over the bedroom of Andrew Goldner’s Altadena, California, home always worried him. So when powerful Santa Ana winds battered his house on the night of Monday, January 5, Goldner, a rock climbing coach and video director, dragged his futon into the living room and slept there with his two dogs, just to be safe.

“I’ve always been scared of that thing,” Goldner told Outside.

The next day, as winds gusted to as high as 80 miles per hour, a danger of a different nature became apparent. That evening, Goldner’s brother, Jacob, stopped by his house and told him that a wildfire had sparked in nearby Eaton Canyon. Within the hour, Goldner received a call from a friend who lives on Altadena’s eastern side. Flames were leaping into nearby homes, and the friend was making a hurried evacuation. Goldner and his brother jumped into their car and fled just as the blaze spread through their own neighborhood.

“It was a horrifying escape,” he said. “We actually turned the first corner, and an entire palm tree came down in front of us and blocked the road. But we made it out, and we drove away.”

Goldner, 37, is one of hundreds of thousands of Southern California residents who narrowly escaped the most destructive wildfires in the region’s history. Whipped by powerful off-shore winds, and fed by bone-dry brush and vegetation, fires enveloped multiple communities in the greater Los Angeles area beginning on Tuesday, January 7. By Monday, January 13, the flames had destroyed or damaged much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and parts of Malibu and Pasadena. Twenty four people were confirmed dead as of the publishing date of this story.

Los Angeles is a haven for outdoor athletes, with its hundreds of running trails, climbing gyms, surf breaks, and cycling clubs. Across the city, five blazes—the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth, Hurst, and Sunset fires—torched favorite trail systems and climbing crags, bike routes, and surf shops. They also devastated the lives of outdoor athletes like Goldner, who teaches climbing at the Stronghold Climbing Gym in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Heights neighborhood. His home is among the estimated 12,000 structures to be destroyed or damaged.

“My house is gone,” he said. “The whole block is. The entire thing is just devastated. There’s not one standing house. All the speculation goes away, and then you’re like, it’s real now. I called my partner, and she just broke down.”

But as the flames spread across neighborhoods and across the city’s canyons and open spaces, communities of outdoor enthusiasts came together to raise funds and offer support to one another. And to try and imagine how life will continue when the time to rebuild comes.

Escaping the Eaton Fire

When hiking guide Amanda Getty, 43, learned that Eaton Canyon had caught fire, she put her daughter and dog into the car and drove towards the canyon to see the blaze. Getty often leads hiking groups up the four-mile route, which leads to a picturesque waterfall. “I feel shameful about it because, in hindsight, it wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but I had to see it,” Getty told Outside. “Eaton Canyon is an integral reason why we live here.”

What Getty saw made the situation feel “very real.” The gusting winds were stronger than any she’d ever felt. She wondered if she should immediately evacuate with her daughter or wait for officials to weigh in. Her husband, Charles, was away on a trip to Colorado, and after she returned home, she called him.

“A huge part of a tree broke off and landed on the roof,” she said. “I should have left then.”

Getty put her daughter to bed and scrolled coverage on social media before eventually falling asleep. Then, at 3:30 A.M. her phone buzzed to life with a text from a neighbor: TIME TO GO. Minutes later, police cars circled the neighborhood blaring their sirens. She woke her daughter and grabbed her dog and sprinted for the car. “The wind was trying to knock us over as we ran,” she said.

Getty and her husband came back to the neighborhood the next day and found many homes burning. Their home was amazingly still intact. The two spent the day clearing brush from the yard and hosing down their roof to prevent the flames from spreading. “I’ve met more people in my front yard than I ever have these past two days,” she said. “I think that’s what you have to do right now: just be the most basic form of human when you see people. Are you OK? Can I help you?”

Madi Pearce, a climber and trail runner who lives in Altadena, was also surprised to find her house still intact after the blaze ripped through her neighborhood. Pearce, 23, had evacuated at 11 P.M. on Tuesday night with a bag of clothes and pet bird, Oliver.

When she came back to her neighborhood on Wednesday morning, Pearce saw that her neighbor’s home was still engulfed in flames. A home two doors down was burning as well. “Everything was on fire,” she said. “Neighbors were grabbing trash cans and filling them with water, spraying hoses, and just doing everything they could because there were no firemen on our street.”

Pearce, 23, heard explosions from the burning structures. She saw fire crews a short distance away trying to extinguish flames at the nearby country club, and other crews several blocks away working on a home fire.

A fire truck sped down her street, and Pearce attempted to flag it down to try and extinguish her neighbor’s home. But the crews sped off. “I don’t know if they had some kind of strategy or they were just stretched too thin,” she said. “Maybe our houses were just too far gone. It was all heartbreaking.”

But somehow, Pearce’s home withstood the blowing embers and flames. Most of the blocks in her neighborhood, she said, are leveled. “Chimneys standing in ash,” she said.

Outdoor Communities Lend a Hand

Even as flames blazed through neighborhoods, communities across Los Angeles rallied to raise funds for rebuilding efforts. The donations platform GoFundMe launched a general collections fund for wildfire victims, and by January 13 the group had collected $2.3 million. The American Red Cross and Salvation Army also ramped up donation efforts, as did the California Fire Foundation—a group that provides funding for both fire victims and rescue crews.

Communities of outdoor athletes also became rallying points for these efforts. When Peace Sports and Total Trash Cycling Clubs learned of the fires, organizers canceled a 60-mile group ride through Altadena and Pasadena that had been planned for the weekend. The groups rescheduled the event for February, and made it a fundraiser for fire victims. Escalemos, a SoCal climbing club, launched a relief fund for local climbers impacted by the fires.

Bike Oven, a cycling shop in Highland Park, also canceled its organized rides and instead pivoted to outreach and relief for community cyclists. Management posted on social media that the shop would become a drop-off location and distribution center for supplies for those impacted by the fires.

Shop employees told Outside that the location quickly became inundated with donations. When Outside visited the shop, bottled water, tampons, toilet paper, and socks filled the store and spilled out onto a nearby sidewalk. “We’re just trying to hurry things to people in need,” Will Stevens, a Bike Oven employee, said.

Some outdoor businesses have helped the community simply by opening their doors. At Stronghold Climbing Gym in Echo Park, owners Kate Mullen and Peter Steadman have remained open so that people can use electricity, showers, and bathrooms.

“Right now, our staff needs the time off, but people still need a place to plug their stuff in, and be around their community,” Mullen said. “A guy came in earlier and asked for a towel. He went in, showered, and then left with wet hair.”

Cities Reshaped by Fire

It will take months, maybe even years, to truly understand how the wildfires of 2025 will reshape the communities across Southern California. The Eaton Fire blazed much of downtown Altadena and its surrounding neighborhoods; the Pacific Palisades fire leveled multimillion-dollar homes, some of which had stood for generations.

In Malibu—where fires devastated the community as recently as 2018—fires burned structures on both sides of the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). Surfer and writer Jamie Brisick believes parts of Malibu may remain changed forever.

“Malibu is such a joyous place, but now, driving north on PCH, to see the devastation of all those beachfront homes will totally change the experience,” he said. “There’s almost this sort of glamour of driving north on PCH—you pass Nobu, and there might be paparazzi out front, and you pass the Soho House, and there’s glamour there, and then there’s Billionaire Beach, with hundred-million dollar homes, and now to see what it is, all firebombed the way it is, will bring you to Malibu in a different mood. It will be a completely different energy now.”

Getty, who calls Eaton Canyon her “second home,” told Outside that she’s spent much of the week thinking about the trails and canyons where she leads groups. “Grieving the loss of trails is so insignificant to the loss of someone’s home,” she said.

Still, Getty wonders how long it will take them to return. “I know that nature is resilient, so much more resilient than I am,” she said. “And these places are going to come back faster than I am, and much faster than people’s homes.”

Flames destroyed the Eaton Canyon Nature Center, which was built in 1993 after another fire, called the Kinneloa Fire, ravaged the area. On Wednesday, the Nature Center’s superintendent emailed park volunteers “Now is the time to grieve, but this has happened before. We will rebuild.”

Returning to Altadena

On Wednesday, January 8, Andrew Goldner checked his phone and saw a text message from a neighbor. The text included a video of the neighborhood’s destruction, including images of Goldner’s burned house.

But Goldner noticed that his garage was still standing. Inside of the garage was the 1966 Triumph Tiger Cub motorcycle that his grandfather had left him as a memento. “He didn’t really impart a lot of things to other people, but he gave that one to me,” Goldner said.

Goldner texted a few friends about the discovery, and within minutes they’d all replied, including one with bolt cutters and a van. They loaded the van and drove into Altadena to try and save the vintage motorcycle.

They found downed power lines, plus police cars and fire crews. They weaved the van through blockades and plumes of smoke. They passed entire city blocks that were burned to the ground. “Then, the next block would be the flip side, where all of the houses were there except for one,” Goldner said. “Embers were falling and landing on random houses of their choosing.”

Eventually they found Goldner’s house. They broke open the garage and rescued the old motorcycle. Other than a new layer of soot and dust, it was exactly as he’d left it.

As Goldner walked back from the garage, the big oak tree that had caused him so much concern was still there, barely touched by the flames. The house, however, was gone.

Seattle native Gavin Feek lives in Los Angeles. He contributes to Field Gulls and Stab Magazine, and has been published in Outside, McSweeney’s, and The Stranger. Feek loves to rock climb, surf, trail run, and ride his gravel bike. Prior to becoming a writer he ran the Glacier Point Cross-Country ski hut in Yosemite National Park.