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    Julian Sands Confirmed Dead After Remains Found on California’s Mount Baldy

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    The British actor was reported missing in January after he went hiking alone on a trail on Mount Baldy. Last weekend, after months of intense searches, hikers found human remains in the area.Human remains that were found on Saturday in the Southern California wilderness have been identified as those of the British actor Julian Sands, who had been missing since January after he went hiking in the area, the authorities said on Tuesday.The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that the remains had been “positively identified” as those of Mr. Sands, and that the cause of death remained under investigation “pending further test results.”Mr. Sands, 65, of North Hollywood, was an avid hiker and was best known for his role in the critically acclaimed 1986 film “A Room With a View.” The film, an adaptation of the novel by E.M. Forster, regularly makes lists as one of the best British films of all time.He also appeared in dozens of other films and television shows, including “Arachnophobia,” “Naked Lunch,” “Warlock” and “Ocean’s Thirteen.”Hikers found the remains Saturday morning in the Mount Baldy area, which is more than 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.Mr. Sands, who had a wife and three children, was reported missing in January after he went hiking alone on a trail on Mount Baldy. On hiking websites, the popular trek is described as challenging and strenuous.Search crews had been combing the area looking for Mr. Sands for months despite their efforts being complicated by dangerous conditions, including heavy rain and snow, some of which lingered into June.In an update on the search on June 17, the sheriff’s department said that parts of the mountain could still not be reached because of “extreme alpine conditions,” including steep terrain and ravines covered in more than 10 feet of ice and snow.More than 80 search-and-rescue volunteers, deputies and staff members participated in the search that day. Two helicopters and drone crews were used to check areas inaccessible to searchers on the ground, the sheriff’s department said.The sheriff’s department had carried out eight searches for Mr. Sands since January, the authorities said, with volunteers looking for more than 500 hours. At the same time, eight other unrelated search-and-rescue operations were also conducted in the region.Mr. Sands often spoke of his fondness for nature and said in a 2020 interview with The Guardian that he was happiest when close to a mountain summit on a cold morning.In another interview that same year with Thrive Global, a health and wellness company started by Arianna Huffington, he said he had spent time in mountain ranges in North America and Europe.Mr. Sands said that people who did not climb mountains assumed it was about ego and a “great heroic sprint” to the summit.“But actually, it’s the reverse,” he said. “It’s about supplication and sacrifice and humility, when you go to these mountains. It’s not so much a celebration of oneself, but the eradication of one’s self-consciousness. And so on these walks you lose yourself, you become a vessel of energy in harmony, hopefully with your environment.”Lauren McCarthy More

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      in Movies

      Julian Sands, ‘Room With a View’ Actor, Is Missing on Hike in California Mountains

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      The search for Mr. Sands, a British actor known for the 1986 film “A Room With a View” and other roles, is an avid trail hiker. His disappearance follows weeks of devastating weather across California.The British actor Julian Sands, known for his role in the critically acclaimed 1986 film “A Room With a View,” among others, is one of two missing hikers the authorities are searching for in the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California following a period of heavy rain and snow across the area.Mr. Sands, 65, of North Hollywood, was reported missing on Friday after hiking alone on a trail on Mount Baldy, more than 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Mara Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said on Thursday. The trails there are popular but also labeled challenging and strenuous on hiking websites.Search efforts had been affected by “trail conditions and the risk of avalanche,’’ Ms. Rodriguez said.“However, we continue to search by helicopter and drones when weather permits,’’ she added.Elsewhere in the San Gabriel Mountains, the authorities are searching separately for another missing hiker, Robert Gregory, 61, of Hawthorne, Calif. That search is being handled by the Hawthorne Police Department, supported by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office San Dimas station.Mr. Gregory was reported missing on Friday evening by his wife after he had not returned that day in the Crystal Lake area. The police said his vehicle was found Saturday outside a cafe in front of a trail head in the area.Early on Jan. 13, Robert Gregory left his Hawthorne, Calif., residence to go hiking. When Mr. Gregory failed to return home, his wife contacted the police.Hawthorne Police DepartmentLt. Louis Serrano of the San Dimas station said on Thursday that search and rescue teams were on the ground and that aerial patrols were continuing.More on CaliforniaStorms and Flooding: A barrage of powerful storms has surprised people in California with an unrelenting period of extreme weather that has caused extensive damage across the state.New Laws: A new year doesn’t always usher in sweeping change, but in California, at least, it usually means a slate of new laws going into effect.Facebook’s Bridge to Nowhere: The tech giant planned to restore a century-old railroad to help people in the Bay Area to get to work. Then it gave up.Wildfires: California avoided a third year of catastrophic wildfires because of a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions — or “luck,” as experts put it.Representatives for Mr. Sands did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.A stream of atmospheric rivers, storms that are narrow in shape and carry a tremendous amount of water, have slammed much of California in recent weeks, causing flooding, power outages and widespread evacuations. At least 19 people have died.On Friday, when Mr. Sands was reported missing, another round of storms was just beginning to sweep across Southern California, lasting through the holiday weekend.By Wednesday, conditions had not improved and the sheriff’s office urged hikers to “think twice and heed warnings,” adding that rescue teams had responded to 14 rescue missions on Mount Baldy and the surrounding area in the last four weeks.The rescue missions were for lost, stranded and injured hikers, two of whom did not survive after falling and injuring themselves, officials said. The recent storms brought snow and ice to the mountain, and conditions were not favorable for hikers, even those with experience, the authorities added.Mr. Sands, a British performer who has appeared in more than 150 films and television shows, including “Arachnophobia,” “Naked Lunch,” “Warlock” and “Ocean’s Thirteen,” is known to enjoy the outdoors. He is best remembered for his starring role at 27 opposite Helena Bonham Carter in “A Room With a View,” the Oscar-nominated Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel, which often makes lists as one of the best British films of all time.In an interview with The Guardian in 2020, Mr. Sands said he was happiest when close to a mountain summit on a cold morning and had aspirations of climbing a remote peak in the Himalayas. He also described a time in the early 1990s when he was caught in a storm above 20,000 feet in the Andes. “We were all in a very bad way,” he said. “Some guys close to us perished; we were lucky.”In another interview that year with Thrive Global, a company started by Arianna Huffington that provides behavior change technology, Mr. Sands said that he had spent time in mountain ranges in North America and Europe.Mr. Sands said that people who don’t climb mountains assume it’s about a “great heroic sprint” to the summit and an ego.“But actually, it’s the reverse,” he said. “It’s about supplication and sacrifice and humility, when you go to these mountains. It’s not so much a celebration of oneself, but the eradication of one’s self consciousness. And so on these walks you lose yourself, you become a vessel of energy in harmony, hopefully with your environment.” More

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      in Television

      Baratunde Thurston Wants You to Be Part of Nature. Right Now.

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      The author of “How to Be Black” and host of the “How to Citizen with Baratunde” podcast wants you to experience the outdoors with a new PBS television series.In the midst of the pandemic, Baratunde Thurston decided to start a garden.It was a way for the author, podcaster and TV host to reconnect with his love of the outdoors, and process his feelings about the tumultuous state of the world.“Unfortunately, the squirrels thought I was gardening for them,” Mr. Thurston said. “In the beginning, I saw it as a battle — me versus the squirrels. Over time I realized, these squirrels are my neighbors, too. Maybe we can work something out.”Connecting with the environment, respecting wildlife and finding reverence in nature are all themes of Mr. Thurston’s new television series, “America Outdoors.” The six-part show follows him on a range of outdoor adventures, from running with ultramarathoners in Death Valley, Calif., to bird-watching in Minnesota and trekking through the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. Viewers learn that nature can be enjoyed by everyone.“Doing a show based in the outdoors was really the right move in terms of ways to experience this country,” Mr. Thurston said. “I got to hang out with true outdoor enthusiasts and was reminded that you don’t have to be obsessive, or particularly well-resourced, to enjoy the outdoors.”“America Outdoors” premieres July 5 on PBS. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.The show is as much about outdoor destinations as it is about people. How do you define an “outdoor enthusiast?”This show is about breaking expectations. When I hear “the outdoors,” I have an extreme landscape like El Capitan in mind. I have a white guy in mind, with a beard, and he’s looking off into the distance, having just conquered something. And we did spend some time with people like that, but we also spent time with the original people on this land. It was a beautiful privilege that I got to interview people from three different Indigenous nations.We spent time with folks who have disabilities, and I got to be guided down a river, white-water rafting and piloted by a man who’s paralyzed. In Idaho, I was hanging out with refugee kids, mostly from Africa and Southeast Asia — part of the “Welcome to America” in Boise is hiking and taking nature walks and getting familiar with all the Americans, all of our neighbors, including the trees and the butterflies. I also met people just in their backyards who maybe don’t have the gear, the car rack, or a subscription to an outdoor magazine, but they know the value of putting their hands in dirt and growing food.You do a lot of really physical outdoor activities in this show — hiking, surfing, rafting, flying a plane! Which was the most challenging?The most challenging by far: sand surfing. Walking in sand, first of all, it’s not fun. That’s a great challenge. I really toned my calves and my glutes and my thighs. So I’m kind of grateful. But trying to ride a board? I don’t do skiing and snowboarding. Trying to stand on frozen water, on an incline, it just feels like … Why would you do that? So then we’re doing it on sand, and there’s no fin on the board. So there’s nothing for it to grip, and so you’re just kind of fishtailing all around. We had so many takes and when you go down a sandy hill, you have to walk back up. There’s no shortcut. It was a lot!Which destinations disrupted your expectations the most?Death Valley was full of life. It was our first shoot and pretty quickly, I was as offended as the Indigenous people by the name because it just sounds barren. The people we spent time with there, they helped me see it differently. The author of “Hiking The Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California,” Shawnté Salabert, took me on this hike to Darwin Falls and it’s just beautiful. I also went running with Mosi Smith, this ultramarathoner, and saw Death Valley through his lens. Of course, being with the Timbisha Shoshone members, who say this place should be called Timbisha, not Death Valley just because some white dude got lost. That’s disrupted expectations just because of what it’s called.There was also a shock for me on Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, with James “Ooker” Eskridge, the mayor of the community. On paper, me and this guy don’t have that much to say to each other. He was in the Trump-iest voting district in America by some measures, and he’s very, very, very conservative. But I had the luxury of spending real time and feeling his energy and experiencing his hospitality. I learned that his home is disappearing due to rising sea levels, due to climate change. He won’t quite call it climate change, but he acknowledges the waters rising and wants to do something about it. He wants sea walls, he wants federal money to be spent to save his town. We were on the coast of his island and seeing tombstones in the water. You can show data about climate change and you could watch an Al Gore presentation and see the temperature going up. But then you can wade through a graveyard. Hearing him describe having to exhume his ancestor to his own backyard; he got emotional talking about it. It made it real. I didn’t expect to have that experience at all. I definitely didn’t expect to have it with someone who’s seemingly so different from me.Climate change comes up a lot in the show. Was that your intention?Making a show about the outdoors is making a show about climate change. We can’t avoid the topic. In every location, I was witness to the effects of climate change: the dryness and lack of water in Death Valley beyond what’s expected; the firefighter training for those wildland firefighters; in Idaho, the smoke from Western fires, and the low levels of the river and the high temperatures of the river. In Minnesota, the premise of one of our segments with the Abbas family, the farming family, was trying to breed climate-resilient trees that can bear higher temperatures, because the forest we were standing in is going to disappear. And so rather than just mourn that, what kind of new forest can we create in its place? They’re engineering just through basic biology to harden the forest so that their kids have trees, too. When we were in Duluth, Minne., we could hardly breathe. Minnesota is having mad fires now. We couldn’t see Lake Superior. I had to wear an N95 mask when we weren’t shooting, because it was burning inside.Everywhere we went, we had a climate story. Sometimes it was more of a focal point of who we were talking with and the story; other times, it just affected how we could make the show.What do you hope people may learn from this show?I want people to see the outdoors as a place where we can literally experience common ground among the wide range of differences that make up this nation. Pretty much everybody should be able to see themselves in the show — we’ve got different time zones, different ecologies, different ages and body shapes and abilities. I hope we’ve reflected the diversity of the nation both in its natural state and in its human state. I want this show to be a mirror for everybody.The Indigenous people I spoke to have a culture of being a part of nature, as opposed to apart from nature. We got to relearn that. That was a really big takeaway for me, especially as the climate gets more volatile in the next decades. We should all stay connected in that way. This is not just something to use. It’s something to belong to.52 Places for a Changed WorldThe 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More