Ed Rosenthal returns

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Ed Rosenthal was lost in the desert, and after just done day, he was already out of water. It would be a total of six days before he was found. He told his story at a news conference held inside Clifton's Cafeteria, a downtown Los Angeles restaurant whose sale he had brokered the previous week. That sale was the reason he had gone hiking in the first place: he had gone to celebrate.

After almost a week without food or water, lost at the bottom of a canyon in Joshua Tree National Park, Rosenthal looks frail and very tan. His kidneys are a wreck, and he has lost 20 pounds. But the 64-year-old real estate broker is still alive.

On the morning of Sept. 24, Rosenthal left Black Rock Canyon for Warren View, a hike he had taken five or six times before. He was found six days later, 27 miles from where he had started.

"It was a huge surprise," Rosenthal said. "I lost the trail. I went through a few scary canyons, and the drops got worse."

He slept in a tiny canyon that always had shade. If he had to walk 10 steps to remain in the shade as the sun shifted, he planned it out all day to conserve his strength. And by the end, he was so weak, he could no longer sit up even when he leaned against a rock.

He got friendly with a horsefly; it slept on him, he said, and hung out all day. Then, Rosenthal got religious. He said the Jewish prayer for dying, but then he took it back.

"I prayed for rain, and it rained," Rosenthal said.

He collected rain drops in his mouth - at a rate, he said, of up to a quarter cup an hour. Without the rain, Rosenthal said he would have been a goner, his insides turning to sand and his kidneys beginning to fail. At last, searchers in a helicopter spotted him.

"Finally, the helicopter I'd seen for days came into the canyon, and the gentleman asked me, 'Hey, are you that Rosenthal that's out here?'" Rosenthal said. "And I said, 'Yeah!'"