LONDON, ENGLAND: British actor Julian Sands, a lifelong nature lover and explorer, shared chilling experiences from his hiking missions to wildernesses in his last UK interview before he was reported missing during a solo trip to the San Gabriel mountains in California. The 65-year-old actor admitted finding “spooky things on mountains” including “human remains.”
Speaking to Radio Times last year, Sands also revealed why he preferred to climb solo. He said, “Pals I used to climb with have stopped going to the mountains, partly because they find, with climate change, the rock faces have become much more unstable." He also opined that if one is not “absolutely committed,” climbing might prove dangerous, saying, “If you don’t really have the desire, the focus for climbing a route, if you’re not absolutely committed, it becomes much more dangerous.” He further added, "Finding folk whose company I enjoy in such stressful and intimate conditions is not easy."
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‘I’ve found spooky things on mountains’
In the interview, he not only cautioned potential climbers but also shared his bone-chilling experiences. Sands shared, “I’ve found spooky things on mountains, when you know you’re in a place where many people have lost their lives, whether it be on the Eiger or in the Andes. You may be confronted with human remains and that can be chilling,” as per The Independent.
However, he acknowledged that they were not supernatural per se, saying, “It’s not necessarily supernatural, it’s possibly all too natural - what I would call hypernatural.” He continued with a Wordsworthian philosophy, “You’re in the presence of big nature and big nature is revealing itself in all its power. It can take us over a threshold of hypersensitivity into a realm of natural forces.”
The actor of the Oscar-winning film ‘A Room with a View’ later revealed that he found “solace” amidst the challenging terrains of mountains which helped him in his “existential self-negation.” The ‘Smallville’ star summed up, "If you can deal with dangerous mountains, you can certainly deal with life as an actor - the two are quite complementary."
Julian Sands' death in the mountains
However, the accomplished climber would later lose his life during a hiking expedition and become one of the dead bodies he spoke about. After he was reported missing on January 13, 2023 during his expedition to Mount Baldy in California, his family and fans suspected the actor had died in the wilderness. Search missions were started with the hope of recovering his body, but they had to stop because of poor weather conditions.
The long search finally came to an end as the San Bernardino sheriff’s department found the ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ actor’s body on Saturday, June 24. The sheriff’s office issued a statement on June 26, saying, “The identification process for the body … has been completed and was positively identified as 65-year-old Julian Sands.”
Sands's family issued a statement that read, as per The Guardian, “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.” The actor’s agent Sarah Jackson said, “He was a passionate climber, and we draw consolation from knowing that he passed in a place he loved, doing what he loved.”
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