A hiker survived nearly a week lost in the woods of Washington state, including a fall from a tree, and was finally saved after someone heard his desperate cries for help.
The man’s calls in the woods of Suquamish were heard by a nearby tribe member who called 911 on Saturday around 12:30 a.m. to alert authorities, the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office said.
When a sheriff’s deputy arrived, he too heard a “faint, distressful voice coming from the woods from a man saying he had fallen from a tree,” the office wrote in a Facebook post.
The deputy quickly helped form a search party with assistance from the Washington Explorer Search and Rescue, Kitsap Search Dogs, Olympic Mountain Rescue, and the Suquamish Tribal Police Department.
After nearly six hours of searching, the crews found the missing man around 7:00 a.m. and carried him out of the woods on a stretcher.
The hiker, whose name was not released by officials, said he’d been wandering aimlessly in the woods for four or five days and had fallen out of the tree “while trying to take a shortcut,” according to the sheriff’s office.
He also told the authorities with the Suquamish Police Department that he was “provided a ride to the end of a road, became disoriented and [wandered] into the woods, where he remained for a few days,” according to a statement from the department.
The man was transported to a nearby medical center for treatment and evaluation. His condition as of Tuesday is unclear.
In Arizona, another hiker survived three days alone in the desert after falling into the “Edge of the World” canyon. She was “preparing for the worst,” her family said, until the Pima County sheriff’s office airlifted her to safety.
On Saturday, a Brazilian hiker fell off a cliff and into an open volcano crater in Indonesia. Authorities located her nearly 1,000 feet below the cliff and had to wait for weather conditions to improve before they could help her. She was found dead on Tuesday, her family said.
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