Another lost hiker in the Olympic Mountains of WA this time. Any more background?

"...pepper jack cheese pasta...

Interesting hiking rations. Glad she made it out, and didn't fall off of the mountain while hiking in the middle of the night...

It looks to me like she was hiking around Mt. Rainier, not in the Olympics. She mentioned hiking there and hiking a loop, which there is a fairly long trail that circles Mt. Rainier. Either way, pretty country, but I can see how she would could get lost. Lots of big trees both places.

Whatever you do, don't forget your pepper jack cheese pasta!

I'm glad she made it out ok, but the media reporting is lacking and propogates ignorance about wilderness survival. I really wish they would quote someone who knew a little about wilderness survival when giving an analysis as to why someone survived. Doug needs to set the media straight--maybe hold some media workshops or something. She could've survived that long easily without eating anything. No one thought to mention how she obtained water or stayed warm while sleeping. I assume she obtained water from creeks and had a sleeping bag and fire starting device. These are the factors that ensured her survival, not her food. And, I wonder if she had a whistle and signal mirror, or was she just using futile yelling and waving?

From the article:

More info from the local area (and yes, she was in the Olympics, not Rainier). I've included all the info, but took some tucks in the white spaces, since newspapers seem to think their readers can't ready properly unless they only print one sentence per paragraph.


Missing hiker emerges alive
Randy Trick
Peninsula Daily News

PORT ANGELES — Mary O’Brien surprised those searching for her Saturday when she walked out of Olympic National Park after five nights alone in the backcountry.

The 45-year-old teacher from Arlington, Mass., had spent Friday night near the peak of Mount Fitzhenry, where she could see Lake Mills, the lights of the Upper Elwha Dam, and the cities of Port Angeles and Victoria.

“It wasn’t until I went higher that I could see the lake and see the lights,” O’Brien said on Saturday. “I was so happy.” She found a phone at a boat ramp at Lake Mills in the Elwha River Basin and called park employees at 3:45 p.m. They took her to park headquarters in Port Angeles.

O’Brien, who had set up camp at Sol Duc campground, lost her way Monday night. She hiked northeast out of the Sol Duc River basin over Appleton Pass toward the Elwha River. She emerged from the backcountry uninjured, save for a pair of shins covered in scratches and bruises from days of hiking off trails through dense forest. She smiled and was talkative as she recounted her trek, wanting just chocolate, tea and a chance to tell her family she was OK. “I have an awesome family and great friends,” she said. “I tried not to think about their worry too much, because I knew it would make me cry.”

The search for O’Brien began at dawn Wednesday with 10 people. Friends of O’Brien’s in Seattle had called the park to say that she had not returned to the Puget Sound area for a flight back to Boston. The search grew each day. By Saturday, two helicopters, an airplane with heat-detecting cameras, three tracking dogs, a technical mountaineering rescue team and a swiftwater dive team were recruited by the park.

The effort involved 50 searchers, including three relatives, and focused on the trails and snow fields in the Sol Duc and Seven Lakes Basin.

O’Brien expressed her gratitude to everyone who looked for her.

“To walk in that room and see my name on all the maps and their search efforts, this is humbling,” she said. “I feel very overwhelmed by the support of my family and friends and the national park.”

Bill Laitner, superintendent of Olympic National Park, met with O’Brien briefly. “If I were lost, this is the team I’d want to have come looking for me,” Laitner said.

Larry Nickey, the park’s fire management officer and incident commander of the search, said the park had been committed to a large search through the weekend, and would have considered narrowing the search area Monday.

Searchers correctly believed O’Brien left the Sol Duc Campground for a day hike Monday afternoon. She said she made it to the High Divide Trail, large portions of which was snowbound, before losing her way that evening.

A tracking dog from Grays Harbor Search and Rescue followed her scent up the Sol Duc River trail to Sol Duc Falls, across the bridge there, then a bit beyond until it lost the scent at a log jam.

O’Brien lost the route near Heart Lake and decided Tuesday to leave the Sol Duc drainage by way of Appleton Pass. She then spent three days bushwhacking in the area around Cat Creek, which is in the Elwha River watershed. She carried a map and knew there was a ranger station near Lake Mills and headed that way. But she could not see the lake while she was in the Cat Creek canyon, so she made for higher ground on Mount Fitzhenry on Friday. “I have to get to high ground to be seen,” she said she thought.

Mary’s sister, Anne O’Brien, and her husband Marc Spiegelman flew from New York to Seattle on Friday. Mary’s brother, Gerry O’Brien from Portland, came to the park July 4, the first day of the search. The rest of the family is in Malden, Mass. They had planned a family reunion on Cape Cod before O’Brien’s disappearance. Earlier in the day, Anne O’Brien wore a dark blue T-shirt with the word “Believe” written across the front in Boston Red Sox typeface. The shirt was a gift in 2004 from her sister, Mary O’Brien, when the underdog baseball team was battling the New York Yankees for a come-back win of World Series. She wore the shirt that morning at a search and rescue briefing at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort as a way of showing faith that her sister would be found alive and well.

“I think she’s working her way out,” Anne O’Brien said during the morning briefing. O’Brien’s family members were given a low-priority trail to look over — the Mink Lake Trail. Involving O’Brien’s relatives in the search was a delicate decision, Nickey said. “We normally try not to involve the family ... because it is very emotional for them and for the searchers,” Nickey said. “This particular family is very strong. They’re a hiking family.” When they heard of her safe return, friends and family were elated.

Kathy Steichen, a park spokesperson, called the family as soon as a searcher radioed to the park’s dispatch that O’Brien was found. “They were a mess. Now they’re ecstatic,” Steichen said of the family.

O’Brien spoke with her family for about 20 minutes after sitting down with the searchers and detailing her trek. She planned to call her family again and talk longer Saturday evening. Friends and colleagues were eager for news, too.

“We were very, very, very worried. We’re all on vacation and e-mails are just going back and forth,” said Laurie Jaffe, who works with O’Brien at Douglas Elementary School in Acton, Mass.
Christopher Whitbeck, the school’s principal, said “I’m ecstatic.
“She is an amazing teacher. ... She is passionate about what she does and she is very methodical,” Whitbeck said. “It doesn’t surprise me at that if someone was going to survive some time unprepared in the woods, that it would be Mary.”

Friends and family had been telling the park that O’Brien was very experienced in the outdoors. Anne O’Brien said her sister had hiked with her extensively in New Hampshire, and had climbed all 48 peaks higher than 4,000 feet in the White Mountain Forest there.

O’Brien said she had hiked the Seven Lakes Basin before and had previously climbed Mt. Olympus, the highest peak in the park. “I have a rule not to hike a trail alone that I have not hiked before with somebody else,” she said. “I broke that rule.”

The park received helpful information from a Port Angeles resident who read about O’Brien’s disappearance and saw her photo in Friday’s edition of the Peninsula Daily News. The person said she crossed paths with O’Brien on the trail to Sol Duc Falls at about noon on Monday, which fit the sequence of events park officials had complied.

Saturday, the park was considering the possibility that she had fallen into the Sol Duc River near a log jam where a tracking dog had followed, then lost, her scent.

The park had invited the Thurston County Sheriff Swiftwater Rescue Team, a six member dive team with an underwater camera, to search above Sol Duc Falls where a tracking dog last caught a scent of O’Brien. The park’s dive team searched the less challenging area below the falls. A State Patrol airplane with infrared heat detection equipment and two helicopters flew over rugged drainages.

“She’s a good example of (the importance of) taking along extra food and clothing ... even on what you think will be an uneventful hike,” said Laitner. “She’s a good example of persevering and not panicking and not losing your head,” he said.

O’Brien said there were times she was uneasy about the terrain, but that she never panicked. She told herself that she had to get out, but that it was not a race. She said she rationed her food, which consisted of a handful of energy and meal bars and one dehydrated dinner.

Her last night in the back country, she treated herself to an improvised hot meal. She took a piece of her reflective metallic tarp and heated water in it. “It was pasta with jack cheese; it had a little bite to it,” she said. “I said ‘I’ll have half now and half later.’ I knew I had to do that.”

******

Personally, I think what saved her was her experience and determination. And I think they are the same things that may have put her into the situation to begin with.

With her history of hiking, she probably thought she could "handle it" when she first realized she was lost. But that same experience should have rooted her in place. On the other hand, I suspect that being as experienced as she was, and having to be rescued could have been an emotional issue.

She had the rule of not hiking alone on a new trail, and admitted that she broke it.

She did carry extra warm clothing, map, extra food, and apparently had firemaking capability, but no container. The first article in this thread said she walked a lot after full dark (about 10:30 p.m. right now), and that could have been to stay warm, since this was just to have been a day hike, and the rest of her gear was back in the Sol Duc Campground.

In this case, its hard to see how much luck was involved. Some, certainly. And she did make it out on her own... eventually.

Sue

"She could've survived that long easily without eating anything. No one thought to mention how she obtained water or stayed warm while sleeping. I assume she obtained water from creeks and had a sleeping bag and fire starting device. These are the factors that ensured her survival, not her food."

This was meant to be a day hike -- I'm sure her sleeping bag was back in her base camp.

She got lost above the snow line. Yes, she might have made it without food, but she may have been walking late to stay warm, and the food would have helped keep her warm when she did stop.

Besides, this is America: I'll bet the worrying about not having food has caused quite a few people to make bad decisions when they're lost.

Sue

Reading that article, besides getting lost initially, it reads like she did good. You make your own luck.