It is not your typical lost-hiker story: For one thing, it was a group of 40 hikers who could not find their way down a remote mountain in Kentucky as night fell and freezing temperatures set in, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. Luckily, they still had phone reception. The group of 37 students and three staffers from La Salle University in Pennsylvania called for help about 7pm yesterday, and rescuers got them off the trail about 3:45am. All were checked out for hypothermia, and only one was admitted to a local hospital. She is expected to be out tomorrow.
"It's pretty rough country back in there," one rescuer tells the AP of the Bad Branch Nature Preserve. The main treatment provided by hospital staffers was, yep, chicken soup. "The other thing was loaning them cellphones so that they could call their parents," says a hospital official. "That was an emotional time." The students are in the area to build houses for Project Appalachia. (More La Salle University stories.)