Lost Hiker's Cries for Help Heard Over Half a Mile

A lost hiker stranded on a mountainside north of Los Angeles might still be there now if her voice had been a little weaker. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says the 23-year-old woman was rescued from a remote part of the Angeles National Forest on Monday morning after somebody heard her cries for help from around half a mile away and alerted authorities, KTLA reports. The woman took the wrong trail while hiking to Echo Mountain on Sunday and "could not hike back up due to the loose crumbly hillside, and she could not go any further down either," the sheriff's department says in a Facebook post.

Rescue crews traced the voice ("we could make out the word help") and hiked through rough terrain to find the woman, KTLA reports. The hiker—who "had no cell phone coverage, very little food, water, and lacked warm clothing," according to the sheriff's department—was hoisted to safety by helicopter and treated for minor injuries and possible hypothermia. A police spokesman tells the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that the woman, who twice suffered falls of around 9 feet during her ordeal, is lucky that people were able to hear her cries for help from a little-visited part of the forest. (A former Navy SEAL looking for DB Cooper's parachute found himself in a dire situation.)