A 79-year-old Ontario woman got lost on a solo hike near an Alaska glacier and spent a night in the forest without camping gear but walked to safety the next day.
The woman — whose name has not been released — had been a passenger aboard the Coral Princess cruise ship.
Kirby Day, port manager for Princess Cruises calls the woman a hardy soul who knew what she was doing.
READ MORE: Goat drowns trying to escape crowd snapping pics in Alaska
He says she did all the right things except for making one wrong turn.
The woman left on an independent hike of the East Glacier Trail and veered onto the Nugget Creek Trail.
As night fell Wednesday, she became disoriented and decided to spend the night on the trail.
Juneau police organized a multi-agency search and looked for the hiker until midnight.
The woman had travelled independently about 19 kilometres to the Mendenhall Glacier.
Police and cruise ship employees called tour groups and hotels seeking information and a patrol officer spent four hours downtown asking people if they had seen the woman.
The Coral Princess, meanwhile, left port at about 4 p.m.
READ MORE: 1st luxury cruise ship set to sail Northwest Passage
The woman appeared at the glacier visitor centre at about 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning — tired and wet but in good shape.
Police officers picked the woman up from the glacier and drove her to the airport where she flew to Ketchikan and rejoined her ship.
Day says this is one of those ones that turned out good “We’ve had a couple over the years that didn’t.”
- What is a halal mortgage? How interest-free home financing works in Canada
- Capital gains changes are ‘really fair,’ Freeland says, as doctors cry foul
- Ontario doctors offer solutions to help address shortage of family physicians
- Budget 2024 failed to spark ‘political reboot’ for Liberals, polling suggests
Comments