Hiker gets lost, stays put and waits for rescue

In the middle of the woods, the best moves are don’t move, but do trust the technology.

Pennington County, South Dakota Search and Rescue said a young woman who was lost while hiking did the exact right thing by staying put, contacting authorities and remembering that modern electronics mean you’re never really lost.

The 18-year-old woman and her friends were venturing to the popular swimming spot called Hippie Hole on Battle Creek near Keystone. The rugged trail down to the swimming hole proved too much for the woman, and she decided to turn back toward the parking lot, letting her friends go on without her.

It was at that point the woman got off the difficult-to-follow trail, leaving her lost and alone in the forest, without water and in sultry, mid-90s temperatures. She called 911 emergency dispatch, saying she did not know where she was and couldn’t find her way back to the car. Dispatch told her to stay put and help would find her.

About a half-hour into the search the team found her sitting under the shade of a tree roughly one-third of a mile from the parking lot. She was hot, thirsty and a little scraped up, but uninjured and able to walk.

“She did the exact right thing by staying put,” a rescuer said. “We were able to put in her GPS coordinates, and that got us within 100 feet of where we found her. It is a lot harder when we are chasing a moving target.”

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