A 23-year-old Australian woman found herself trapped for several hours after falling into a crevice while attempting to retrieve her phone during a hike in the Hunter Valley. The incident occurred on a secluded private property where she was hiking with friends.
The woman dropped her phone and, in an effort to recover it, slid headfirst into a 10-foot gap between two large rocks. Her friends tried to assist but eventually had to leave to find a spot with better phone signal to call for help.
When New South Wales (NSW) Ambulance services arrived, the woman had been hanging upside down for over an hour, stuck about three meters deep in the crevice.
“As she’s crawled into this little hole, she slipped and slid about three meters down a chute and got stuck,” explained Peter Watts, NSW Ambulance Specialist Rescue Paramedic, in a CNN report.
The rescue was complex, requiring paramedics to move boulders weighing up to 500 kg to reach the woman. She was freed after seven hours and taken to the hospital with only minor scratches and bruises. Unfortunately, her phone was not recovered.
“It was challenging but incredibly rewarding,” Watts noted, adding that it was his first time encountering such a situation in his decade-long career as a rescue paramedic.
