Hikers who visited Utah’s Zion National Park are sharing their perilous story of survival – which includes getting stuck in quicksand and spending hours in a snowstorm over the weekend.
Ryan Osmun and his girlfriend, Jessika McNeill, originally from Arizona, said they’d been hiking for three hours on Saturday when McNeill tripped and fell in quicksand on part of a trail at Zion known as the Subway, CBS News reported.
“He started to help me get out by himself and realized I wasn’t going anywhere,” she told CBS of the ordeal.
“He had tried a pulley system with wrapping it around my waist and under my arms, hooked it to a rock and started to pull it but it just felt like it was starting to rip my leg and my whole hips off my body and I didn’t feel like I was going anywhere.”
Osmun said he eventually managed to help McNeil out of the sand, but he got stuck knee-deep in the process.
McNeill spent an additional 30 minutes trying to free Osmun but he wouldn’t budge. Unfortunately, they had no phone service and couldn’t call for help, she recalled.
“He eventually told me I needed to leave him and hike back to get cell service and call 911,” McNeill told ABC News.
“I knew the only way to save his life was to leave him, but I didn’t know if he had the time left. It was the hardest thing I’ve had to do, the scariest thing I had to do,” she added.
McNeill spent three hours looking for an area where she could call for help. Rangers from Zion Search and Rescue found McNeil and treated her for hypothermia, according to a National Park Service release.
Several hours later, rangers found Osmun and spent two hours freeing him from the sand.
“The water was so cold, I thought I was going to lose my leg,” Osmun told ABC.
“I was in the water for 11 hours total. There were two snowstorms while I was waiting, just sitting in the water. It was just pouring snow.”
Rangers treated Osmun for hypothermia and also started warming his leg. Rangers spent the night with Osmun as another 4 inches of snow coated the ground. The next morning, the Utah Department of Public Safety sent a helicopter from Salt Lake City. The helicopter landed safely on Sunday afternoon.