Pamela Salant – 3 days in the forest with broken legs
Time stranded: 3 days
Distance traveled: >1 mile
Terrain types: forest
Deaths: 0
Situation ended: Found by rescue helicopter
Location: columbia gorge national scenic area
In July of 2011, Pamela Salant, an art teacher from Portland was hiking through the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area with her Boyfriend. They had planned to spend the night at one of the lakes and at the end of a long day of hiking they finally reached their destination, a popular valley camping site on the edge of Bear Lake. They dropped off their gear and separated to look for a good spot to camp for the night, only walking a short distance away from each other.
Pamela didn’t find anything and started to walk back to the lake to meet up with her boyfriend, but then it happened. She later claimed that it happened so fast that she doesn’t know how she fell, but ended up tumbling 50 feet down a cliff. She was unconscious from the fall and didn’t wake up until the next morning, only to find one of her bones was sticking through her leg and both of them were broken.
She didn’t have her phone and had no way of calling for help, and to make matters worse was only dressed in shorts and a tank top. There was no way of getting back up the cliff and she couldn’t even stand, but this is when her survival instincts kicked in. She ripped up her underwear to use as a bandage to cover a large cut on her knee and began to slide along on her bottom towards the sound of running water further down the slope.
She knew it would be a good idea to stay close to water, not only because she didn’t even have a water bottle, but because she knew that it would likely lead to people. While all this was happening her boyfriend had called the emergency services, and a rescue team was dispatched to find her. Initially, this included people on foot looking for her in the direction she was last seen walking in, but they weren’t able to get down the cliff and couldn’t search the valley below where she was.
Pamela managed to travel just over a mile from the point she fell over the cliff, almost entirely by sliding along on her bum. She stayed next to a creek for the entire 3 days but food was starting to become a problem, leading to her trying to eat a slug at one point. She ate any berries she passed and started to eat caterpillars after getting desperate, but it wasn’t until the third day she tried eating a slug and ended up spitting it out after a few chews.
At night the temperatures would drop to 50°F (10°C) which is very cold when you’re only in shorts and a sleeveless top. During the night, Pamela would grab clumps of moss and wrap them around herself, trying to create a makeshift natural blanket. On the third day, she had reached a distance of just over a mile but still had a long way to go and was in a rapidly worsening condition.
The rescue teams realized that the only way to effectively find her was by air, and a helicopter was dispatched on the second day of the search but weren’t able to see any signs of her through the thick forest canopy. On the day of her rescue, she was sitting on a log in a small clearing and the rescue helicopter flew directly overhead, almost missing her if she hadn’t waved.
There was no way to land anywhere nearby, and over 200 feet of cable had to be lowered to reach her. She was put onto a stretcher and winched up to the helicopter before being taken to hospital. Both legs were badly broken and she had several fractured ribs, along with a large cut on her knee and a very sore and scratched behind, but managed to make a full recovery and stated she intended to return to hiking.