“Doom and gloom” were setting in about 2 a.m. Monday as crews searched Ohiopyle State Park for a missing 76-year-old woman.
The Jeannette woman had gone missing off Ferncliff Trail, where park rangers Chief John Kaminsky said there are some crevices and “unique dangers.”
Their fears evaporated about 8:30 a.m., when the missing woman flagged down a member of the Ohiopyle River Rescue team. Despite being stuck on a hillside for about 12 hours, she was not hurt.
“It is always great when things turn out this way,” Kaminsky said.
The woman spent the night in the park after slipping and falling down a hill. Finding herself unable to climb back up, she hunkered down where she was, Kaminsky said.
Authorities became aware the woman was missing upon finding her daughter, 47, waiting in a parking area about 9:30 p.m. Sunday. Their names were not released.
Kaminsky said authorities approached the woman because she was in the park after it closed at sunset. They learned she and her mother had been hiking in the Ferncliff area when the older woman decided she wanted to return to the car. The daughter continued on.
The woman was on her way back to the car when she missed a shorter route, Kaminsky said. She slipped and fell down the hill in the dark about a half-mile from the car, he said. She was not carrying a cellphone and had no food or water with her.
As many as 30 people were looking for her.
“She heard the helicopters last night, but they could not see her under the canopy,” Kaminsky said. “We had searchers out all through the night.”
Once the river rescue team spotted her, Kaminsky said, they took her across the river to an easier extraction point, where an ambulance was waiting. They let her go when the daughter said she would take her mother to a hospital to get checked out.
“She was very alert, and she was doing quite well,” Kaminsky said.
