Hiker Rescued After 10 Days Lost In Mountains

A hiker is finally home safe after being lost for 10 days in the California wilderness.

The 34-year-old Lukas McClish was only going for a three-hour hike when he disappeared.

Lost in the woods for nine nights and 10 days, shirtless with only a flashlight and folding scissors. It would be more than a week before the raggedy-looking hiker would be found.

“I kind of just hiked each day. I’d go up a canyon, down a canyon to the next waterfall,” McClish said. “I’d sit down by the waterfall and drink water out of my boot.”   

It was Tuesday, June 11th when McClish went for a hike in Boulder Creek and ended up getting lost.

“I felt comfortable the whole time I was out there. I wasn’t worried about… I had a mountain lion that was following me, but it was cool. He kept his distance. I think it was just somebody watching over me.”

The problem is McClish didn’t tell anyone where he was going. By the time Father’s Day rolled around last Sunday, his family started worrying and filed a missing person’s report.

“Some nights, I just had to trust God that he was going to be okay,” McClish’s mother said. “That was hard to do some nights because I would worry about where he was, where he was sleeping and how cold he was, if he was alive.

McClish drank water from creeks, ate wild berries, slept on a wet bed of leaves while yelling for help and thinking of his next meal.

“Just ‘Help! Help! I’m over here! Is anybody out there?’” McClish said. “I want a burrito and a taco bowl. That’s what I thought about everyday after the first five days when I started, kind of, realizing I might be in over my head.”

But Thursday afternoon, someone finally heard his cries for help. Boulder Creek Fire deployed a drone and spotted his location.

A K-9 tracked him down and McClish was escorted out of a remote canyon, reunited with family.