18-year-old Cherelle LaGrou was on the phone with her mother while hiking an Alaskan mountain alone. She slipped and fell about 30 feet from a cliff, terrifying her mother with her screams.
Cherelle and her mother were talking for about 15 minutes. She was on a ridge atop Fox Creek, and told her mother she didn’t know what to do now that she had reached the edge of the mountain. She lost her footing on the slippery terrain, and her mother heard a scream, followed by silence.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Cherelle said, “It feels like it was something out of a movie. It was all just so unreal that it was actually happening.”
Cherelle came back on the phone after a short while, and was hysterical. She cried to her mother, saying that she wasn’t ready to die. Her mother, Shelly, talked to her daughter while her husband called Cherelle’s employer, Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. They alerted Alaska State Troopers.
About 30 minutes after the fall, as troopers were working to bring her to safety, the battery of Cherelle’s cellphone died. It wasn’t until another 45 minutes later that she was able to call her mother and let her know that she was safe. Luckily, she sustained only minor scratches.
Cherelle’s mother told The Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle, “You don’t know if you’re talking to your child for the last time. It was a miracle.”
The National Geographic Channel reality show Alaska State Troopers was filming in the area, and caught the rescue on film. It is expected to air this fall.