A young woman spent hours trapped upside down after slipping between two rocks while trying to retrieve her cell phone during a hike in Australia.
The woman – identified in reports as Matilda Campbell – was walking in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales earlier this month when she fell into the three-metre-high crevasse.
It was the start of a seven-hour ordeal that would see emergency services carry out a “difficult” rescue – including moving several rocks.
And even after managing to move a 500 kg boulder out of the way, they still had to figure out how to get the woman out of the ‘S’ curve she was in.
“In my 10 years as a paramedic, I have never encountered a job like this. It was challenging but incredibly rewarding,” said Peter Watts from the NSW Ambulance Service.
She had been upside down for more than an hour before rescuers arrived, after initial efforts by her friends to free her failed.
NSW Ambulance has completed a dramatic rescue, rescuing a woman who was trapped upside down between rocks in the Hunter Valley.
Matilda Campbell dropped her phone among the rocks while walking with friends and when she tried to retrieve it, she fell and got stuck,… pic.twitter.com/szp3Fifr1B
– 10 News First Sydney (@10NewsFirstSyd) October 22, 2024
Photos shared by the ambulance service show her hanging between rocks by her feet, as well as complex efforts to keep the area stable as emergency services tried to create a gap large enough to free her.
Watts later described the young woman as a “soldier” in an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC.
“We all thought: How did you get there – and how are we going to get you out?”
Incredibly, the rescued woman was left with only minor scratches and bruises, Ambulance NSW said.
She was, however, unable to retrieve her phone. “Thank you to the team that saved me, you are literally life savers,” he wrote in an online message. “Too bad about the phone.”
Source: BBC