After a California hiker was found after being stranded in the Santa Cruz Mountains for 10 days, he shared the survival tactics which ensured his safe return home.
Lukas McClish, 34, set off on June 11 for a hike that was supposed to last only three hours. He didn’t even wear a shirt on his fateful journey. “I left with just a pair of pants, and my pair of hiking shoes, and a hat. I had a flashlight, and a pair of folding scissors, like a Leatherman tool. And that was about it,” McClish explained to ABC 7 Los Angeles.
McClish was eventually reported missing on June 17 after he failed to show up for a planned Father’s Day dinner. He was rescued last Thursday.
McClish said he survived his terrifying 10 days stranded in the mountains by eating wild berries, sleeping on beds of wet leaves, and drinking one gallon of water each day out of his own boot.
“I just make sure I drank a gallon of water every day, but then after, getting close to the end of it, my body needed food and some kind of sustenance,” McClish told the outlet. “I [would] go up a canyon, down a canyon to the next waterfall and sit down by the waterfall and drink water out of my boot,” he explained of his daily routine.
McClish said that, while stranded, he screamed continuously for help to no avail. “Just ‘Help, help. I’m over here,’” he recalled. “Or, ‘Is anybody out there? I want a burrito and a taco bowl,'" he joked. “That’s what I thought about every day after the first five days, when I started to kind of realize that I might be in over my head.”
After McClish’s family reported him missing on June 17, they spent an agonizing four and a half days searching with authorities before they found him Thursday afternoon in Big Basin State Park.
“There were multiple reports of witnesses hearing someone yelling for help, but the location of that person was hard to establish,” Cal Fire San Mateo–Santa Cruz wrote in a social media post following McClish’s rescue.
McClish was uninjured from the episode, but said that he was slightly sore and had lost his voice. He recalled the amazing moment he saw boot and paw prints from rescue crews and their search dogs. “It was just really humbling and I don’t know, it was an awesome experience,” McClish said of his rescue. "I did enough hiking for probably the whole rest of the year."
"Me too," McClish’s father responded. "We've all hiked a lot," his mother agreed.
