Who: A hiker in her 20s who has never been hiking in her life
Where: Motatapu Track, Australia
His mistake: She’s never hiked in her life, but decided to hike alone on a difficult trail
What happened: A tourist decided to solo hike along the Shania Twain track (a trail named after the country star since some of the trail runs through her property). The woman has never been hiking before and soon realized that she was ill prepared and unfit for the challenge ahead of her.
Instead she hunkered down in a hut along the trail for nine days. She was too scared and unconfident in her ability to return to the trailhead. She did have a small supply of Weetbix (a breakfast cereal type thing) and energy bars that kept her going.
After 9 days, another hiker happened upon her and offered to escort her out. The woman still wasn’t confident enough that she could get out, so the other hiker made it to out of the wilderness and alerted authorities.
A helicopter was brought in and plucked the woman from the hut. Her current condition is unknown.
Read the story here.
The hiker was Australian; the track is in New Zealand.