Hiker lost in Hawaiian forest found alive after 17 days
KAHULUI, Hawaii — It had been 17 days since anyone had seen Amanda Eller. Her car was spotted by a trailhead in a vast forest reserve in this state, and thousands of search volunteers were scouring the jungles and streams nearby.
On Friday afternoon, less than an hour after her family announced a $50,000 reward for information, rescuers found Eller with a broken leg, a torn meniscus in her knee, and sunburns and scrapes on her body.
“I wanted to give up,” Eller, 35, said from her hospital bed late Friday. “But the only option I had was life or death.”
Eller, a physical therapist and yoga instructor, said she had lost her way in the Makawao Forest Reserve on the northern side of Maui on May 8.
Eller had intended to go on a 3-mile trail walk, one she had done before. She went off the path to rest, and when she resumed hiking, she got turned around.
Eller estimated that she had hiked continuously from 10:30 a.m. until around midnight that first day, looking for her car.
Eller was wearing just a thin tank top, a sports bra and capri-length yoga pants. She left her water bottle, cellphone and wallet in her car. Eller said she had not brought those things because she had planned to be gone only a short time.
After she got lost, things only got worse. She fell 20 feet off a steep cliff, fracturing her leg and tearing the meniscus, according to her friend Katie York. The next day, she lost her shoes in a flash flood.
At night, Eller covered herself in ferns. She ate whatever she could salvage, including wild strawberry guavas and moths that landed on her body.
Meanwhile, an army of volunteers turned over every stone looking for her.
On Day 17, Eller was near a stream searching for “some plant to eat for dinner and some place to sleep that wasn’t directly in the mud” when she saw a helicopter. She said she had seen and heard multiple helicopters fly above her during her ordeal, according to York, but none had spotted her. This one did.
“I looked up, and they were right on top of me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and I just broke down and started bawling.”