A Hiker Fell Off a Cliff on the Appalachian Trail. It Took Him an Entire Night to Call for Help.

A 29-year-old man suffered a severe fall from an overlook along the Appalachian Trail over the weekend, and managed to escape with injuries — after finally managing to crawl to his phone and call for a rescue the next morning.

The unidentified man was at Bear Rock, in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. At some point during the night, he fell from steep terrain onto bare rock 40 to 50 feet below. While he was conscious, his phone landed a distance away from him, and he was not able to crawl to it and call for rescue until around 10:30 on Sunday morning.

Officials with the Germansville Fire Company responded with UTVs to the complex accident site, stabilizing the man for transport to a local hospital within two hours. Fire Chief Jay Scheffler led the response.

“For how far he fell, I was sure he was going to have suffered worse damage,” said Scheffler, noting the injuries were to the ribs and spinal column.

Scheffler said the man was not a serious hiker, and was not involved in thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Though rescuers can’t be certain what caused the overnight incident, Scheffler said they detected “a strong smell of alcohol” at the scene.

It’s not uncommon for the department to respond to distress calls in the area (especially at a more popular overlook nearby), but the fire chief said they usually come from inexperienced hikers who are underprepared or lost late at night.

Scheffler remarked on the man’s physical resilience, and shared that he expects to hear back from him once he’s out of the hospital. But, he emphasized, the ordeal was far from unavoidable: The man had been traveling alone without providing any plan or location information to family or friends.

“He told us ‘I didn’t want to bother you,’ and I just said ‘what else are you going to do out here by yourself [with serious injuries]?’” Sheffler said. “It comes down to doing stuff you shouldn’t be doing while hiking alone.”