An elderly Canadian cruise ship passenger who got lost on a solo hike near an Alaskan Glacier spent the night in a forest home to bears, wolves and moose, before walking to safety the following morning.
The 79-year-old Ontario woman, whose name has not been made public, was a passenger on the 294-metre Coral Princess when it docked in Juneau, Alaska’s state capital, last Wednesday. The ship has 1,000 passenger cabins and a crew of close to 900.
The woman travelled 19 kilometres from the port to the Mendenhall Glacier to walk the 3.5-mile East Glacier Trail, which was not part of the cruise itinerary. But she became disorientated on the loop route, which ought to take two hours to walk, veering instead onto another path, the Nugget Creek Trail.
At 4pm, by which time she had failed to return, the Coral Princess left port without her. Lost out on the darkening trail, she was forced to spend the night without any camping or safety gear in the Tongass national forest, part of the world’s largest swathe of temperate rainforest.
Juneau police organised a search that went on until midnight. The following morning at about 9.30, the woman walked into the visitor centre, wet and tired but otherwise unscathed. Police officers drove her to the airport, where she boarded to a flight to Ketchikan to rejoin the cruise.
“She’s a hardy soul,” Princess Cruises port manager Kirby Day told the Juneau Empire. “She is a strong lady, and she knew what she was doing. She did all the right things except for making one wrong turn."
