A hiker who hadn’t been heard from since her phone call reporting she had been charged from bears walked out of the Alaska forest on her own almost two days later.
Teams had been searching for Fina Kiefer, 55, since the early hours of Tuesday. According to the dispatch log of Alaska’s state troopers, she had called her husband to ask for help, saying that she had been charged by bears on the Pioneer Ridge Trail. She said she had warded them off with bear repellent spray but in fleeing them had lost the trail.
Shortly afterward, she stopped answering calls and texts.
Kiefer, who lives nearby in Palmer, had been hiking by herself on the strenuous route, a 12-mile out-and-back. She had set out on Monday night; at that latitude in mid-June, the sun doesn’t set until almost midnight and the sky remains in twilight all night.
Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, aerial searchers and ground teams with dogs combed the rugged hills above the Knik River 35 miles northeast of Anchorage.
At 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, the search was ended for the day because of deteriorating weather conditions. About an hour later, a volunteer searcher driving away from the trailhead was flagged down by Kiefer, who had walked out of the woods along Knik River Road.
She was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries.
Kiefer told authorities she had seen the search helicopters but couldn’t attract the crews’ attention through the tree canopy.
