Hiker discovered alive after 10 days misplaced reveals how he survived

A shirtless hiker has revealed how he survived 10 grueling days lost in the northern California mountains before he was rescued, relatively unscathed.

Lukas McClish, 34, had set out on a three-hour hike through the Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Boulder Creek, California, on June 11 after his friend mentioned a granite outcropping in the area, according to the New York Times.

He did not tell anyone where he was going, and had brought with him just a few supplies.

‘I left with a pair of pants, and my hiking shoes and a hat,’ McClish told KGO-TV. ‘I had a flashlight and a air of folding scissors, like a Leatherman tool – and that was about it.’

McClish would then have to spend nine nights and 10 days – shirtless – foraging for himself as he drank water from the creek, ate wild berries and slept on wet leaves.

McClish, an experienced hiker who does landscaping in forests razed by wildfires, said he was ‘astounded’ that he got lost.

The area in which he was hiking had been razed in the CZU Lightning Complex fire of 2020 and ‘looks completely different from all of the other terrain,’ he explained.

‘That’s one thing I didn’t take into consideration – when the fire comes through like that and decimates it, it turns into the desert and you’re unable to find your bearings.’

The typical markers to indicate direction, such as deer trails or hiking paths, were gone.

But at first, McClish considered his predicament a chance to test his survival skills.

‘I’m an avid backpacker, so for me to go out for a night or two is not out of the norm,’ he told the Times. 

On that first cold night, though, McClish tried to build himself a camp – but the brush he used to start a fire was wet.

He then hiked across a canyon for better shelter, and the next day set out to find a stream he thought would be nearby.

‘So I just kind of hiked,’ McClish told WDBJ. ‘Each day I go up a canyon, down a canyon, to the next waterfall, drank water out of my boot.’ 

‘I felt comfortable every time I was out there,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t worried about it.’

‘I had a mountain lion that was following me, but it was cool,’ McClish added. ‘It kept its distance.

‘I think it was just somebody watching over me.’

But by day five, McClish started to grow concerned – and tried to find a way back to civilization.

‘I knew if I kept following the sun, I’d get to the ocean eventually, but I didn’t know how far from the ocean I was,’ he said.

Meanwhile, his family began to worry when he did not show up for Father’s Day, and filed a missing person’s report.

That sparked a massive manhunt, involving nearly 300 people and emergency personnel from several agencies. 

‘Some nights, although I just had to trust God that he was going to be OK – and that was hard to do some nights, when we would go to bed at night, because I would worry about where he was, where he was sleeping, how cold he was and where he was if he was alive,’ his mother, Diane McClish, told WDBJ.

As search efforts continued, McClish started shouting for help as he experienced hypothermia and slipped while going over a rock face. 

‘Help, help, I’m over here,’ he remembers screaming over and over during days eight and nine, along with ‘Is anybody out there?’ 

At the same time, McClish said he kept dreaming about his next meal as he was forced to survive on wild berries.

‘I wanted a burrito or a taco bowl,’ he said. ‘That’s what I thought about every day when I, after the first five days, when I started to kind of realize that I might be in over my head.’

Finally, at around 7.30pm on Thursday, two park rangers were making their way up a hill and heard McClish’s screams.

‘I’m thinking, I hope this isn’t a mirage,’ McClish recounted. 

But the Boulder Creek Fire Department soon deployed a drone and spotted him, while a dog tracked him down.

He was then escorted out of the wilderness by police, and was reunited with his anxious family.

McClish would go on to spend Thursday night safely at a local hospital, where doctors removed rocks from his back.

He said he still doesn’t fear the wilderness, but admitted: ‘I did enough hiking for probably the whole rest of the year.’