Gerrard Kaonga
A hiker who thought she'd been bitten by a spider had to call mountain rescue after she was left stranded and unable to finish her hike.
But after she was saved in a five-hour operation, it turns out the actual culprit was very different, and much more common.
On the evening of Wednesday June 12, the anonymous woman was on the Taboose Pass, a mountain trail in Sierra Nevada, California.
While fetching water, she felt a biting sensation from 'what she thought was a spider', according to a press release from Inyo County Search and Rescue (Inyo SAR).
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She soon found herself in a nightmare situation - 'unable to feel the skin on her legs' and not feeling capable of finishing the hike.
To make matters worse, her phone was also running out of battery.
She was able to call mountain rescue with her last bit of juice before her battery died.
Inyo SAR received her call at around 6.30pm.
They wrote: “Inyo SAR assembled a team in Bishop and drove the rough road up to Taboose trailhead.
“The rescuers pushed a wheeled litter up for about 1.5 mi, then stashed it when the trail became too rough to safely continue with a litter for the last quarter mile.
“After assessing the patient, the rescuers slowly walked her down the tricky section of the trail while ensuring her safety with ropes, then transferred her into the wheeled litter where the trail became stable. Subject and rescuers arrived at the trailhead just before midnight.”
The total rescue operation took over five hours.
The woman wasn’t actually bitten by a spider like she thought, however.
“Rescuers believe that the individual who needed rescuing was stung by stinging nettles located on the overgrown trail,” Lindsey Stine of the county sheriff’s office, said in a statement to the New York Post.
In an attempt to avoid the snow on the Mather Pass, the hiker had inadvertently strolled through a patch of stinging nettles on the Taboose Pass trail.
Stinging nettles can often have stinging hair hairs tipped with formic acid and other irritants that can cause irritation upon puncturing the skin.
The symptoms do not tend to last longer than 24 hours and the hiker is currently recovering well.
The Inyo County Search & Rescue page also highlighted important tips to prevent disaster in these situations, including bringing a power bank and have a satellite messaging device.