A hiker crawled for two days in search of rescue after plummeting 20-feet down a waterfall and breaking his leg and wrist, reports ABC.
54-year-old Neil Parker was walking alone on Mount Nebo in Brisbane, Australia, when he fell. The experienced hiker’s first thought was to use his cell phone to call for help, but in an ‘everything that could go wrong did go wrong’ scenario, found his phone had been damaged in the accident.
‘My left foot just below my ankle, clean snapped in half,’ he said. ‘The whole bottom of my leg came loose. ‘It’s not a compound fracture. Close to it. It didn’t break the skin but I have what’s called compound blisters on my skin which are eight or nine inches long. ‘I had to carry my leg, and legs are very heavy when they’re not connected to anything.’
Parker decided to crawl to an area two miles away, where he believed rescue teams would be more likely to find him. The 54-year-old had packed painkillers and protein bars, which he said helped him survive the journey.
“I could only get a metre or a metre-and-a-half each time before I had to stop,” he said. “What took me 40 minutes to walk up took me nearly two days to crawl back down,” he said.
A rescue helicopter eventually spotted Parker in the scrubland on Tuesday afternoon. He was winched to safety shortly afterwards and taken to hospital.
