Woman wedged upside down between boulders for seven hours trying to retrieve phone

Brisbane, Australia
CNN
—
A woman who tried to retrieve her lost phone from between boulders in Australia’s Hunter Valley became stuck upside down for seven hours before she was rescued earlier this month.

Just the bare soles of the woman’s feet can be seen in photos of the incident posted on social media Monday by the New South Wales (NSW) Ambulance service.

The woman had been walking with friends on a private property in Laguna, a country town in the Hunter Valley about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Sydney, when she dropped her phone.

As she tried to retrieve it, she slipped face-first into a 3-meter (about 10 feet) crevice between two large boulders, so deep that her friends were unable to reach her. The woman’s name wasn’t formally released by rescue services but NSW Police said she was 23 years old.




https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/travel/australia-woman-wedged-upside-down-rescued-intl-hnk/index.html





It took a few hours before enough rock was removed for rescuers to first access one foot, then the other.

The last remaining boulder – weighing some 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) – proved difficult to shift, Watts said.

“We used a winch to pull that out of the way. We were using timber on either side of that to prevent that from rocking or rolling over that little 10-centimeter gap until we got it well out of the way,” said Watts.

Then they started to manipulate her body to get her out of the hole.

“The chute that she slid down didn’t go straight down, so we couldn’t pull her straight up,” Watts said.



The woman was taken to the hospital for observation.









Her phone, however, remains trapped between the rocks.