Kiwi woman drank her own urine as she prepared for death in US desert
Claire Nelson spent three days with a broken pelvis trapped in a US desert before being rescued.
A New Zealand woman drank her own urine to survive three days stranded, wounded in a relentlessly-hot American desert.
Claire Nelson, 36, was found with a shattered pelvis in Joshua Tree National Park by US Park Rangers three days after she had fallen and broken her pelvis on Tuesday.
Recovering from the ordeal in hospital, Nelson tweeted: "Nobody could hear me scream. I would have died by the weekend. I cannot believe I am alive."
She added: "I nearly died this week. On Tuesday morning I was on a solo hike in the Colorado desert when I fell off a boulder, landed on a rock, shattered my pelvis, and was unable to move, or sit up or anything."
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She went on: "I just lay there, using a stick to help cover me for the long hot parts of the day when the sun was burning, and at night tried to keep warm and not get panicked about rattlesnakes.
Claire Nelson, who grew up in Eastbourne, near Wellington, survived three days stranded in a staggeringly-hot US desert.
"My water ran out Wednesday night and I survived by drinking my own urine."
The rescue helicopter would never have found her if she had not made a flag to wave them down, she said.
In Ōtaki, north of Wellington, mother Maggie Hickton said she started becoming concerned when he daughter's Instagram feed stopped getting updated. "By Thursday I was starting to think, how long do you wait?" she said.
Horrible thoughts went through her head - had her daughter been abducted? Had she been bitten by a rattle snake? Had she fallen?
Nelson had indeed fallen. She had stepped off the trail, stumbled on a rock and gone down a cliff about five to six metres to a riverbed below, shattering her pelvis.
And there she was stuck, unable to move, even to get to shade, for three days.
Claire Nelson had been travelling across Canada but detoured to Joshua Tree, where the accident happened.
As the sun moved across the sky on those long days - as the temperatures reached into the "high 30s or 40s" - she tried to shield herself with her t-shirt.
What she didn't know is that people whose home she was house-sitting had raised the alarm and a search was underway.
The rescue helicopter flew over Nelson a couple of times before the crew eventually spotted her - thanks to her waving her t-shirt and hat on the end of a hiking stick.
Now recovering in hospital, Nelson was shocked, in pain, and could not believe she was alive, Hickton said.
"My pelvis is in pieces and it's the most agonising pain I've ever felt, but they're going to operate on Monday and piece me back together with pins," Nelson wrote on Twitter. "I'm so grateful to be alive."
Hickton planned to fly over to see her daughter on Monday and it was still not clear how much of the hospital would be covered by insurance.
The Joshua Tree trip had been a diversion from a one-year tour Nelson had been doing across Canada following 12 years living in London.
Before that, Nelson was based in Auckland but spent many of her younger years in Eastbourne, on the edge of Wellington Harbour.
- Stuff
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