Updated
April 11, 2020 10: 07: 51
Claire Nelson thinks it was her hiking experience, not inexperience, that very nearly got her killed at Joshua Tree National Park.
The New Zealand journalist had hiked there before, and this walk was only designated “moderately hard”, so she was feeling confident about it.
She didn’t worry about sharing her itinerary with anyone, and didn’t leave any notes telling people where they might find her if she didn’t come home.
But a few hours into the hike, Claire lost her footing and fell about eight metres into a small clearing, not much bigger than she is.
“I’d landed in amongst these large boulders and I couldn’t move,” she tells RN’s Life Matters.
“I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t stand up. [It was] indescribably painful.”
She’d shattered her pelvis in the fall. She had no phone service, only enough water for about a day and very little food — a bagel, a hard-boiled egg, a chocolate bar.
She was facing sweltering Californian desert heat, not to mention patr