Mom Walks 30 Hours Through A Snowstorm To Save Her Family

A mother would do anything if it meant saving her family, and when one Pennsylvania mom and her family slid off the road and into a ditch, she knew she had to find help.

Forty-six-year-old Karen Klein and her husband Eric were on their way to the Grand Canyon National Park with their 10-year-old son, but since it’s winter, one of the main roads to the canyon’s north rim was closed and their GPS showed them an alternate route through the park’s service roads.

However, the family’s car ended up sliding into a ditch when after they started driving down the snow covered service roads and tried to turn around. Klein knew no one would likely pass by them since the road was so secluded, and since it was snowing so hard, she knew they would have to get to the major highway to find help before it was too late. Klein was a triathlete and had taken wilderness survival classes, and volunteered to go, However, when she got to the nearby highway it was deserted since it had also been closed because of the snow and decided to keep hiking to the park’s entrance.

For the next 30 hours, Klein hiked 26 miles through the storm and wilderness, and when she ran out of food she ate pine twigs and drank her own urine. The final few miles took nine hours for her to walk, since she would make it 10 feet before collapsing and then fight to pick herself up again. At one point, she took her shoe off to get ice out, and when she couldn’t get it back on she kept on walking the final four miles without it.

Knowing Klein had been up for 45 hours, Eric began to worry when she didn’t return the next day and decided to take their son and hike to higher ground where he found cell service and called for help. Rescuers soon got to Eric and his son, but Klein was still missing. Rescuers searched for 6 hours and finally found her huddled in a guard’s cabin, which she broke into and tried to keep warm with blankets found inside.

Miraculously, Klein was alive and is now recovering in the hospital. “What kept her going, she says, is she didn’t want her mother to bury her daughter. She didn’t want her son to be without a mother,” Klein’s twin sister Kristen Haase said.