A woman was rescued last week after a possible spider bite left her unable to feel the skin on her legs during a hike in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
The hiker made a call for help around 6:30 p.m. June 12 as she was on Taboose Pass Trail, Inyo County Search and Rescue said on Facebook.
She was a little less than 2 miles shy of the trailhead when she went to get some water from a creek and “reportedly got bitten by what she thought was a spider.”
Afterward, she was “unable to feel the skin on her legs and could not continue her hike down,” Inyo County Search and Rescue said in a statement.
Luckily, the woman, whose name was not released, was able to share her coordinates before her phone battery died.
Inyo Search and Rescue assembled a team and drove the “rough road” up to the Taboose trailhead. Rescuers also pushed a wheeled carrier for about a mile and a half on the trail until it became “too rough,” the group said.
When rescuers found the hiker, they helped her walk slowly down “the tricky section of the trail” and later transferred her to the wheeled carrier.
The hiker and the rescue team arrived at the trailhead just before midnight.
Inyo Search and Rescue warned hikers to take power banks for their phones when they head out and reminded the public that the Taboose, Sawmill, Baxter and Shepherd pass trails are “a lot less maintained" than the rest of the trails in the Sierra and that hikers may encounter “very tricky sections” and “very steep grades.”
