The family of a 75-year-old Vancouver woman who was lost for three days in the wilderness in Skamania County says she stayed alive by continuously moving and sleeping little.
“She’s doing great. She’s got a lot of spunk,” said Jung VanAtta’s daughter, Sue Wong. “She just has a can-do attitude, which helps.”
Hardships through her life likely also hardened her survival instincts. VanAtta’s family defected from North Korea in the 1940s; her father was captured when she was 3 years old, and she helped raise her siblings in the war-torn country. She emigrated from South Korea in 1974.
VanAtta turned 75 on Tuesday, the day she was found by rescuers in the Woodard Creek Drainage.
VanAtta was last seen around 10 a.m. Saturday near 572 Beacon Highlands Road, about 15 miles northwest of Stevenson, according to the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office. She had been picking mushrooms with Donald E. Bergseng, 87, of Vancouver.
Chung Oh said Bergseng invited his mother to pick chanterelle mushrooms at a spot the man had been frequenting for years. VanAtta collected two buckets of mushrooms and was enjoying herself so much, she decided to take a stroll. Bergseng didn’t join her, Oh said, because he was not in good enough health to traverse the incline of the trail.
Somewhere along the way, VanAtta slipped and fell down a steep ravine, her family said. She slid on her backside.
A growing worry and search effort
She couldn’t get back up the side of the narrow gorge. A couple of hours passed. Family and friends were worried, so they called 911.
They searched the area until sunset, but VanAtta was nowhere to be found. That’s when deputies arrived and started coordinating a rescue mission, said Skamania County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy Schultz. Deputies and search-and-rescue volunteers continued rooting around in the dark woods until 2:45 a.m. Sunday, Schultz said.
In the following days, more searchers were called in to help find VanAtta, and several clues were discovered, according to Schultz. A footprint from a tennis shoe was found. Deputies knew VanAtta wasn’t wearing boots, so the print was likely hers. They also found a bag of plucked mushrooms.
The search proved difficult. Schultz said the area around the Beacon Highland Roads property, and nearby Woodard Creek, consists of waist-high ferns and tall-standing timber.
On Sunday, the sheriff’s office deployed a drone to search from the air for VanAtta. A contracted helicopter from JL Aviation also took to the sky. Still, nothing.
“The only thing working in our favor was the weather,” Schultz said.
‘She might freeze to death’
When VanAtta skidded down the ravine, she was bruised and scratched, with a cut on her head and a bruised rib. Ferns slowed her down, family said. She was unable to climb back up, so she started walking east toward Woodard Creek, mainly because she could see electrical poles. VanAtta figured the power poles were a sign of civilization, Oh said.
VanAtta told her family she knew she had to keep moving. She was cold and scared, Wong said.
“She knew if she stopped, she might freeze to death or she might have a stroke, actually. These are her exact words. She thought she may have a stroke if she stopped,” Wong said.
The daughter described her mother as a nimble woman. When VanAtta wasn’t bushwhacking, she shook her legs. She would pick up sticks and hit them together. Whenever VanAtta got tired, she would spread leaves on the ground, lay down and then put leaves over her feet and take a short rest.
Even at night, VanAtta was on the move. She trekked about 800 meters from the bottom of the ravine, as the crow flies. She likely traveled a longer distance on foot; she wasn’t walking in a straight line, Wong said.
She never slept for long, she told her family.
VanAtta crossed Woodard Creek early into her journey. She thought doing so was her best bet to get out of the woods. Searchers told Oh that the point where she likely crossed the creek was about a dozen feet wide.
She ate nothing and drank a small amount of water.
“She said she only drank a little bit at the creek because it was too hard to reach the water after certain areas,” Oh said.
Other than her survival tactics, VanAtta would shout “Yahoo!” at the passing helicopter, pray a lot and sing worship songs. On Tuesday, VanAtta thought she saw a beam of light coming through the trees around 2:30 a.m. It gave her hope and encouragement, and she prayed for rescue, her daughter said.
“She knew by (Tuesday) if she wasn’t found, that was probably going to be the last of it. But a large group of birds singing in the morning lifted her spirits,” Wong said.
All that energy
Later that day, searchers with the North Country EMS Volcano Rescue Team were climbing and combing an area in the Woodard Creek Drainage. Chances were high VanAtta was there based on the clues found previously, Schultz said.
Their search efforts moved slowly. Around mid-afternoon, the rescue team heard faint cries coming from behind them, Schultz said. They found VanAtta among the tall brush, far from any maintained trails.
She was weakened but in stable condition, officials said.
VanAtta was quickly helped to an ambulance and driven to a hospital for treatment, leaving Schultz little opportunity to ask what happened, and how she made it through three nights outside, without supplies.
“I’m anxious to meet with her,” Schultz said Wednesday. “I’m hoping we can learn something that will help us in future searches.”
