Man survives being lost in California mountains for 10 days by eating berries

Lukas McClish hadn’t notified anyone of his planned three-hour hike that turned into a more than weeklong ordeal

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sun 23 Jun 2024 06.00 EDT

A man who got lost in California’s mountains for more than a week – after heading out on what he expected would be a hike of just a few hours – survived his ordeal by drinking creek water and eating wild berries, he told a local news station.

“I didn’t bring anything” besides a flashlight and folding scissors because “I thought I was doing a three-hour hike” on the way to work, Lukas McClish told KSBW for an interview published on Saturday.

McClish spoke out about his experience in the Santa Cruz mountains after about a half-dozen tourists in the Greek islands – including Americans – were either found dead or went missing upon setting out on hikes in unusually high temperatures across much of the world.

As McClish told it, the 34-year-old outdoors enthusiast from Boulder Creek, California, lost his bearings after beginning his hike the morning of 11 June. He had not informed anyone else of his plans, so it would not be until the afternoon of Thursday, 20 June, that the unkempt-looking hiker was found at the bottom of a remote canyon and rescued.

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