Lost hiker tells how she made it to safety

She walked nearly nonstop, hiked steep slopes across more than 50 miles, and survived by conserving trail mix and using her reflective tarp to heat pepper jack cheese pasta she had packed.

Mary O'Brien, a 45-year-old elementary school teacher from Arlington who disappeared last week while hiking in Washington state, set off on an overnight hike that ended up lasting six days.

"I was very focused on trying to get out," said O'Brien, describing in an interview how she walked out of the woods late Saturday to a boat launch at Lake Mills.

Her parents and siblings spent last week anxiously awaiting news at the family's home in Malden. Some 50 searchers had hunted for O'Brien in the snowy mountain trails of Olympic National Park.

In a telephone interview yesterday, she said she was lucky because she had planned to take an overnight trip on Mount Rainier and packed extra food and other supplies.

She said she benefited from weather that improved over the days she was lost.

"The hike from 5,400 feet to 10,000 feet is very arduous, and it burns a lot of calories, so I definitely packed a lot more food," she said. "The other reason I fared so well is because I knew people were waiting for me on both ends, my friends in Tacoma and my family back in Boston."

She said that on her first day she made it about two-thirds down a looping trail. "I couldn't figure out where this loop trail continued," she said. "I was going from 7 at night to 2 in the morning. I went several ways and did not have any success. I found a place to sleep for a few hours and started again at 4 a.m."

She spent the next hours navigating a steep path, but it was too treacherous to follow, she said.

"I realized I needed to find another way out," she said. "I tried to stop trying to get out and just tried to be seen and tried to signal planes and other hikers."

But she had no luck. "The helicopters were on the other side of the mountain," she said. "They thought something had happened to me in this waterfall about a mile in, so they focused most of their efforts there."

The higher she went, the colder it became. On her last day on the mountain, she said, "I decided I had to get down, so I started hiking down at 2 a.m."