[imagesource: Wikimedia Commons]

A lone hiker spent two weeks stranded in the wilderness in Southern California, with just half a jar of salsa and water from the creek to sustain him.

Until Allison Scott and her boyfriend, Freddie Valdivia decided to go camping near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest after Thanksgiving.

Pretty much as soon as they set up camp, they heard something that would turn their trip into a decent survival tale.

Allison described the moment she found a stranded hiker via NBC Los Angeles, saying that after a plane flew by, they heard “somebody yelling help, and so I called out ‘hello,’ and he heard us and he kept yelling,” she said.

After about 30 minutes over the rugged terrain, the couple made it to the man’s location and found him in a creek bed.

In a video the couple took, the man, identified as Eric, apologised for the inconvenience, saying: “Sorry to put a damper on your guy’s camping trip.”

Apparently, his feet were in such bad shape after two weeks in the wild that he couldn’t move, per MSN:

“He had a stick with a water bottle on it trying to signal. He couldn’t walk. His feet were extremely swollen and infected just from walking so much, and possibly the cold where he was.”

Eric had decided to set up a shelter under a flight path where he might have a chance of being spotted by a passing aircraft.

“He was pretty out of it. He was obviously starving, he wasn’t super dehydrated because he was drinking creek water. But he told us he had taken a cab up and was hiking up to Big Bear from Angelus Oaks and he had gotten lost and he had been trying to find somebody to help him for days,” Scott said.

Surviving freezing cold temperatures with no fire because he lost his lighter, off half a jar of salsa and creek water, with buggered feet, could only have done a number on him.

This video shows some footage from the impromptu rescue mission:

Scott and Valdivia called emergency services immediately and within about 15 minutes a chopper crew from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department found their location and lifted Eric to safety:

“He told us it was a Thanksgiving miracle and he offered us money, and we said no we don’t want to take your money,” she said.

Instead, Scott says they got something priceless: the satisfaction of helping someone in need, and an incredible story of survival that they can tell for a long time.

“I never thought that I would be that person to find a missing person so this very incredible. I’m just happy he seemed OK,” she said.

Scott and Valdivia said that whenever they find themselves in Oceanside in San Diego County where Eric lives, they will call him on his landline (he has no cell) and take him out for dinner.

[sources:nbclosangeles&msn]