Hiker Derek Mamoyac survived five days on a mountain with no supplies, eating bugs to stay alive.
Last week, 27-year-old Derek Mamoyac set off on a hike up Washington’s second-tallest mountain, 12,277-foot-high Mount Adams. The expedition was only intended to take a single day, and his family expected him to return back to his Philomath, Oregon home that evening, with photos and stories of his wilderness adventures. When there was no sign of him that evening, they began to worry.
That Monday, Mamoyac’s family reported him missing, and rescuers sent a search team up the mountain to look for him. For five whole days, there was no sign of the lost hiker, and everyone was fearing the worst.
But that Friday, a search dog discovered crumbs from a granola bar that Mamoyac had eaten days earlier, and traced the scent to his location. The dog found Mamoyac lying in a wooded area of the mountaintop. He had a broken ankle and was dehydrated, but otherwise, he was in remarkably good shape. After breaking his ankle while descending the mountaintop, the hiker had managed to survive by drinking water from nearby creeks, and eating centipedes and other insects for nourishment.
As soon as Mamoyac’s father and sister heard that he had been found, they rushed up the mountain for an emotional reunion. “We drove up as fast as we could, crying the whole way,” his sister, Sophia Mamoyac, told the Oregonian.
The search team members were elated to find Mamoyac alive and well, too. “We get happy endings,” said rescuer Greg Varney. “But not at the end of a five-day search.”