More than three dozen Pennsylvania college students spending spring break in Kentucky on a mission trip were safe Friday after becoming lost for hours when a sightseeing mountain hike unexpectedly stretched into the night, officials said Friday. Most of the hikers were seen in the emergency room at Appalachian Regional Hospital in Whitesburg, with one woman admitted and listed in good condition, spokeswoman Dena Sparkman said Friday. The few who declined to be seen at the hospital "were like, `feed me and we're good,'" Sparkman said. "I think the best medicine we gave them was chicken soup," Sparkman said. Caroulis said the group, including three non-faculty staff members, was on an alternative spring break trip to Eastern Kentucky that the university has offered for several years. The group, which was hiking near Bad Branch Falls at a place called High Rock, stayed together near a campfire and stayed in contact with police and rescue workers by cellphone after that first call, Watts said. A search began about 7 p.m. EST Thursday, and it took until 3:30 a.m. Friday to get the entire group off the mountain, said Mayking Volunteer Fire Chief Tony Fugate, who helped. The group had to be walked down the mountain using an alternate route that had fewer obstacles but took more time, Baker said. Caroulis said the group was expected to return to Pennsylvania on Saturday as scheduled.
– It is not your typical lost-hiker story: For one thing, it was a group of 40 hikers who could not find their way down a remote mountain in Kentucky as night fell and freezing temperatures set in, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. Luckily, they still had phone reception. The group of 37 students and three staffers from La Salle University in Pennsylvania called for help about 7pm yesterday, and rescuers got them off the trail about 3:45am. All were checked out for hypothermia, and only one was admitted to a local hospital. She is expected to be out tomorrow. "It's pretty rough country back in there," one rescuer tells the AP of the Bad Branch Nature Preserve. The main treatment provided by hospital staffers was, yep, chicken soup. "The other thing was loaning them cellphones so that they could call their parents," says a hospital official. "That was an emotional time." The students are in the area to build houses for Project Appalachia.