Lehigh Valley Mother Stranded in Grand Canyon Shares How Her Family Survived 
 
 A Lehigh Valley mother and her family were stranded in blizzard conditions near the Grand Canyon. Klein, a 46-year-old Easton, Pennsylvania native and professor at Northampton Community College, was on vacation in Las Vegas with her husband Eric Klein, 47, and their 10-year-old son Isaac. "As far as places being closed, we just didn’t realize that these roads were closed and these visitor centers were closed,” Klein said. Karen Klein was enjoying a holiday vacation with her husband and 10-year-old son when their car got stuck in mud near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona late last week. Karen Klein shared her family’s miraculous story of survival with NBC10’s Deanna Durante. She hasn’t lost any yet, but said it’s a “sit and wait situation." But soon Eric started to worry. “It really didn’t feel like there was a point of no return until it started to snow, it was night time, and Karen was not in the car any longer,” Eric said. "I had been eating aspen twigs and twigs from evergreen trees because I thought I'd only be gone for like an hour or two," Klein said. For shelter, Klein at one point wedged herself beneath an evergreen tree, but was afraid to fall asleep and freeze to death. “My shoe had filled up with snow and I couldn’t put my shoe back on, so I was walking in my sock, and having to physically lift my left leg to pull it forward,” Karen said. After walking 26 miles in the snow along a desolate stretch of the Grand Canyon over 36 hours, a Las Vegas woman is now safe at a Utah hospital and recovering from exposure. Even as she ate twigs and drank melted snow to stay alive, Karen said one thing kept her going. She remembered thinking: "I can’t leave my son without a mom. Klein said she’d decided to be the one to go get help because her husband had recently been in an accident. So in his mind, she was doing what she needed to do to protect us,” Eric said. Around the same time, searchers rescued Eric and Isaac Klein after the 47-year-old father was able to hike to higher ground to get cellphone service and call for help. That set off a massive search and rescue effort, locating Karen more than 36 hours after the ordeal began. "We both got on the phone and we both just sobbed that she was still alive."
– "Maternal instinct" and a "solutions-oriented" personality are what a 46-year-old Pennsylvania mom says helped her survive a treacherous trek over more than 25 miles of the Grand Canyon to find help for her stranded family, after their car got stuck in a blizzard, Karen Klein tells NBC News. Klein, now recuperating from exposure in a Utah hospital, was found early Saturday after trudging more than 30 hours through the snow. Klein tells NBC10 her ordeal started Thursday after her family, vacationing in Las Vegas, decided to drive to the Grand Canyon using GPS-provided directions. "Google Maps shows there's a way—but it's impassable" due to closed roads, a local sheriff notes, adding he's seen that type of confusion happen before. When the Kleins' car got stuck in a ditch during a snowstorm and they couldn't get cellphone service, they decided Karen, a triathlete, should head out for help. "It was pretty simple," husband Eric tells CBS News. "Karen is our problem solver, and she's got experience. She's super intelligent." Klein had just a small package of Cheerios to keep her going—she eventually resorted to eating tree twigs and drinking melted snow—during her quest. She refused to let herself sleep (she was afraid she'd freeze to death), lost one of her boots along the way, and had to pick up one of her own legs and move it with her hands after she pulled a muscle. "I could only move it 10 steps at a time" before she became fatigued, she tells NBC News. She finally broke into an empty park ranger cabin, where she was rescued Saturday. After a mini-trek themselves, her husband and son had been able to get cellphone service and call for help. Thoughts of her family pushed Klein, who may lose some frostbitten toes, through her long walk. "I can't leave my son without a mom," she remembers thinking. "[I] can't leave my husband without a wife. I'm not letting my parents bury me."