A 66-year-old hiker who went missing in Potomac State Forest in Garrett County was found early Sunday after a six-hour search, Natural Resources Police said.
Jana Estep, of Alexandria, Va., had been picking fiddlehead ferns with a companion in the Walnut Bottom area of the park about 6:30 p.m., when the two were separated, police spokeswoman Candy Thomson said.
The other hiker, nervous for her safety, called 911. Natural Resources Police, the Garrett County Sheriff's Office, the Bittinger and Bloomington fire departments, and canine units from Washington, Md., and Preston County, W. Va., responded and formed a perimeter around the densly vegetated area, moving slowly inward until they found Estep shortly before 1 a.m.
Estep was uninjured, but with a misty rain falling, she was cold and wet, Thomson said. She was taken to Garrett Memorial Hospital for an evaluation.
Thomson called the search "a textbook search that worked perfectly."
twitter.com/cmcampbell6
Note: An earlier version of this article misstated the state from which some of the canine units responded.