An Arizona woman fell into a canyon known as the “Edge of the World” and managed to survive three days in the desert before she was rescued.
Janelle Banda, 32, was on a father-daughter camping trip when she went for a walk and took a misstep that dropped her 400 feet into a steep canyon in Sedona, Arizona.
For two and a half days, Banda suffered through the heat and cold as her family was “very much mentally preparing for the worst,” her loved ones told The Arizona Republic.
But Banda was ultimately saved by the Pima County sheriff’s office, which airlifted her by helicopter on June 16.
Her sister, Sarah Banda, 29, called the rescue “nothing short of a miracle,” adding that she has “an overwhelming amount of relief, joy.”
The sisters “always had a love for the outdoors” and were seasoned hikers, but Janelle Banda’s latest trip was her first trek at the Edge of the World — a popular beauty spot marked by towering rock formations and treacherous cliffs
She and her father started their trip on June 11,
Janelle Banda, an Etsy store owner, and her father started their trip on June 11. She then took a short walk away from their campsite on the night of June 12, when she was “spooked by something” and lost her way in the woods, her sister said.
“If you walk the wrong way, down the wrong path, you could just end up walking and stepping where you shouldn’t at the edge of the cliff,” Sarah Banda said.
Janelle Banda made it out with two sprained ankles, cuts, bruising and some scrapes that resembled road burn. She was also extremely dehydrated when she was found.
She spent one night in the hospital and is now resting with her parents, Sarah Banda said.
“She can’t really move,” said Sarah Banda. “She’s in a lot of pain.”
“There’s obviously the mental toll of … the trauma of not just falling but being in the canyon alone,” she said. “That’s a different battle that she’ll have to deal with.”
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