Alberta woman’s 12-day bush ordeal just latest in amazing survival stories

Those of us who live in cities sometimes forget how big and empty much of Canada is, or big chucks of the United States, for that matter.

Large swaths of our country remain uninhabited wilderness where it's possible for a person to disappear without a trace even in an age of mobile phones and GPS.

A young Alberta woman almost became one of those people. The 25-year-old member of the O'Chiese First Nation near Rocky Mountain House became lost after fleeing a sexual assault. She wandered the bush for 12 days before being discovered on a dirt road by a passing oilfield worker last Friday, The Canadian Press reported.

RCMP say the incident began July 14, when a truck carrying five people got stuck on the north end of the O'Chiese reserve. Three left to get help but when they didn't return, the woman and another man began walking.

[ Related: Missing woman survives 12 days in Alberta wilderness ]

At some point, the man struck the woman in the face and tried to sexually assault her, Cpl. Nick Munro told CP.

“She fled into the bush and, when she was in there, she got lost and disoriented and couldn’t find her way out again," he said.

Police weren't contacted until a couple of days later, when her family reported her missing. They spoke to those she was with, including her alleged attacker, who told investigators he didn't know where she was.

A search of the reserve by officers, volunteers and a helicopter turned up no trace and was called off July 19.

Meanwhile the woman, who suffered a broken jaw in the attack, stumbled through the forest, surviving on water from streams and berries. She was discovered about 10 kilometres from where she went missing.

“She was suffering from exposure, may have been mildly concussed from the altercation — not in great shape,” Munro told CP.

Despite her injuries, she was able to recount her ordeal for police and name her attacker, who was arrested and faces several charges.

RCMP said they believe the group had been drinking and that alcohol was a factor in the woman getting lost.

That wasn't the case for trapper Rhonda Cardinal, who went missing for 16 days in northern Alberta last July after stomping off from her husband, Andrew. They were in the bush about seven kilometres from their camp, about 200 km north of Edmonton, when he lost the keys to their ATV, the National Post reported at the time.

Rhonda Cardinal apparently got tired of waiting as her husband searched for the keys on the dense forest floor on his hands and knees.

“Next thing you know, I’m talking to myself,” Andrew Cardinal told the Post. “I thought she took off back to the cabin.”

He eventually gave up looking for the keys and headed back to the couple's camp. When his wife wasn't there, he doubled back but found no sign of her. The following day, he walked to the highway and called for help.

A massive search over the August long weekend involving 58 RCMP officers, volunteers, family members and a helicopter revealed no sign of Rhonda Cardinal. The search was called off after 10 days.

Andrew Cardinal said some of his wife's family accused him of murdering her and burying her body in the woods.

"They said I shot her or something,” he told the Post. “They said my family helped hide the evidence."

Cardinal was called into the local RCMP detachment to give a statement but was never suspected of killing his wife, police said.

Meanwhile, Rhonda Cardinal was trying to stay alive. She didn't know how she came to be lost, saying she blacked out and began wandering through the bush, the Post said.

She heard the search helicopter at one point but assumed it couldn't see her. She slogged through soggy muskeg and at some point had a confrontation with a bear.

“We were just looking at each other. I thought he was going to attack me,” she told the Post. “I didn’t panic or anything. He went down. I walked away slowly the other way and he just walked the other way.”

Her shoes were destroyed and she was forced to tear up her T-shirt to cover her feet. More than a week into her ordeal, Rhonda Cardinal came across a one-room cabin, where she found water, canned food and socks for her blistered and infected feet, the Post said.

After spending a couple of nights in the refuge to regain her strength, she set out again to find help, eventually reaching a road where she was able to flag down a gas plant worker Christopher Raddi. That same morning, Raddi had seen a news story about the woman missing in the area, but was surprised to see her standing on the road. She was soon reunited with her husband.

“I told her I loved her, and I told her I was happy she was alive,” said Andrew Cardinal.

[ Related: Family doubles reward for finding man missing in Australia ]

Rita Chretien has one of the most astonishing tales of survival, but it's bittersweet.

The Penticton, B.C., woman survived 48 days lost in the remote Nevada mountain wilderness after she and husband Albert got lost while driving to Las Vegas.

The couple's van got stuck on a snow-covered logging road in March 2011, apparently misled by their GPS navigation unit that made it appear it was a viable route. Attempts to dig out and to call for help on their cellphone failed.

The couple tried to walk out, Rita Chretien later told the Globe and Mail, but went in the wrong direction. There were well-stocked hunting cabins just a couple of kilometres away.

Albert Chretien left a couple of days later to find help but never returned. Rita Chretien later described the final parting with her husband of 39 years.

“We prayed, and we cried, it was very emotional, we had not cried so deeply for years," she told the Globe.

She stayed put, subsisting on the van's meagre supply of trail mix, some candy and water from melted snow while search parties vainly scoured the couple's travel route for any sign of them.

Rita Chretien told the Globe she survived by reading her Bible and talking to God. But steadily weakening, she had concluded she was going to die after barely making it back to the van from her daily trek for water.

“I was quite content with that and I went to sleep with the child’s prayer, ‘I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ " she told the Globe.

"About two hours later, I awoke to a noise and it was the ATVs coming round the corner, and for some reason I jumped to my feet, yanked that door open and flagged them down."

Albert Chretien's body was found by hunters in the fall of last year, resting peacefully and undisturbed by animals in the shelter of a tree, CBC News reported. He'd walked several kilometres up a mountainside before apparently stopping to rest.

"He had placed his backpack where it could be seen," Henry Chretien, Albert's brother, told CBC News. "He lay down under the protection of the tree for a much needed rest and died peacefully in his sleep."