Survivor: 'I had to get back home'

CEDAR CITY — Thoughts of family inspired Tamitha Garner to keep going as she and her husband hiked to an amazing rescue in the harsh backcountry of southern Utah Wednesday.

"My family is what kept me going," Garner said Wednesday night. "Every thought was with my family. I had to get back home."

Tom and Tamitha Garner of Kearns were found Wednesday afternoon in Modena Canyon, about 60 miles west of Cedar City, by an Iron County road crew clearing a remote road into Beaver County.

Tamitha Garner said that, when she saw the crew's truck, "I was running and screaming towards it."

She said their experience camping, monitoring their water, staying in their truck and rationing out their food helped them survive their ordeal.

"We do camping all the time, so we just kind of had our heads together, and he's an Eagle Scout," Tamitha Garner said, referring to her husband.

An emergency room doctor who examined the couple Wednesday afternoon said that Tom and Tamitha Garner "have a good mental status and are very happy to be found."

Dr. Darrell Wilson, a physician at Cedar City's Valley View Medical Center, said at a Wednesday evening press conference that the Garners were "in surprisingly good condition considering the trial they went through and the difficult experience they had out in the wilderness."

Both were dehydrated and suffered some blisters and minor frostbite on their fingers and toes, Wilson said, but nothing that will cause long-term damage.

Chuck Hulet, who was working a road grader when he saw the couple standing by the road, said, "She was glad to see us, her and her husband. They just grabbed me and gave me a big hug."

In an interview with the Deseret Morning News, Hulet said the couple told him they were out at a spring looking at horses when a storm moved overhead.

"They got stuck from the storm and spent eight nights in the pickup," he said. "The plane flew over looking for them but didn't see them."

The couple decided to hike out on foot and were found by Hulet and his crew.

Ironically, the crew was clearing the snowpacked road to reach a family stuck in a cabin in the area when they encountered the Garners. The crew called for help and drove them to Modena, where an ambulance was summoned.