A North Carolina father is thanking the Lord after his teen daughter managed to survive a massive 50 foot fall off a cliff.
Victoria Creed, 17, was hiking with her friend when the group took a break near Three Bears Gulley on Pilot Mountain. But when they got up to continue pressing on, tragedy struck.
“They were all sitting on the edge of a rock and some of the girls had got up and walked away,” father Mickey Creed said, as reported by Fox 8. “They turned and asked Victoria, ‘Are you coming,’ and she said, ‘Yeah.’ She gets up and the next thing they heard was screaming.”
According to her father, Victoria slid and fell about 50 feet, before a tree stopped her fall and she was knocked unconscious. “She was actually trying to climb back up from where she was at, and lost her balance, and fell and she doesn’t remember anything from there,” Creed said.
When Mickey heard of the accident, he rushed to Pilot Mountain but wasn’t allowed past the gates into the park. The wait was agonizing.
“The waiting was brutal. I’m not gonna lie,” Creed explained. “I had a lot going through my head,” he said. “A lot of, ‘I should have been there, why wasn’t I there?’ The only thing I thought was I’d never get to hear her say, ‘Daddy,’ again.”
It took rescue crews about an hour and 20 minutes to retrieve Victoria.
“I got to speak to her and say a prayer with her,” Creed said. Victoria was rushed to the hospital, where she was treated for a broken collarbone, two broken bones in her foot and given 14 stitches. Needless to say, it could have been much worse. “To be able to walk into the room and actually see her sitting up, and say my name again, all the weight was lifted,” Mickey said.
Victoria was released from hospital Monday. Now, her family is praising God for his goodness and protective hand over a situation that could have ended in disaster.
“I can’t express enough how good God is, I really can’t,” Creed said. He further explained that his daughter is determined to become a park ranger and that this experience will help her on her way to fulfilling her dream.
“This was put in front of her to make her better at what she wants to be,” he said. “Maybe prevent this from happening to someone else.”
Now, through the experience of his daughter, Mickey offers a simple piece of advice to anyone who is thinking of going hiking. “I really think it could have been prevented if she had on some good hiking shoes,” he said, detailing that Victoria was wearing Crocs at the time of the fall. “She wasn’t prepared. Just be prepared when you go to places like that. Pay attention.”
“I’d like to thank everybody, the hikers and the rescue squads and I’m thanking God that I’m still here today and that he was with me the entire time and I just have a special thanks to you guys, it means a lot,” Victoria said, as reported by WXII News 12.
“God had to be with her, to fall 50 feet and come out with what she did,” Mickey concluded.