PROVO CANYON, Utah - Crews have rescued a hiker stranded overnight in Provo Canyon.
The Utah County Sheriff's Office received a call from the hiker, who was stranded on a cliff near Squaw Peak Road in Provo Canyon, at around 11:30 p.m. Thursday. 25-year-old Ben Keeley, of Provo, had been hiking by himself throughout the day on Thursday.
Keeley said that he had hiked most of the peaks in the Provo Canyon and realized that when it started to get dark, he wasn't where he needed to be to get safely off the mountain before dark, so he decided to take a shortcut and ended up near a cliff.
"It was probably six o'clock or seven o'clock when I got up on the peak and I knew I was running out of daylight. From there, I kind of made some poor choices and tried to take a shortcut down a gully, and that's where I got stuck on all those cliffs," Keeley said.
Keeley was uninjured, so police decided to wait until daylight on Friday to attempt a helicopter rescue. He was brought down from the canyon via helicopter then able to walk out on his own.
"It's very dangerous. A lot of people lose their life in the same situation, especially when it gets dark at night and you think you can make it and you slip and you're gone," said Lt. Wally Perschon, Utah County Sheriff's Office.
Aside from being tired and dehydrated, Keeley was uninjured.
