#Woman survived nearly two weeks in Zion National Park with no food, little water

The California mother who went missing in Zion National Park survived for nearly two weeks with no food and little water, her sister said in an interview on Monday.

Holly Suzanne Courtier, 38, had “bruises all over her body” and had lost a lot of weight when she was found on Sunday after vanishing in the Utah park on Oct. 6, said Jillian Courtier-Oliver, one of her four sisters.

“She hasn’t [eaten] since then at all,” Courtier-Oliver told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “She’s had very little water, we found out.”

Courtier had last been seen Oct. 6 getting off a private shuttle van at an area leading to several Zion hiking trails. Authorities began searching for her after she didn’t show up for her scheduled pickup that afternoon.

Her sister said that after days of scouring the park, she had nearly lost hope of ever finding Courtier alive.

“Two days ago I actually said, ‘I’m starting to lose hope,’ ” Courtier-Oliver told the outlet. “They had a lot of cadaver dogs out and I knew what they were looking for was a body, not a person.”

“It was the first time I actually started losing hope. And I went with up with so much help knowing that we needed to find her.”

On Sunday, rangers got a tip from a visitor saying they had spotted Courtier in the park. She was reunited with her family and is now recovering from her ordeal.

An update on a GoFundMe page started by another of Courtier’s sisters said she would need “medical care in the days moving forward.”

Courtier’s daughter, Kailey Chambers, previously said her mom had been traveling the country and visiting national parks since losing her job as a nanny because of the coronavirus pandemic.