5 years after dramatic rescue, hiker reflects on being lost in Hawaii forest for 17 days
Lost for 17 days in a Hawaii forest reserve, most of it with a broken leg and burns to her feet so severe they almost required amputation, Amanda Eller held out hope someone was coming to rescue her.
Now, five years after her dramatic rescue from Maui's Makawao Forest Reserve, Eller told ABC News she's continuing to heal from what was a traumatic, life-changing experience.
"Nothing has been the same since," Eller, 40, said. "Something like that, it changes your whole life. There's no, like, going back to normal after that."
The physical therapist and yoga teacher set out on the hike on May 8, 2019, without a cellphone. She soon found herself disoriented after going off the trail in the more than 2,000-acre reserve, which is surrounded by more dense forest.
"I was trying to find my way out, and it got worse and worse and worse," she said.
On day four of being lost in the forest, she said she fell 20 feet and broke the tibia in her left leg. Soon after, she lost her sneakers in a flash flood. She looked for berries and fruit to eat, like guava, and clear water to drink, though had limited survival skills, she said.
"There was a whole skill set that I wish I had that I didn't, but I just think it was my will and my faith that wouldn't let me give up," she said.
Unbeknownst to her, the case drew attention on social media and national news, and a search effort funded with the help of donations amassed more than a thousand volunteers.
She said she held out hope each day that people were looking for her and would listen for helicopters "constantly, it was my full-time job." Then, on day 17, one appeared right above as she was hobbling on her hands and one good leg looking for food near a waterfall. She was rescued by a helicopter on May 24, 2019.
"I looked back as we were flying away and that area where I was at the top of the waterfall disappeared so quickly, and you couldn't make out heads or tails where I was," she said. "It was just a needle in a haystack situation of them finding me."
"It was truly a miracle," she said.
Eller was briefly hospitalized for her injuries, with hospital officials saying she suffered from severe burns in addition to a tibia fracture. She said she also lost 20 pounds, was dehydrated, had severe cellulitis "to the point where they thought they might have to amputate my feet" and was "scathed head to toe."
"There was not an inch of me that was not scratched or torn in some way because the jungle out there is brutal," she said.
During a news conference four days after her rescue, she called her journey of survival "extremely spiritual" and that it "was an opportunity to overcome fear of everything."
Reflecting on that moment now, Eller said she was in rough shape physically, but was feeling good emotionally and spiritually after her experience in the forest.
"It really broke down some things that were preventing me from seeing light in life. And so I was in a very, like, lightened mindset," she said. "I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
Still, speculation and rumors spread regarding her experience, Eller said, from allegations that she was on drugs or got lost on purpose to gain money through GoFundMe.
"Anything you could think of that could possibly explain how I could come out of a 17-day experience like that and be in a positive state of mind," she said. "I think that people just created stories so that their mind could grasp the situation. But what happened from that, unfortunately, is eventually it started to take a toll on me."
Eller said she left Maui about six months after her rescue and spent time with family before going to India for several months to undergo training to help process the trauma she experienced in the forest and after her rescue.
The Maryland native came back to the U.S. right before the COVID-19 pandemic and bounced around the West Coast before ending up back in Maui, which she thought would be a "wonderful reuniting" with a place that felt like home but ended up reopening old wounds.
"As soon as I landed, the trauma started to kick in on a deeper level, just exposure therapy and being close to where it occurred," she said. "I went through about two years, I'd say, of deep healing and really tough stuff. Just a very dark time."
She said she went through a mind-body therapy certification to help process her trauma and began seeing clients, teaching yoga again and socializing.
She was in Maui during last year's devastating wildfires, and recently felt the need to leave the island again.
"What I noticed is there's a lot of people that had left the island afterward, and I just started feeling the call, too, that maybe I'm not meant to be here at this time," she said. "I believe certain people are there to help, and maybe that's not me."
Several weeks ago, she moved to Minneapolis, where someone she had been seeing long-distance lives.
"I feel like my nervous system is more stable here, and I wasn't meant to hold space for that healing process [in Maui]," she said.
Eller said her experience in the forest shifted her perspective and made her more accepting of change. In hindsight, she also realized she needed to go through that experience, however extreme, to make personal changes, she said.
"I never could have imagined that I would be experiencing this much happiness in life," she said. "I do believe that everything happens for a reason and I am grateful for the experience, even though I'm still healing from it."
Professionally, Eller said she works with clients to help them work through their own trauma through holistic physical therapy.
"Most of the people I work with feel stuck in some way, or they feel like they have something from the past that's just tormenting them," she said.
She said she is still in touch with some of the people involved in the search effort for her, as is her family. Her father, an expert in GPS technology, used a software system to help track the search effort, which she said is believed to have helped find her. Following her rescue, he helped found a nonprofit that advises on search and rescue efforts, she said.
"That experience really touched them," she said. "They had never seen community come together like that. That's like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience."
Eller said she revisited the Makawao Forest Reserve for the first time following her rescue as a form of exposure therapy around December 2020. Before leaving Maui, she revisited the forest as often as she could -- though would stick to the main trail and bring her phone, water and a hiking kit her dad created that included a whistle, blanket, glow stick and tips on what to do if you get lost.
"My peace is found in nature," she said. "I'm just a lot more careful than I was before."
