By now most of you have heard about Angela Hernandez, the 23-year-old from Portland, Oregon who was found alive days after driving off a cliff near Big Sur last week. 

It’s an incredible story of survival and one that has many of us thinking — could we do it? 

“For someone to last that long with almost nothing is just incredible,” said Cliff Hodges, founder/owner of Adventure Out. 

Hodges says when he first heard about Angela Hernandez, the young woman who survived nearly a week alone after driving off a cliff, he thought it was either made up or she had supplies in her car. 

Hernandez wrote it on Facebook: 

“I could feel water rising over my knees. Every bone in my body hurt. I was able to break out of my car.”

Hernandez suffered from a brain hemorrhage, a collapsed lung and fractured ribs, shoulder and collar bones.

She collected fresh water from moss, and walked the beach searching for help until nearly a week later, when a couple found her alive. 

“As someone who teaches thousands of students a year how to survive in the wilderness even with certain skill sets and certain environments a lot of people wouldn’t even make it a day or two and for her to go a week with no supplies and from what I know no training is just an incredible story and I think it says a lot about her character,” said Hodges. 

Hodges is the owner and founder of Adventure Out, an outdoor school that teaches people primitive survival skills in both the North and South Bays. 

“Learning how to build a shelter and stay warm and dry and learning how to find and purify water is something that can make an enormous difference and extend your life for days,” Hodges said. 

He says with shelter, water, and fire, you could survive a week in the woods, and that it’s important to learn to read a landscape and identify certain plants and trees. 

“It sounds like Angela was a combination of lucky, as well as just smart … If I got to meet Angela I think I would just want to give her a big hug and say ‘thank god’ and ‘congratulations you’re alive’ and also just to say how impressed I am,” Hodges said.

WHAT OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON:

>>MORE STORIES