[Shelley]

Source: MSN News

German police say an American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as an SOS flag.

Twenty-four-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado was lifted to safety by helicopter last Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp describes Bruinsma as "a very smart girl" who acted "very resourcefully."

He says "she kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal."

She was right. Once lumberjacks spotted the bra on the moving cable, an alpine rescue team was able to track the cable to a ledge where she had fallen.

Officials said a rescue team, including five helicopters and 80 emergency workers, had been searching for Bruinsma since she went missing June 16 after losing her way in bad weather while hiking with a friend near the Austrian border.

She fell five metres onto a rocky overhang, where she spent the next 70 hours on the narrow ledge, sustained by water that she found by breaking into a supply box on the ledge.

She badly bruised a leg and dislocated a shoulder in the fall, and the cliff was too difficult for her to climb.

Rasp said the cable was only within reach because the timber transport system was out of service.

When a repairman restored the line on Thursday, the cable car started moving up the mountain and Bruinsma's bra reached the worker at the base. He knew of the missing hiker and immediately called police.

Rasp said his team followed the cable line up the cliff side in a helicopter and found Bruinsma standing on the ledge, waving with her good arm. After circling once, they lowered a winch to Bruinsma and lifted her aboard.

"She did so well because she is in very good shape," Rasp said. "She has been training for a marathon."

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I'm glad she will be okay and a clever way of signalling for help.