A woman was rescued by a helicopter from the Big Sur coastline on Sunday afternoon, according to the CHP’s Coastal Division Air Operations.
The missing person, a 59-year-old woman from Utah, stayed at Ragged Point Inn on Saturday night, according to CHP Officer Tony Ramage.
She was thought to have possibly gone to Willow Creek Beach at low tide early Sunday morning, a CHP post on Facebook said.
The CHP’s H-70 helicopter responded to search for the woman on Sunday morning along with CHP Monterey and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, the post said.
The helicopter took off from the Paso Robles Municipal Airport, but due to a low layer of marine fog over Highway 1, was forced to delay its response, the CHP said.
Improved weather allowed for the helicopter to take off a little after 1 p.m., Ramage said. The helicopter flew to Big Sur and initiated its search around 1:30 p.m., he said.
Just after 2 p.m., the missing woman’s vehicle was located at a turnout on Highway 1 north of Kirk Creek Campground, Ramage said.
The helicopter focused the search along the nearby shoreline and spotted her on a rocky beach a quarter- or half-mile south of the campground shortly after, he said.
It landed on the sand approximately two hundred yards away from the woman and the flight officer safely retrieved and brought her back to the helicopter.
“I’m going to go ahead and land right over here,” the helicopter operator could be heard saying in CHP video shared of the rescue.
The woman was uninjured, Ramage said.
She was flown back to her vehicle, where her husband and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office was waiting, he said.