Teen Falls Off Alaskan Cliff While Speaking To Mother On The Phone

Cherelle LaGrou, a Washington teenager working in Alaska this summer, was on the phone with her mother as she hiked alone on a mountain before her mother heard a scream, and then silence as the 18-year-old fell off 30 feet from a cliff, according to The Associated Press

The 18-year-old was saying to her mother how nervous she was about the slippery terrain right before her mother, Shelly LaGrou, heard the yell, the AP reported. Shelly said Tuesday that she waited, roughly 1,500 miles away in Omak, Washington, to hear her daughter's voice again.

Shelly and Cherelle LaGrou were talking for about 15 minutes before the teen fell from a ridge atop Fox Creek, according to the AP. The mother suggested Cherelle switch the phone to the hands-free option, which she did.

Cherelle came back on the phone after a while, hysterical and crying, telling her mother she wasn't ready to die and that she had slipped down the slope and couldn't climb back up, according to the AP. In that position, there was no way she could have called for help herself, Cherelle LaGrou said.

Shelly tried to keep her daughter calm Sunday while her husband frantically called the teen's employer, Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, which alerted Alaska State Troopers, the AP reported.

That call set in motion a dramatic 45-minute rescue near Denali National Park that was captured by the National Geographic Channel reality show "Alaska State Troopers," and is expected to air this fall, according to the AP.

The teen said that before her rescue, she believed she was staring death in the face and thought about everything she would miss in her life, the AP reported. Instead, she sustained only minor scratches.

"It feels like it was something out of a movie," Cherelle said, according to the AP. "It was all just so unreal that it was actually happening."

Mother and daughter prayed together that angels would hold the teenager against the wall of the mountain.

Soon after troopers arrived, Cherelle LaGrou's phone went dead, the AP reported. After the teen was safely on the ground, officials called her parents.

While she waited to hear from rescuers, Shelly LaGrou didn't know they had secured her daughter with a rope, according to the AP. All she knew was that her daughter had been getting weary of trying to hold on.

"I knew that just one wrong slip any second, and I'd be hearing her scream again and she'd be gone," she said, the AP reported.