It took her three hours to reach a location with cellphone service so she could call 911. “I kept telling myself: ‘He would do it for me,’” McNeill said. She left him with warm clothes and decided the fastest way to get help would be to swim down the river, which was waist-deep with frigid waters, rather than taking a trail. With no cellphone service in the remote area, they decided McNeill would have to go for help.

She tried to pry his leg out with a stick, but realized that effort would not work. The trouble for Osmun and McNeill began about four hours into the couple’s hike on a popular route called “The Subway” in the southern Utah park. “When water cannot escape, it creates a liquefied soil that cannot support weight and creates suction,” Baltrus said. Osmun had stepped into a small hole filled with it, Baltrus said. Quicksand can form in saturated loose sand and standing water - the combination found on the river bed trail Osmun and McNeill were hiking, said Aly Baltrus, Zion National Park spokeswoman. “And then toward the end I thought I wasn’t going to make it.” “I thought for sure I would lose my leg,” Osmun said.

Ryan Osmun, 34, of Mesa, Arizona, told NBC’s “Today” show that he hallucinated at one point while waiting several hours alone after his girlfriend Jessika McNeill left him last Saturday to get help. SALT LAKE CITY - A man who was stranded for hours in frigid weather with his leg sunk up to the knee in quicksand at a creek in Utah’s Zion National Park said Tuesday that he feared he would lose his leg and might die because the quicksand’s water was so cold. The Zion Search and Rescue team took several hours, to locate the man who was stable but suffering from exposure, hypothermia, and extremity injuries. A creek where a hiker was rescued after being stuck in quicksand on Saturday, Feb.

Arizona man stuck in quicksand