Officials called Shunghla "an extraordinarily resourceful and resilient" little girl.
A 10-year-old girl was rescued after spending more than 24 hours alone in the frigid cold Cascade mountain range in Washington state, US. In a Facebook post, the Kittitas Sheriff's Department said that the girl, identified as Shunghla Mashwani, lost track of her family on Sunday during a visit to the rugged Cle Elum Valley. The same day, she was reported missing.
Just before Shunghla's family stopped for lunch, members of her extended family noticed she was missing from their large group. Around 20 adults in the group then immediately went back and searched for the 10-year-old for two hours until a nearby resident came to their aid and called the police.
"There is no cell signal in the valley, and the family searched for Shunghla for nearly 2 hours before a passerby on a UTV saw the commotion and offered to use the Starlink phone at their cabin on Fish Lake Rd to call 911," the sheriff's department wrote in the social media post.
Shunghla was found the next day after a massive search and rescue effort by teams from across Washington state. In the post, the officials described the area where the 10-year-old was lost as "steep, rugged and remote, with dense trees and undergrowth". They said that Shunghla slept between two trees to stay warm in temperatures that dropped down to 3 degrees Celsius.
Shunghla, who arrived in the US from her native Afghanistan two years ago, was returned safely on an inflatable watercraft to her father. The officials called the 10-year-old "an extraordinarily resourceful and resilient" little girl. "Mashwani hiked downstream through the dense forest and spent the cold night between some trees," the post read.
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Shunghla told her family and rescuers that she got lost when she couldn't find the footbridge her family used, but "she knew it was the right thing to follow the river". "The Sheriff's Office is deeply thankful for both the result of this search and the tremendous outpouring of assistance and resources that made it possible," the post added.
Shunghla's family said they enjoy spending time in the rural and remote backcountry because it reminds them of Afghanistan, which they left for the United States two years ago.