COWAN LAKE STATE PARK — A hiker was rescued after she slipped and fell crossing a small creek on the Emerald Woods Trail off Yankee Road in Cowan Lake State Park Tuesday afternoon.

“An elderly couple was walking on a hiking path and about halfway in, the lady slipped in the mud and injured her leg and wasn’t able to walk,” Clinton-Warren Join Fire District Chief Bob Wysong told the News Journal.

He said it occurred approximately 300 yards off the main road down a fairly steep hill at around 2:30 p.m.

“We responded with a rescue and a squad, and we asked for extra help from the Wilmington Fire Department,” said Wysong. Five personnel from Clinton-Warren JFD and two from WFD responded.

He said it only took a few minutes to get to the couple. The husband, who was not injured, was escorted from the scene as EMS personnel tended to the woman.

Wysong said she was braced and then transported in a Stokes basket — a metal or plastic stretcher widely used in search and rescue operations — to the waiting ambulance. He said the operation took about a half-hour.

The woman was taken to Clinton Memorial Hospital.

Wysong told the News Journal that such an operation is part of their department’s training. He cited another rescue they were involved in last year when a person fell down a cliff near the edge of the water at the campgrounds off Osborn Road.