A hiker takes in the view of the Dix Mountain range during a snowshoeing class in Keene Valley in 2017. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

A woman spent 25 hours in the freezing rain in the remote Dix Mountain Range the day after Christmas, with most of those hours spent thinking she would freeze to death after she slipped and slid hundreds of feet down a rock slide off the summit of South Dix Mountain.

Hope Lloyd, 46, of South Glens Falls only stopped her slide a short distance from the edge of a vertical cliff face by grabbing a small spruce tree.

“That’s the only thing that saved me,” Lloyd said in a phone interview with the Associated Press. Lloyd declined to be interviewed by the Enterprise. “If I was a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

She was bruised but uninjured. She was high enough on the mountain to get cell phone service and call the state Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers from the remote mountaintop at 5:30 p.m. Rangers said she was petrified to move in any direction, fearing she’d slide again, so she felt stuck. She was still hours away from rescue, with driving rain, near-freezing temperatures, darkness and worsening conditions.

“She, quite honestly, thought she was going to die up there,” Forest Ranger Jamison Martin said in a video describing the rescue.

Lloyd had already been hiking for 12 hours, but at the rangers’ advice, she was able to keep hypothermia at bay by moving and wiggling to keep her body heat up amid whipping winds 4,000 feet up on the mountain.

Meanwhile, Martin and forest ranger union delegate Andrew Lewis layered up, filled their packs with enough supplies and equipment for themselves and Lloyd, and started hiking up to the peak in weather they would never hike in otherwise. An ATV brought them into the woods, but they still had a 4.5- to 5-mile hike to get to her, and conditions were getting worse. Lloyd had an emergency blanket, but the clock was ticking.

Lewis, who spoke in his position as a union delegate, said they were postholeing in the rotten snow even in snowshoes, sloshing through mud and were completely soaked to the skin in the first hour of the rescue.

“You’re essentially walking around in a car wash,” he said.

Every tree they bumped into dumped water on them. Conditions worsened all night long and slowed them down.

“It’s brutal,” Martin said. “It’s basically what we call hypothermia weather.”

Lewis and Martin reached her at 1:30 a.m., and gave Lloyd warm liquids, food and dry clothing.

A video posted to Instagram shows the first moments when Lloyd heard the rangers calling and called back out to them. By then, she’d spent hours by herself on the side of the mountain and was exhausted after hiking most of the Dix Range. Martin and Lewis said she was incredibly grateful upon their arrival.

“I feel extremely grateful. Extremely grateful,” Lloyd told the AP. “I just want to hug everybody.”

They guided her out of the vegetation and back to the trail. But they still had a long way to go. The group finally reached her vehicle at the trailhead at 6:30 a.m. She had been in the woods for 25 hours.

Lewis said Lloyd staved off hypothermia but got frostnip on her feet — a less-serious type of frostbite.

Lewis said Lloyd had been trying to find the trail and started moving off the summit in the wrong direction when she hit a steep section, slipped and slid down through the trees and out onto an open rock slab. There wasn’t snow on the steep rock slab, but she kept sliding down it.

Lloyd is an experienced hiker. Martin said she was on her third round of doing all 46 High Peaks. Lewis said she told them she had a number of close calls before.

“She came to realization that night that she had been lucky all those other times,” Martin said. “It’s no joke back there. It’ll kill you.”

He said people pushing for the 46 have deadlines they set for completing the challenge, but Lewis said attempting to meet them in these treacherous weather conditions is “high risk hiking.”

“Those aren’t the conditions to go out in,” Martin said. “I get that pushing yourself is a thing, to challenge yourself. But there’s sometimes where it’s just like, that’s a lot.”

“This was horrible conditions all around,” Lewis said. “It’s absolutely the worst of all scenarios.

“Yes, it’s winter by definition right now. But these conditions are more like spring melt, shoulder season,” he added. “They’re just awful. It’s not wise to be pushing the limits on big hikes in the Adirondacks in these conditions.”

His suggestion for other hikers is to “wait until winter gets here.” Trails need snow to fill them in before they become safe with the unseasonably warm and wet December the Adirondacks has had.

Lewis said these rescues beat rangers up. They are all seasoned in the wilderness and in top shape, but this sort of trip is not “healthy hiking.” It is exhausting and dangerous even for the experts. While on the call, he said they are only thinking about the person’s welfare. This starts when they are packing. They bring lots of layers and equipment for themselves and then supplies for the people they are rescuing. All of this equipment needs to be lightweight so they can heft it up the trail as quickly as possible.

“We buy a lot of expensive gear for ourselves for these missions,” Lewis said.

Rangers have state-issued equipment but it is common practice for them to supplement this with personal equipment. The state supplies gear, but clothes, tents, sleeping backs or additional equipment are purchased by the rangers themselves, sometimes thousands of dollars of equipment.

Lewis said the rangers’ union has been advocating for the state to supply them with more personal protective equipment. He said there will likely be a push for this with the state budget coming up in April.

Last summer, Lewis and other rangers established the Forest Ranger Foundation, which raises money to purchase more high-quality equipment for rangers going out on rescue calls.

Martin said winter hikers should always wear a waterproof breathable layer, but in intense rain and exertion hikers can even sweat those out. He suggested carrying multiple puffy layers to change into — as well as things like wool or synthetic clothing that maintains warmth even when wet. The common phrase among hikers, “cotton kills,” exists because cotton clothing loses its insulation when it gets wet.