Lost hiker’s smart thinking gets him home

A missing hiker is found alive and safe, and now the volunteers who found him are calling it a miracle.

Ken Knight, 41, was separated from his hiking group on the Appalachian Trail last Sunday.

Crews spent the past week scaling every inch of the area in Amherst County near the Rockbridge County line. Although Knight is legally blind, investigators hoped his hiking experience and his knowledge of the great outdoors would help him survive, and that’s exactly what happened.

Rescuers found Knight around 5 p.m. on Saturday evening in the Snowden area near the James River.

For so many of the volunteers, their prayers were answered on Saturday.

“We heard they had a hiker, it was like ‘oh my God. Yes,” said Janice Dudley, a volunteer with Big Island Emergency Crew. 

Knight made it to some water to stay hydrated.

“He was following the stream to the river and knew he could get to [Route] 130 and track somebody for help,” said Brandon Cocke, a volunteer for the Big Island Fire Department.

Firefighters say he wasn’t even a mile away from the road.

The fire department found Knight because the hiker had a clever idea – start a fire to get someone’s attention. The call came in around 4 p.m. on Saturday and firefighters could see the fire on Snowden Mountain within eyesight of their station.

“We were talking and said ‘watch this be the guy setting the fire to attract attention,’” said Cocke.

They had their radios on – a sound that reached Knight.

“He heard our guys, of course the radios. He heard the commotion coming toward him,” said Cocke.

Janice Dudley’s husband, Clint, was one of four firefighters who walked into the woods to find Knight.

“Fifteen feet from the fire in a creek bottom was Ken set up, had a camp set up, tent set up. He immediately started packing up camp and ready to get out,” said Clint Dudley.

Dudley said he told Knight he knew who he was.

“He said ‘what do you mean.’ I said your picture’s been all over the news and the newspaper the last couple days. Of course he had no idea,” said Dudley.

Janice Dudley heard an announcement she’d been waiting to hear – that he was alive.

“Then they said he’s walking out on his own. It’s like praise the Lord. We don’t get those every day.  We don’t get these turnouts,” she said.

“It was just complete luck of the draw it happened. I’m not sure it will ever happen again,” said Cocke.

Firefighters say about 15 minutes after they found Knight, it started to rain. They say if he would have waited a couple hours to start the fire, the ground would have been too wet.