PHOENIX — Adisyn Mathenia and her cousin, Logan Moore, embarked on a 36-day backpacking trip across Europe with high hopes. The pair, who have been best friends since birth, began their journey in Barcelona: sightseeing, hiking and relaxing on the beach before heading to Switzerland.
"Logan's always had a passion for traveling, that's what he's always wanted to do," Mathenia said. "Switzerland was definitely for me to get in all the hikes that we could."
It was on a hike in Switzerland that Mathenia and Moore experienced the unthinkable: Moore, slipping off the cliff they had been hiking up, and landing on a boulder down below.
"I take, like one step towards him, and I just realized that if I went for him, like, I would go down too," Mathenia said. "That was, like, the hardest part for me, it was just having to watch him fall, and not even trying to reach out."
Moore had on a backpack, which Mathenia said she thinks cushioned most of his fall. After hitting the boulder, Moore slid head first into a crevice where he got stuck. Mathernia knew time was of the essence — she started a stopwatch and got to work.
Mathenia said her training in veterinary school and her work in an animal hospital helped her know what to do in case of an emergency. She sent one of the pair's friends to get help, another to call rescue services and she and another friend attempted to scale the side of the cliff to get to Moore.
Mathenia said 21 minutes after she began her stopwatch is when the first helicopter came. One hour and 34 minutes later, Logan was lifted out of the crevice and into a makeshift bed of dry clothes from Mathenia and their friends.
"The whole time, it was just kind of like surreal looking," Mathenia said. "But for a while there, it was like pretty... touch and go. He seemed stable to the point where I wasn't really worried about him necessarily dying in that moment, but with trauma like this, you never know — like, one minute, they could be fine, and then the next... they would stop breathing."
Throughout the search and rescue process, Mathenia said she tried to take photos and videos for Moore. Moore was the one documenting everything on the first nine days of their trip, Mathenia said.
Moore was airlifted to a hospital, with Mathenia and their friends hiking back down the mountain, driving to the nearest train station to ride to the next town and walking one hour to get to the hospital to see Moore.
"We were just anxiously like, eating pizza in the waiting room just waiting to like, have any sort of update on him," Mathenia said.
The update was good, considering the circumstances: Moore had fractured multiple bones near his shoulder and fractured multiple vertebrae, but the doctors said he would only need shoulder surgery. Mathenia said while the experience was traumatic, she realized it could have been much worse.
"Ten feet to the right, it was just like a straight, like, 700-foot fall, Mathenia said. "If he was standing right there where one of my like other friends was standing and he fell there, he would have died."
Mathenia and her family put together a GoFundMe page to raise money to get Moore home for shoulder surgery in Phoenix, where Mathenia and Moore both grew up and live now. Moore is in surgery as of June 8 and Mathenia is still in Switzerland, attempting to finish her trip without her best friend.
"I think it like really hit me once I left him just kind of like, how much it was," Mathenia said. "This is like somebody that I really care about, and it's a lot."
Even though Mathenia has always loved hiking and adventures, she's found herself afraid in certain situations, particularly when she is at a high altitude.
But Mathenia said she is more grateful for her cousin's safety than she is afraid.
"I just have to keep reminding myself that Logan's alive, and that's all I could ask for, Mathenia said. "Everything else will kind of work itself out. He'll heal, I'll get over my fear of heights, and we'll move forward."
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