Twin points of light crept down the secluded path, and Susan Stronberg knew she wasn't going to die.

"I can't tell you the feeling when I saw those headlights come up the road," Stronberg recalled Tuesday in an interview in her hospital room. "It was like being given life again."

When the Lake County and Swan search and rescue teams were dispatched shortly before 7 p.m. Friday, the 57-year-old Yellow Bay woman had already been in excruciating pain for more than seven hours.

Injured while falling down a 4- to 5-foot drop-off on a trail about 2 miles south of Blue Bay in the Mission Mountains, Stronberg had broken her left wrist in two places and shattered her left ankle - sending the jagged end of her shinbone a couple inches through her skin.

For Stronberg, alone in the woods, the ordeal eventually would last more than 14 hours.

"It was just a stupid little day hike, but it turned into, you know, staying alive," she said.

Stronberg left the house about 10 a.m. Friday to take her two Airedales on a hike - something she or her husband, Michael, did almost daily. She drove the dogs to a dirt track she had hiked before but does not visit often - Trail 2100, located on Flathead Reservation land about 7 miles south of the Stronbergs' home.

After exercising the dogs for about an hour and a half, Stronberg began to head back to her car. The trail had suffered heavy tree damage from a late snow, and as Stronberg navigated an escarpment to bypass the last log between her and the car, she lost her footing.

"I looked down at my leg and I thought, 'Oh my gosh.' I couldn't believe it. I thought I was going to bleed to death. That was my first reaction," she said.

Stronberg said her second reaction was that she would pass out and become lunch for some wild animal.

It took Stronberg almost two hours to crawl, on her forearms and with the aid of her good leg, the remaining quarter-mile to her vehicle.

She tried to drive out, but her Toyota FJ Cruiser has a manual transmission. Stronberg tried to use her right foot to operate the clutch and brake pedals simultaneously, but only succeeded in backing the small SUV across the dirt track and over an embankment.

Gushing blood from her leg, Stronberg said she slid out of the car into the brush and remained motionless on her back for an hour.

"I was spent," she said. "I didn't know what I was going to do."

By 4:30 p.m. Stronberg began preparations for spending the night.

"I tried to hoist myself back in to the car, but the pain was just too excruciating," said Stronberg, noting that she could hear boats on Flathead Lake and trucks on Montana 35. "Nobody could hear me where I was, I pretty much knew that."

Stronberg spread a newspaper she had in the car on the ground to stay warm. She covered herself with another.

"So I was going to spend the night out there, then I heard the coyotes start howling and yipping," she said.

Inch by painful inch, Stronberg crept on her stomach back into the car - using any type of handle protruding from the listing car to drag herself forward.

"I was just screaming it was so painful. I was just exhausted," said Stronberg. "You know I could hear the bones just crunch, crunch, crunch the whole time. It was just sickening."

From inside the car, where she had a gallon jug of water and some candy, Stronberg saw lights. Miles away, her rescuers were searching. It was 11:30 p.m.

In an effort to stay warm as night temperatures and shock continued to set in, Stronberg tore into pieces the rubber mats under the dog beds in the car's rear. She drank some water, which she had been conserving by spitting it back into her jug.

By 2 a.m., more than 14 hours after she was injured, Stronberg was found by Brian Ducharm, a ranger with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The dogs were still in the area.

"I said, 'I think I'm in love with you, Brian.' Then that's the first time I cried," Stronberg said.

Stronberg's husband spent Friday evening and the early hours of Saturday morning at his house or providing information for personnel with the Lake County and Swan Search and Rescue teams - which had set up their command post at the Blue Bay campground.

He said he last spoke to his wife at 9 a.m. Friday from Missoula, where he owns a company that prints and processes business mail.

When he called her as he left work at about 3 p.m., he got no answer but didn't think it unusual. He arrived home at 4:45 p.m. and noticed the dogs and car were missing.

"Again, I didn't think anything of it," said Michael, observing that Susan could have been out about town or hiking, where cell coverage is spotty.

He found her cell phone, left behind because it would be useless in the woods, still at their Yellow Bay house with missed calls from a cousin at 2 p.m. and his own at 3 p.m.

"Around 5:30 I began to get anxious," Michael said.

He checked trails above and below the house, but didn't see Susan's vehicle. He notified the Lake County Sheriff's Office that his wife was missing by 6 p.m.

Deputies began searching the roads for her vehicle and broadcast an attempt-to-locate bulletin. By 9 p.m., the search and rescue team had been called out. From their command post, rescuers grid-searched around the house and likely hiking trails.

Rescuers came up dry again and again.

"She used anything and everything, plus sheer guts and willpower, to stay alive," Michael said.

About 1:30 a.m. Saturday, he remembered Trail 2100 - which has a lot of shade for the comfort of the couple's non-shedding Airedales - and notified searchers about it.

"Had she picked a brand new trail that I didn't know about, I wouldn't have a wife today," he said.

After the initial contact with Michael Stronberg, "I determined that we would call out search and rescue to do a road search because, honestly, we didn't know where she was," said Deputy Becky McClintock, the Sheriff's Office liaison that night with the Lake County and Swan search and rescue teams.

The teams were dispatched shortly before 7 p.m., and began systematically searching all the roads along Montana 35 from Ferndale to Hellroaring Road, McClintock said.

For five hours, search and rescue team members looked for Susan's car, marking roads already passed with surveyor's tape.

"Some of those are barely roads," McClintock said. "Some are barely drivable."

Including fire department and ambulance personnel, about 40 people were involved in the operation.

While search and rescue team members scoured Flathead Lake's east side, McClintock - along with Lake County Search and Rescue coordinator Tom Savage and Swan Search and Rescue coordinator and Bigfork Fire Department Assistant Chief Nat O'Farrell - directed operations from the command post at the Blue Bay campgrounds.

Rescuers spoke with Michael Stronberg and searched the couple's home for clues about where Susan may have gone.

Then Michael remembered trail 2100. Ducharm went to check it out.

"He knew the area very well because he lived there, so that's always a huge asset," McClintock said.

Meanwhile, McClintock and the rescuers began considering their next move if Susan Stronberg failed to turn up soon.

But Ducharm did find Stronberg, and responding medical personnel from Polson moved her - strapped to a backboard - out of the woods in the back of a pickup truck.

After meeting an ambulance, Stronberg was taken to the search effort's command post and from there airlifted via ALERT helicopter to Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

Stronberg praised the acumen, consideration and care with which rescue personnel treated her.

"Search and rescue is just an incredible vehicle for this community," she said. "I would have died out there, there's no question."

Until last year, when Lake County passed a mill levy, search and rescue teams were supported entirely by private donations.

Stronberg said that when she gets better, she and her husband are going to throw a barbecue, invite her rescuers, and make a donation.

You never know when you're going to need to be rescued, she said in explaining why the community should support its search and rescue teams.

McClintock said she was just glad everything will turn out all right.

"They did an excellent job and were very professional," she said. "That's what they're there for. They love doing it."

Stronberg still faces months of recovery.

She is scheduled for one of at least three surgeries needed to repair her wrist and ankle today, and will have to stay completely off her feet for about six weeks.

Infection will be Susan's greatest obstacle, now that fears she might lose her leg are largely past. She is being prescribed high doses of antibiotics.

"I figured when I was out there that I would lose my leg, because of the condition it was in," Stronberg said. "It was gruesome."

Her hospital stay easily could last two more weeks.

"I lived. That's the thing you've got to understand, I lived. Anything I go through now is a piece of cake," Stronberg said. "I don't look forward to the ordeal ahead of me, but I've already come out a winner."

And the next time she heads out for hike, Stronberg said she will tell someone where she is going and when to expect her back.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com