Hiker, 70, Rescued Alive After a Week Lost

Craig Berg, 70, of Royal Oak, Michigan, was lifted off a remote Lake Superior island by a Coast Guard helicopter on Saturday, Sept. 12, after going missing in Isle Royale National Park on Sept. 5. He was injured and suffering from hypothermia, and Michigan State Police said he was found alive and alert.

An MH-60 Jayhawk crew from Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City hoisted Berg into the helicopter and flew him to Marquette Regional Airport in Gwinn, Michigan. Emergency medical personnel waiting there took him to a hospital.

The National Park Service said two paddlers found him. Berg was at Intermediate Lake, more than a mile from any established hiking trail on the island, and the kayakers relayed his location to park officials, who coordinated the evacuation with the Coast Guard, according to the Park Service account released Monday.

Michigan State Police foot patrols and K-9 units reached Berg after the good Samaritan hikers spotted him, officials said. The Coast Guard Great Lakes statement put it simply: "The Coast Guard and Michigan State Police rescued an injured, ailing man Saturday after he went missing in Isle Royale National Park on Sept. 5."

He was lost days before anyone knew to look

Berg's son, Evan Berg, told Detroit station WDIV that his father wandered off the trail and then went into a marsh, where his phone and his wallet were gone for good.

"He got lost, and then he fell into a marsh, and he lost his cell phone and his wallet in the marsh," Evan Berg said while driving north to Marquette on Saturday. "He's been trying to make his way to find somebody. Kayakers ended up finding him."

After the rescue, Berg told relatives he had gotten lost several days before anyone reported him missing, and that he had been looking for help for 11 days. The last communication the family had from his phone came on Sept. 2.

That gap is why the official count and the family's count differ. The Coast Guard dates the disappearance to Sept. 5, the day Berg was supposed to be on a ferry home. Berg himself dates it to the moment he stepped off a trail nobody knew he had left.

A retired engineer who wanted the Appalachian Trail

Berg arrived on Isle Royale on Aug. 27 for a solo backpacking trip planned to run nine days, and he was booked on the Ranger III passenger ferry back to Michigan's Upper Peninsula on Sept. 5. When he did not get home, family members reported him missing the next day, which set off a large-scale search run by park officials.

He is a retired quality engineer and a grandfather of two. He had always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail, his son said, and decided that might be too much. In 2025 he spent a week at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. This year the goal was Isle Royale.

WDIV described Berg as physically fit, an experienced outdoorsman who runs regularly and has done solo hikes before. Evan Berg said the trails on Isle Royale are hard to follow and poorly marked.

Boats, dogs, drones and seaplanes

The search pulled in agencies from three states. Lt. Ben Eckola, public information officer for the Michigan State Police Eighth District, credited the National Park Service, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Keweenaw County Sheriff's Office, the Wisconsin State Patrol and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

Crews worked the water, the ground and the air. A 45-foot Coast Guard response boat, drones and seaplanes were part of the effort, along with search dogs and aircraft from the Minnesota State Patrol. Michigan State Police sent its Aviation, Canine, Emergency Support, Marine Services and Communications units.

Getting searchers to the island was its own operation. On Sept. 11, a Coast Guard boat crew and a helicopter crew from Air Station Traverse City ferried state police troopers and K-9 units across Lake Superior to join the search. Berg was found the following morning.

Eckola also thanked the hikers who helped, plus Isle Royale Seaplanes and No One Left Behind K9 Search and Rescue. "Everyone's efforts played an important part in finding Craig," he said.

An island with no roads and almost no help

Isle Royale sits off the northeast tip of Minnesota, near the Canadian border, and it is about 45 miles long and 9 miles wide. Outside two hubs of visitor services at either end, there are no roads and no motor vehicles. The federal government designates 99% of the park's land area as official wilderness.

Berg's wife, Debbie, told the Detroit Free Press that only two rangers are stationed on the island, and that the park has two camp stores and a lodge. The park's own website says cell phone service is not reliable and that bicycles, motorized vehicles and drones are generally prohibited there.

Park visitor safety guidance is blunt about the odds: help can be hours or days away, even when a visitor manages to reach a ranger. Isle Royale is one of the least-visited national parks in the country, reachable only by ferry or seaplane.

Park officials said the search area covered "dense forests, rocky shorelines, wetlands and inland lakes, where limited cellular coverage can also make communication challenging." The island's trail network includes the Greenstone Ridge Trail, which runs nearly its entire length, and several canoe routes across inland lakes, including the lake where Berg was found.

"He's Alive! They got him!"

Evan Berg was in the car on the long drive from metro Detroit to Marquette to pick his father up from the hospital when he described the text his stepmother had sent him hours earlier.

"He's Alive! They got him!" he said, reading it back. "I yelled at the top of my lungs, 'He's Alive!' And people looked at me and, oh, man. It was a wonderful feeling."

He had already spoken to his father by phone. "He was shaken up," Evan said. "You can tell this rattled him. I think it would rattle anyone. He said, 'Oh, man, I have enough stories to tell you to fill a book. And I said, well, 'we'll talk about it when I see you in person. And then, maybe you go write that book.'"

Evan, one of Craig Berg's two children, had one word for what the previous week and a half had been like for the family: stressful. Asked how Saturday felt, he gave a list. "Relief, ecstatic, elated, relief, jubilation."

An antenna made from broken earphones

With his phone at the bottom of a marsh, Berg improvised. His wife has said he rigged an antenna out of broken earphones, hooked it to a portable radio, and used it to pick up broadcasts while he was moving through the swamp looking for another human being. For days, by her account, he saw nobody.

When the kayakers finally turned up, Berg walked out to meet them on his own. He left his camping equipment in the brush, and according to his wife, that is where it is going to stay.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources said Berg was found in good condition and was "walking in the hospital before the last searchers returned from searching." That detail says something about the man that a week of statements does not.

What the rescuers said afterward

Eckola's statement came out the same day. "We're thankful that missing hiker, Craig Berg, was found alive and alert on Isle Royale," he said. "The collaboration and hard work of everyone involved in the search helped locate Craig safely."

Senior Chief Petty Officer Wendy Janson, command duty officer at the Coast Guard's Sector Northern Great Lakes command center, pointed at the civilians who happened to be paddling in the right place. "This rescue is a testament to teamwork and what can be accomplished when first responders and members of the community come together," she said.

"We are extremely grateful we were able to get Mr. Berg safely off the island and deliver him to the medical care he needed," Janson added.

Isle Royale officials said the outcome reflected the combined efforts of search teams, partner agencies and members of the public who helped throughout the operation. The Coast Guard released video of the Sept. 12 hoist, showing the Jayhawk crew lifting Berg off the ground.

Officials have not said what Berg ate, where he slept, or exactly how he covered the distance between the trail he lost and the lake where he was found. They did not release details about his injuries either. He was still recovering in a Marquette hospital on Monday, where the son who had spent Saturday driving north gave him the hug he had started to fear he would not get.