Two women describe how they survived 5 days lost in California wildnerness

BERKELEY, CA -- Two East Bay women are safe after surviving in the wilderness for five days, with barely anything to wear. They were rescued about 20 miles north of Sonora off of Highway 108.

For five days, 57-year-old Laura Sherman of Oakland, and 56-year-old Denise Diaz of Berkeley wandered through thorny brush in hot, dry conditions.

"It's really changed my perspective on everything because we could have died," Diaz said.

The two friends were driving up Highway 108 to Coyote Springs on Friday when they read about a beautiful lake along the Emigrant Trail, so they turned off the road for a quick day trip.

"We went without preparing. We didn't tell anybody that we were going there. We didn't have a map," Sherman said.

They had two bottles of water, some granola and a towel. They were only wearing swimsuits and T-shirts when the trail began to fade. They were lost.

"I just said to Laura, 'We have to be grandmothers. We're going to have grandkids. This is going to happen. We're not going to die now. We're too young to die,'" Diaz said.

After two days of wandering in the heat and sleeping in the cold, they ran out of water.

Diaz: "I read somewhere that if you drink your urine in a dire strait that's what you have to do, so we started doing that."

Sherman: "We did that and we sucked on grass, we chewed on grass."

Diaz: "I basically said, 'Let's eat these grasses.'"

Finally, on the fifth day they spotted two cowboys tending to their herd.

Sherman: "I was so excited."

Diaz: "It was like a mirage."

Sherman: "It was incredible."

A Stanislaus County Sheriff's chopper plucked them out of the wilderness and the ordeal was over. The women took a photo as they flew back to civilization.