NORTH BEND, Wash. (AP) - A 31-year-old woman who went missing while hiking in the Snoqualmie Pass area late Saturday night has been found safe.

She has been identified as Seattle lawyer Cindy M. Wysocki, a public defender from Chicago. Wysocki is conscious, talking and in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Searchers located Wysocki just after 1 o'clock Monday afternoon.

King County sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said she was able to wave when she was spotted by a sheriff's helicopter. But the helicopter could not land on the rough terrain, and officials had to send in a Navy Night Hawk helicopter from Whidbey Island NAS to pick her up.

Urquhart said the missing snowshoer was found quite a distance from ground searchers. He said if she had not been spotted today by the helicopter she probably would not have survived. "Today was do or die," he said. "It would have taken searchers another six hours to get to her, without the helicopter she probably would not have survived."

"It really didn't look good and I just thank God she's alive," said Cindy's brother Bill Wysock. He spent hours among the volunteers to try to track down his sister.

Deputies say it was around 2 a.m. Sunday when they got a call from the woman's hiking companions saying the woman had gotten lost in the Denny Creek trailhead area.

The weather has been stormy up in the area, and conditions on the trail are absolutely miserable, making the search for the missing hiker all the more difficult.

But deputies say their biggest concern was the hiker's condition.

"It's cold and wet," Peter Lindje with the King County Sheriff's office said Sunday. "Those are the worst conditions for hypothermia. We'd probably be better if it was snowing -- maybe it would be dry. But instead it's been pouring rain, slightly above freezing here."

Deputies said they doubted the woman was even prepared for an overnight stay in the mountains. She went hiking with two friends and at some point took a wrong turn.

Her friends looked for her for several hours before calling 911 early Sunday.

"It was a group of three people that went for a hike here at the Denny Creek trail Saturday afternoon," Lindje said. "After lunch, she got tired and decided to head down the trail early and get a head start on these guys, and they left late. They came down to the vehicle, and she wasn't here."

More than 50 people were actively searching the woods Sunday and Monday for the missing hiker.
Search and rescue leaders said one searcher and a rescue dog were being treated for hypothermia after falling into the water while scouring the woods early Monday.