George Scherer, 32, of Nutley, N.J., found his way to a makeshift shelter outside the national park boundary, where he was spotted and picked up by a helicopter. The shelter, used by East Maui Watershed Partnership crews, contained a stash of dry clothes, food, water and a blanket that Scherer said was responsible for his survival.

"Talk about a guardian angel or a power above. If it wasn't for the supplies those guys put out there, I wouldn't be alive today," he said yesterday at his wife's relatives' home in Kahului.

Scherer, a home security repair technician, and his wife, Shirley, a cosmetics chemist for L'Oreal, had started down the Sliding Sands Trail at the crater summit around 2:45 p.m. Tuesday, but his wife turned back after about 45 minutes, said Haleakala National Park Chief Ranger Karen Newton. Scherer decided to hike on, unaware that it takes about eight hours to make the 12-mile hike out by the Halemau'u Trailhead.

He missed a turn in the trail and stopped to talk to other hikers at Kapalaoa Cabin around 5:30 p.m. and was given directions to the Halemau'u exit, Newton said. Worried about meeting up with his wife, he decided to chance it but made another wrong turn in the center of the crater floor as darkness fell. Scherer followed an unmaintained trail north down the rugged 'a'a lava fields of the Ko'olau Gap and finally decided to rest at about midnight. Temperatures at the park's ranger station were in the 40s.

Meanwhile, Shirley Scherer notified authorities that her husband was missing, but by then it was dark.

It was a moonless night and Scherer had no flashlight, no food, a small amount of water and no warm clothing. He had only shorts, a T-shirt and windbreaker. He said he spent the night on wet ground before starting out again at daylight. He reached the park's fenced boundary and continued through dense brush and rain forest until he saw the watershed shelter. Scherer decided to stay put overnight, hoping rescuers would find him in a small clearing by the shelter.

"It was so incredibly cold and wet that first night out," he said. "And the trek through that forest was just hellish. I was crawling, sliding down on things, traversing 20-foot waterfalls. There was one stream after another," he said. "There were times I felt like I wasn't going to make it, but I didn't want to give up. I kept pushing to see my wife again. The worst part was wondering what the people were thinking at home — was I dead, alive, stranded or what."

Sixteen National Park Service employees and a county fire department helicopter searched for the missing hiker Wednesday, concentrating in the crater area, Newton said. A group of 26 searchers was ready to head out yesterday morning when word was received around 7 a.m. that a Windward Aviation helicopter piloted by Duke Baldwin had spotted Scherer, landed in the clearing and was flying him to the park's Hosmer Grove.

Shirley Scherer's family had organized their own search party and were headed up to the crater when she got the call that her husband was safe.

"I didn't have a feeling he was gone, just that he was somewhere in there where we had to look for him," she said.

Newton said the hiker's hands, legs and feet were swollen and his bruised body was covered with scratches.

Scherer said he now realizes he should not have set out on his hike so late in the day and should have been better-prepared for Haleakala's unpredictable weather.