Woman Struggles To Recover After 75-Foot Fall From Runyon Canyon Cliff

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A woman is recovering Thursday after a 75-foot fall from a cliff at Runyon Canyon, one of the city's most popular hiking spots.

"Everybody says it's a miracle she's even alive," said her mother, Phillis Lowery, who flew in from Detroit to be by her daughter's side.

Dani Lowery, 36, suffered four broken ribs, a fractured tailbone and a lacerated liver in the fall from the popular hiking trail that just reopened after a four-month renovation. Lowery also suffered scrapes and bruises all over her abdomen, arms and legs.

"Her body looks like she was dragged naked behind a car, face down," her mother said.

Lowery said went jogging on Sept. 18 at about 2:30 p.m., taking Gardener up to Runyon to go up the stairs side. At one point, she came to two paths – one on the left "looked sketchy" to Lowery, so she decided to take the one on the right. Traversing what she described as a "gravelly kind of sand," she said she tried to stay on her feet but was thrown.

She said she flew 20 feet and crashed down on a boulder. Lowery said paramedics told her if a man who lives at the top of Runyon hadn't seen her fall, she would have easily bled out.

She said she lives in the area, so she's been to the park before.

"But once they remodeled it, everything looked so different," Lowery said.

Lowery, who works as a dental hygienist, has been in and out of the ICU and surgery. She has tried to return home, but was unable to hold down food, so she's back in the hospital, where a CT scan revealed an aneurysm.

A friend of hers set up a GoFundMe account with a goal of raising $8,000 to help Lowery with medical and living expenses.