A miss­ing hik­er was found safe and sound yes­ter­day, af­ter go­ing miss­ing for over 12 hours in the Lopinot for­est.

Po­lice said 63-year-old Pat Jack­son went for walk in the Lopinot for­est and got lost on the trail.

Rel­a­tives who had last seen Jack­son around 10 am on Tues­day, be­came wor­ried af­ter he did not re­turn from his walk and re­port­ed him miss­ing to the po­lice.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice Search & Res­cue teams from North and Cen­tral, led by Of­fi­cer Cum­mings and Of­fi­cer Bideshi, and the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue team mount­ed a mas­sive search op­er­a­tion comb­ing the for­est yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the fire of­fi­cers took around 6 hours to find Jack­son.

Jack­son emerged with fire of­fi­cials just af­ter 4 pm from one of the path­ways lead­ing to the Cau­ra Riv­er. His cloth­ing was tat­tered and he was vis­i­bly ex­haust­ed, but he was fine oth­er­wise. He was im­me­di­ate­ly greet­ed by rel­a­tives, who were re­lieved that he was found alive.

Speak­ing short­ly to the me­dia, Jack­son said that it was not easy.

He had to be par­tial­ly car­ried by Fire Of­fi­cers at one stage.

Jack­son was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en for med­ical ob­ser­va­tion.