Couple rescued after spending five days stranded in car in snow

A couple has survived after being stuck in deep snow in their jeep for five days in a California forest.

Maia Herman-Kitami and Carlos Hernandez survived by drinking melted snow and were finally rescued after being spotted by strangers on snowmobiles.

“I just want to say thank you and how grateful both of us are because without them, we wouldn’t be here,” Mr Herman-Kitami told San Francisco’s KGO.

The couple got in difficulties after deciding to go camping at the end of last month in California’s Mendocino National Forest.

But the weather turned quickly and their Jeep Wrangler got stuck due to heavy snow.

Even worse they could not get mobile phone service to alert authorities.

They decided to stay put in their car to try and keep as warm as possible, ration food and drink the melted snow.

Good Samaritans join search party

Police were alerted by the missing duo’s parents a day after they were due to return home.

The pair were eventually discovered by Jason Logan and his father-in-law Ron Lovell.

They had heard about the missing couple and decided to search for them on their snowmobiles.

Logan and Lovell found another group on snowmobiles also looking for Herman-Kitami and Hernandez and they eventually tracked down the missing couple.

“Sure enough, we come around the turn and there’s a Jeep 300 yards away,” Mr Logan told another media outlet, KRCR.

“It was just mind-boggling.”

However, there were still fears the couple may not have survived until they started blasting their horns.

“They started laying on the horn, you saw both doors open and they jumped out each side,” Mr Logan said.

The rescue likely came just in time as a fresh snowstorm hit just hours later.

“With the weather we had… I’m fairly convinced the Jeep would have been buried by [Tuesday] morning,” Mr Logan said.