A woman has been rescued from a mud pit in Minnesota after becoming trapped for several days.

On 6 June, two friends, Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin, were riding their all-terrain vehicles through a wooded area near Backus and Hackensack in northern Minnesota when they discovered Kathryn Woessner, 68, almost entirely submerged in a mud puddle.

According to Sandbeck and Gravalin, Woessner – who had last been seen on 3 June – told them she had been trapped in the mud for several days, ABC reports. She said her vehicle had become stuck and while attempting to get around it, she slipped and fell into a puddle about 2ft deep.

Before she was found, the Douglas county sheriff’s office had already issued an endangered missing person alert for Woessner, noting that “she does not have any personal belongings with her and has medical conditions that raise concerns about her safety,” the outlet added.

Speaking to KARE11, Gravalin said the area had been flooded following a recent storm. As they drove deeper into the woods, they came across “this van in the middle of nowhere that has no real off-road capabilities to get there, but it somehow did,” according to Gravalin.

Sandbeck recalled the moment the pair spotted Woessner, saying: “We could see that there was a body in the puddle next to the van, and then that’s when it got real … When we walked up, we thought she was dead. We thought it was just a body, and then she whispered, ‘Help me,’ and it scared the crap out of me.”

“All you could see was just the round part of her face, like her mouth, her lips. You couldn’t even see her ears. It was all submerged,” he added.

The two men quickly pulled Woessner from the mud. She later described the puddle as “like quicksand” and said she “couldn’t get out” of it, KARE11 reports.

After rescuing her – an effort that took less than half an hour – Sandbeck and Gravalin called 911. Paramedics were dispatched to the scene, and Woessner was transported to a nearby hospital.

Local officials say she was expected to make a full recovery.

Reflecting on the ordeal, Sandbeck said: “We’re just two guys that were out there riding, enjoying the day together, making fun of each other all day long like we always do, like buddies, but I have no doubt the hand of God was there guiding us there. Because that trail that we found her on, we actually drove past it.”

“We’ve driven past it for the last eight years and never went down,” Gravalin said.

“And it was like, let’s go check that out,” Sandbeck added, according to KARE11.