A walk on Hilton Head beach turned disastrous for woman trapped hip-deep in pluff mud
On Monday, Ruth McCully said she became a literal “old stick in the mud.”
She was traversing Hilton Head Island’s north end beach, Fish Haul, just before sunrise, trying to find the perfect shot of the sun as it breached the horizon over the Atlantic Ocean.
The 68-year-old Bluffton resident makes the trip to Hilton Head’s beaches often to photograph the sunrises.
She was following the steps of others toward the north end of the beach, heading toward the marsh that separates Fish Haul from Port Royal Plantation when, all of a sudden, she was swallowed up to her hips in pluff mud.
She couldn’t move her feet or legs.
Panic set in.
She was able to reach her phone, which was thankfully in her pocket and not in her backpack.
“I called my husband and said I was stuck in the mud. He thought I was talking about the car,” she told The Island Packet. “I said ‘no, it’s me! I am stuck in the mud!’”
The smelly, slick mud had enveloped half of McCully’s body.
She couldn’t put her hands down to push herself upward without getting sucked down even more.
Her next call was to 911.
“For probably about 10 minutes I really panicked, but the dispatcher stayed on the phone with me and he calmed me down,” she said.
It was still dark outside as fire rescue arrived at the beach and started to scan for McCully, who was wearing a headlamp and carrying her photography gear in a backpack.
She was slowly sinking deeper as fire rescue crews spotted her around 6:45 a.m. and gave her a shovel to start digging.
Crews wore special mudder shoes that redistribute weight and avoid sinking as quickly, and they soon brought out a plank to stand on to help get McCully out of the mud.
When she had dug one leg out down to her knee, rescuers brought a tarp and swiftly pulled her out. She was uninjured except for a little soreness in her knee.
It was a really gorgeous sunrise, she said, even though she had to watch it while halfway engulfed in mud.
But McCully was grateful for people who’d been around pluff mud and knew how to rescue her without sinking in themselves.
“I’m used to East Coast beaches,” she said, having lived in Florida and Massachusetts. “I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
What is pluff mud?
Pluff mud is the mud lining of the salt marsh floor, and it’s unique to the Lowcountry.
Outside Hilton Head says “it smells ‘different’ because a lot of plants and animals die in the marsh and decompose there.’”
Pluff mud surrounds Hilton Head’s north and western sides, where salt marshes dominate the landscapes.
It’s the cause of many lost shoes and, in one case, a stranded jet skier, because so many visitors are unfamiliar with the seemingly harmless mud.
“There’s so many people moving down here from up north, and you don’t have this on East Coast beaches,” McCully said. “My advice is, if it starts to get mucky, turn around and go in the opposite direction.”
How to get out of pluff mud
If you find yourself, or your shoe, stuck in pluff mud, here are some tips:
1. Try to disperse your weight as much as you can.
2. If your leg or foot is stuck, don’t yank. Pull your foot a couple of times to loosen the mud around you.
3. The more you stay in one spot, the deeper you’ll go. Try to move around as much as you can.
When you’re on Hilton Head’s beaches that face the Port Royal Sound, Broad Creek, Skull Creek or Calibogue Sound, avoid the ribbons of pluff mud and the muddy edges of salt marshes all together.
This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 4:30 AM with the headline "A walk on Hilton Head beach turned disastrous for woman trapped hip-deep in pluff mud."
