SHE AIN'T HEAVY SHE'S OUR SISTER!

Heroic strangers carry hurt hiker down mountain

EVERY Aug. 28 for the past 23 years, Ursula Bannister, 79, has hiked to the top of High Rock Lookout, near Ashford, Wash., where she scattered her mother's ashes 23 years ago.

"It's considered a hard hike, but because I've done it so many times, I wasn't nervous about it," says Bannister, who lives in Tacoma.

That morning, she steadily made her way to the top of the dramatic, spire-shaped rock formation. After leaving the flowers she brought to honor her mother, she headed down - and that's when she caught her foot in a hole and tripped.

"By the time I sat up, my foot was pointing the wrong way. I knew right away I had broken my leg," she recounts.