LOVELAND - Sheila Townsend finally hiked to the top of Longs Peak on Sunday - her third try for the summit.

But her triumph quickly turned into an ordeal when she fell and broke her ankle and had to spend the night at 13,000 feet shivering in near-freezing temperatures until help arrived Monday morning.

Along the way she learned an important lesson: "I will never be climbing a mountain like this alone ever again," the 48-year-old Tulsa, Okla., woman said Tuesday from her hospital bed at the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland.

Her left cheek was swollen and broken. Her shoulder and neck were sore. There was a big knot on her right kneecap. She has five stitches in her head and doctors inserted pins to hold her left ankle together.

But overall, Townsend counts herself lucky to be alive.

"God was watching over me. He sent lots of angels," she said, choking up a bit. "I had lots of people praying for me, people I don't even know."

Townsend went to Rocky Mountain National Park specifically to hike Longs Peak, a goal that had eluded her in two previous years because of snow and fatigue.

"It was something I wanted to accomplish in my life before I got too old to do it," she said.

When she reached the top, she took pictures and tried to write her name in the summit register, but she couldn't open the metal container. So about 4 p.m., she headed back down. By then, she was alone.

She was sidestepping down through some loose rock. First she started to slide, then she began to roll and then she blacked out after traveling about 200 feet.

She came to about 30 minutes later and noticed her blood trickling down the side of the mountain. Had she rolled another 500 feet, Townsend said, she would have gone flying off a ledge.

Her cell phone had no signal. She looked around and realized she was going to have to spend the night alone on the mountain.

Townsend was wearing a hiking shirt, pants and a hooded sweatshirt, but did not have much else in the way of gear other than a light, some toilet paper and two water bottles.

So for 30 minutes she crawled on her hands and knees toward a 2-foot-tall niche that would give her some shelter.

Townsend said she felt a moment of panic when she realized she would be alone overnight.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend grew concerned when she failed to check in by phone. He alerted her family and park rangers, who launched a search early Monday morning.

Park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said about 75 percent of the accidents on Longs last year involved day hikers like Townsend.

Patterson said the Park Service does not charge for such rescues. However, Townsend will be responsible for the cost of the helicopter that flew her to the hospital.

Before the chopper took off, one of the searchers snapped a photo of Townsend in the basket that was to carry her away. In the photograph, she is smiling.

"They said smile, so I smiled," she explained. "I was so happy at that point to see somebody."