A Canadian woman who was last seen in mid-March in Baker City, driving with her husband to Las Vegas, was discovered alive Friday in Nevada, severely malnourished but in relatively good shape.

Rita Chretien, 56, was found by hunters near her van on a remote logging road in Elko County in northeastern Nevada. She was airlifted to a hospital in Twin Falls, Idaho, for treatment.

She survived 49 days in the wilderness by eating snow, her son, Raymond Chretien, told The Oregonian.

"We're stunned," he said. "We haven't fully digested it. This is a miracle."

The news was bittersweet, however, because his father, 59-year-old Albert Chretien, is still missing.

Raymond Chretien said he had pretty much lost hope of seeing either of his parents again.

They took off March 19 from their home in Penticton, B.C., just north of Oroville in north-central Washington, heading to Las Vegas for a trade show. They were last seen that afternoon at Jackson's Food Mart in Baker City, where they bought gas with a credit card. They were captured on a video surveillance camera.

Raymond Chretien said they traveled to Nevada the same day, meandering over back roads to soak in the scenery.

But their van, a tan 2000 Chevrolet Astro, got stuck in the mud, and they couldn't dislodge it. Rita Chretien told her son that they simply had made a series of bad choices.

Three days later, Albert Chretien ventured out to seek help. His wife stayed put in the van.

Figuring neither might make it out alive, Rita Chretien kept a journal to let her family, friends and the world know what had happened to them.

"I don't believe they were prepared for winter weather," Raymond Chretien said. "They don't go camping."

When his mother finally was rescued and talked to him, she immediately apologized for causing him and his two brothers and other loved ones anguish.

"She felt extremely bad for us all," he said. "She was extremely apologetic."

The two hunters discovered her about 3:30 p.m. today, according to Detective Jim Carpenter, spokesman for the Elko County Sheriff's Office. Chretien told her son that she probably would not have lived more than another two or three days. Over the 49 days, she lost about 30 pounds. When the two hunters tried to feed her, she couldn't keep it down.

She's not optimistic about her husband's fate.

"He didn't have shelter," Raymond Chretien said. "It's her belief that he didn't make it."

Still, he said her spirits were fairly good.

Raymond Chretien and his wife are flying today to Twin Falls to be with his mother.

He said the Elko County Sheriff's Office is mounting a search at the crack of dawn. Conditions were too difficult to start searching right away.

The couple, who own a commercial excavating company, left their home in Penticton about 6:30 a.m. March 19 and made it to Baker City between 3:30 and 4 p.m., according to Baker City police.

They didn't have to be in Las Vegas for another three days, their son said.

When they didn't return home as planned on March 30, the family alerted Canadian authorities, and a massive search was launched that went on for more than a week.

Dozens of officers in patrol vehicles and aircraft took part in the search covering Oregon's Baker, Grant, Harney and Malheur counties, a rugged, sparsely settled 30,000-square-mile region. Pilots even peered into the Burnt and Snake rivers, looking for any sign of the couple's van.

Officials from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took part in the effort, headquartered in Baker City. Raymond Chretien rented a plane early on, fearful that searchers would not use planes.

The search was scaled back after about two weeks and discontinued April 21 pending any new information.

"We had all concluded that there was very little chance left," Raymond Chretien said. "We know that there's a miracle here."