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A woman too scared to climb down Mount Marathon was helped off Seward's famous mountain just before midnight Saturday after an eight-hour rescue effort by the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group, the Seward Volunteer Fire Department and the Alaska State Troopers.

Marleen Mohle, 25, of Berlin, Germany, wasn't injured -- just weak and tired, according to a trooper report.

Mohle's companion, Sebastian Stange, 29, also of Berlin, called for help at 3:15 p.m. Saturday. He said Mohle had slipped on a steep, rocky area and was too scared to move any farther, troopers said.

The pair was a little less than halfway up the 3,022-foot peak made famous by the annual Fourth of July race up and down the mountain that rises just a few blocks from downtown Seward. Mohle and Stange were perched on what the trooper report called "a dangerous angle" at about 1,300 feet.

Such rescues aren't unusual, said Seward resident Flip Foldager, a veteran Mount Marathon racer who in the past has conducted mandatory prerace safety clinics for race rookies.

"That actually happens quite often -- three or four times a summer," Foldager said.

"I think a lot of it is the word 'Marathon' -- people hear that and they think (road) marathon. They don't realize they're getting into a life and death situation on a dangerous cliff, and they're just not prepared."

Sometimes, Foldager said, hikers paralyzed by fright who call for help wind up getting it from his wife Patti -- a two-time Mount Marathon woman's champion who works at the Seward hospital, located conveniently near the mountain's base.

"Not so much this last year, but for a couple years, Patti would get called and she would hike up and talk them down," Foldager said.

This time, the troopers launched a helicopter with three members of the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group aboard. Members of the town's volunteer fire department waited in the lower ravine.

The helicopter dropped the rescue team near the summit, the trooper report said. Rescuers hiked from the top of the mountain to a spot above Mohle and Stange, and from there, they repelled down to the pair, troopers said.

The team reached the stranded hikers around 8:45 p.m. and lowered them to the bottom of the mountain.

By 11:20 p.m., troopers said, everyone was off the mountain, safe and sound.

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.