A Canberra teenager missing for a week has been found alive after crashing her car and falling 15 metres down a steep embankment.
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Despite leg and abdominal injuries from the crash, 19-year-old Kathleen Bautista climbed at least 100 metres uphill after escaping her upturned car in the Cotter reserve area, west of Canberra.
Her relieved father, Ronnie Bautista, said the family had never lost hope.
"To be honest the only thing we could do really is to pray, pray really hard she will be found. We never lost hope and we really kept that hope alive in us through the help of all the support of everyone," he said.
"I'm just ecstatic, just really very happy and over the moon that Kat's been found safe and sound."
Mr Bautista was driving when police rang with the news.
"And I think that's probably the loudest scream that I did when I heard the news that Kat was with [them]," he said.
Search and rescue members found the Gordon teenager's car off Settlement Road about 10.25am Friday, almost a week after she went missing last Saturday.
It had tumbled 15 metres down an embankment, hitting three objects on its way and landing upside down in a creek.
As teams were preparing to search the area around the car, a constable noticed Ms Bautista's hand - high up on the embankment - lift to get their attention.
"She was lucid, had a clear conversation with us, she was chatty and even started telling jokes, so she was relieved and she thanked us profusely. She was actually, despite her circumstances, in very good spirits," Lachlan Ryan, from Search and Rescue Disaster Response said.
She was taken to Canberra Hospital injured and dehydrated, and remained there in a stable condition on Friday afternoon.
Earlier on Friday, authorities had received more precise information about where her mobile phone was last activated and used that to narrow their search.
"We were able to see where the signal was intersecting between Black Mountain and Isaacs Ridge, and those areas and the timings of those signals enabled us to say with some certainty that Kat's phone was in that location," Constable Ryan said.
Although her phone had been turned off on Saturday morning, authorities were able to find her car based on that information within an hour of searching.
ABC reported there were tears of joy when her boyfriend and friends - who spent the morning putting up posters as part of the search - embraced when they heard the news.
Police and SES members have spent the past week searching bushland west of Black Mountain tower from the water and the air for Ms Bautista and her mobile phone, which last registered signals in the area.
The search party concentrated on the Lower Molonglo Nature Reserve before moving further west to the Cotter catchment area.
An ambulance believed to be carrying Ms Bautista was followed by a police car as it headed along Cotter Road towards the hospital about midday.
Crash team investigators examined the site and upturned car in the quiet and isolated gully on Friday afternoon.
Detective Sergeant John Giles said text messages Ms Bautista sent to family and friends before she disappeared had been of "extreme concern", and police had been concerned she had attempted to harm herself or had run away.
Over the past week the teenager's family urged their daughter and sister to return home, pleading for anyone with information about her disappearance to come forward.
On Wednesday night, the University of Canberra student's friends held a vigil at Black Mountain.
More than 100 people, including Ms Bautista's boyfriend and friends, rallied volunteers to hand out flyers Friday morning and spread the word of her disappearance.
Father Ronnie Bautista said his daughter, a former student of St Clare's College, was a "loving and generous person with a very big heart".
"She's funny and can make us laugh anytime," he told WIN television earlier this week.
"She's smart, witty and an incredibly good friend."
Mother Rowena Bautista urged her daughter not to be scared of returning home.
"Kat, please come home, I just want to hug you," she said.
"I'm really, really worried about you."
Breanna Toombs, who met Ms Bautista about seven years ago when the pair began playing soccer together for Brindabella, described her as a caring "social butterfly".
"When I think of her, I think about her carefree nature and her loyalty to her loved ones," she said.
"She always knows how to have a good time and while shy at first, she is one of the most bubbly people I know.
"She was there to help me out in times of need, which is something I appreciate enormously."
