The woman was walking on the “Hump” track atop the mountain with her daughter, Mary Kromar, and son, Andy, when she slipped off a boulder about 12.30pm.

Mary said for a few horrifying seconds, she thought her mother, Marija, had fallen off the mountain.

“We were at the top, admiring the view,” she said.

“I don’t know what she was doing when she went over; maybe there was a bit of a lip and she just turned around, tripping on it.

“It just happened so quickly.

“All I heard was her calling out – I thought she’d fallen over the edge.”

Marija had fallen almost four metres between two boulders below and was stuck in a crevice.

Mary said it was clear, when Andy found his way down to check on her, she had been seriously injured.

“Andy jumped down there and saw she had got her ankle stuck in the gap,” she said.

“She said straight away she could feel her ribs, and I saw the big gash on her ankle, so I knew something was there.

“Andy managed to call triple zero and they said the ambulance was going to be 25 minutes away.

“She was good for a while and then went very pale.”

SES members from Bright and Myrtleford were first on scene about 1pm.

An air ambulance arrived soon after and a paramedic was winched down to attend to Marija’s broken ribs, ankle and multiple lacerations.

However, getting Marija out of the crevice proved to be a challenge.

A Wangaratta CFA high-angle rescue team was among more than 20 emergency service members supporting the rescue.

Almost five hours after she had fallen, Marija was moved by stretcher to an area safe to be extracted by the air ambulance.

About 5.20pm, she was winched from the scene and flown to Melbourne.

Mary said she couldn’t be more grateful for the help of emergency services.

“The response was very quick and everyone's doing a great job,” she said.