A family trapped atop an isolated 40-foot waterfall in California were rescued after sending an SOS in a bottle, according to a report.

Axar.az reports citing NY Post that Curtis Whitson, 44, was with his girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, and his 13-year-old son Hunter Whitson when they got stuck up a remote gorge in Arroyo Seco after a rope they needed to climb down was missing.

“It was a little scary,” Hunter told The Washington Post. “We hadn’t seen a single soul the entire trip.”

The trapped hikers initially made a large “SOS” sign on the ground with stones, then wrote a note in a bottle saying, “WE ARE STUCK HERE @ THE WATERFALL GET HELP PLEASE.”

Amazingly, just hours later it was found by two hikers about a quarter-mile downstream, with a search and rescue team finding the family that night in June, they told the paper.

“We were all dead asleep when we suddenly heard the helicopter right above us,” Ramirez, 34, told the Post, hugging and crying knowing that they were safe, finally being airlifted out the next morning.

“As you can imagine, they were very happy to see us,” pilot Joe Kingman told the paper, saying it was the first time in his 23 years of rescuing people that he’d heard of a message-in-a-bottle working.