A man who was missing for more than a week in the Canadian wilderness has been rescued after a helicopter saw an SOS message on a rock. Andrew Barber spent nine days out in the sticks and had to drink dirty pond water to stay alive, with the head of a search and rescue group saying he may have not survived another 24 hours.

The 39-year-old from British Columbia was found with an injury to his right leg and was “severely dehydrated”. He was found near a lake some 365 miles north of Vancouver and about five kilometres away from his truck which had broken down on a forest service road, per reports. A police helicopter first spotted the vehicle before soon finding Mr Barber by a makeshift shelter and a rock which had the word “HELP” written on it in mud. 

"He was having a hard time standing,” said Bob Zimmerman, president and manager of Quesnel Search and Rescue (SAR).

He told CBC News: “I don't know that he would have made it another 24 hours without us recovering him.”

An image shared by Quensel SAR shows the shelter, made out of sticks and mud, propped up against the boulder where he wrote the “HELP” message.

“After over a week in the wilderness, our subject has been located alive during today’s search from the air,” the volunteer group said. 

“This outcome is the result of countless hours on the ground and in the air, using every resource and piece of technology available to us.

Mr Barber had no food and "munched on whatever he could find" during his time in the woods, according to Staff Sergeant Brad McKinnon of the William Lake Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

"He was literally slurping unclean pond water to stay hydrated," he told the Canadian Press news agency. "The human body can go a long time without food, but water is a different situation."

Mr Barber was taken to a nearby hospital by a helicopter and has since been released.