Lost in the Piercing Cold

A January snowmobile outing turns into near tragedy as two men become trapped in the snowbound mountains of Utah.

By JeaNette G. Smith

The sun shone brightly over a blanket of newly fallen snow on a January day in 1985. Twenty-one-year-old Steve Smith donned sunglasses and a wind jacket.

“I’m ready,” he called to Jim Sampson, his 48-year-old neighbor. “Let me tell my mom we’re going snowmobiling.”

“Do you want me to pack you a lunch?” Carol asked her son.

“No thanks, Mom. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. I have a big test to study for.”

Weeks of winter had piled more than 60 inches of snow on top of the sagebrush covering Bountiful Hills, Utah.

Steve felt as if he were on a racetrack with no bounds. He revved the Ski-Doo’s engine and sped ahead of his companion, shouting, “Let’s race!” Neither man cared about a finish line as they skimmed across the sparkling powder.

“We’ve reached Ward Canyon,” Steve shouted. “Let’s take the ravine.”

“It’s pretty steep,” Jim observed.

“But someone else made it. See that set of tracks?”

“I guess it’s OK. I can’t spot any skeletons down there,” Jim joked, but an eerie image darted through his mind. Only two years earlier a high school boy had frozen to death in those mountains.

As the two men descended the hill on a diagonal the snow got deeper, and their snowmobiles sank into the drifts.

Neither a mighty surge of power nor a series of gut-wrenching shoves would move the stubborn machines back up the hill. The Ski-Doos knew only one route – down.

But soon the snowmobiles sank again. Jim and Steve yanked and strained to free them, but after wasting a precious hour they gave up in despair. Walking home the way they had come would take days. Though it was risky, they had to try reaching help on this side of the mountains.

Jim felt under the seat of his stuck snowmobile and found a box of matches. “Please, God, don’t let us need these,” he prayed. But the afternoon sun had started to set.

With Steve’s every step down the mountainside the snow moved beneath him. He fell onto his back and rode a tiny avalanche through the trees, not stopping until the ground abruptly leveled off.

He struggled to his feet, only to fall again and resume his slide. Raising an arm to protect his head from a jutting rock, he felt blood pool beneath his skin on impact.

Tumbling more than 700 vertical feet, Steve finally reached the valley at the base of the mountain. He looked up just in time to see Jim brush past a branch, breaking it from a dead tree before breaking at the bottom. Jim lay still, squinting with the pain of bruised and tired muscles.

Steve didn’t know where they were or how to get home, but he felt lucky they hadn’t been buried in the cascading snow.

They stood up in waist-deep snow topped with a four-inch crust caused by the snow’s melting during the day and refreezing at night.

Steve threw his body against the crust, breaking a path through the near-ice. The resistance he encountered was like running through deep water.

Though he was accustomed to hard labor from his construction job, Steve’s muscles shook with fatigue after two hours of painfully hacking away. Jim, who barely kept up by following behind Steve, was too weak to help break the trail.

In desperation Steve finally pulled himself up on top of the thick snow, hoping the crust would hold him. His knee immediately broke through as he attempted to distribute his weight. Somehow he managed to make progress by crawling gingerly across the surface. Jim mutely followed.

With the sun gone and the twilight fading, both men felt helpless. Freezing temperatures set in with incredible speed.

“I’m sure we’ll find some cabins around the next bend,” Steve tried to encourage Jim, who fell farther behind. “I think we’re following a rod that leads out of here.”

“I see a stream,” Jim replied. “It’ll be faster to walk in the stream.”

“No!” Steve shouted. “If we get soaked we’ll freeze for sure.”

Ignoring the warning, Jim tepped into the water. Steve proceeded on land as close to Jim as possible. They crept through the black night in slow silence.

Eventually Jim opened his mouth to speak, but his wildly chattering teeth made the only sound. Steve recognized this violent shivering as the first stage of hypothermia. He knew what would come after the shaking stopped. The body’s organs would begin to freeze, the heart and lungs would work erratically, and reasoning would be impaired.

“Jim, come out of the water,” Steve called, trying to control the panic he now felt. “I’ll hurry ahead. I’m sure there’s a cabin around the very next bend.”

Steve pulled his companion out of the icy water and told him to move around. Steve began breaking snow at a furious pace. But as he rounded the bend he saw no cabin. Despair filled his soul, and he blinked away the teas that burned his eyes.

Returning to Jim, he found the older man standing exactly as he had left him – staring straight ahead. The shivering had stopped.

Steve knew he had to get Jim warm. He dug a hole in the snow to protect them from the canyon wind, then pulled the matches from Jim’s pocket to build a fire. It took every match he had to ignite some nearby pieces of wet wood.

When he finally sat down, Steve noticed how hungry he was. He had eaten only two candy canes that whole day. His longing for food disappeared, however, when he felt the cold biting into his fingers and toes.

It would feel so good to lie down and sleep, Steve though. But he knew it would be a sleep from which he would never wake.

Every half hour throughout the night he rubbed Jim’s freezing limbs and then gathered wood to feed the fire. Each time he stood up he swayed before finding his balance.

The sun rose at last. Without knowing where he got the strength, the younger man pulled Jim to his feet. Steve’s body ached all over, and sharp pains shot through his legs.

A new day should have brought hope, but low clouds surrounded them, and visibility was less than 20 feet. Steve could see far enough to realize that he hadn’t been following a road at all. He didn’t know which way to go. He dropped to his knees to ask God’s help.

Meanwhile, Steve’s mother, Carol, had started to worry shortly after noon the previous day and had called the sheriff at disk. The sheriff had collected his Jeep posse – five teams of men – and initiated a ground search, while a rescue helicopter had flown overhead.

Because of avalanche danger the sheriff had halted the search at 11:00 p.m. and resumed it the next morning. At that time more than 100 men from a local church appeared with Jeeps and snowmobiles to help in the search.

Back in the canyon, Steve rose from his knees and started up a snowy hill. He hadn’t walked 50 yards before he saw a narrow road on which the snow was packed solid enough to hold a man’s weight.

He also noticed something strange: there were no trees anywhere near the road. The young man realized why he couldn’t find a road the previous night. God had led him to firewood instead.

When Steve recognized that a Power greater than his own was watching over him, he gained the strength to support himself and his exhausted companion.

Six hours later the two sighted the cabin that Steve had anticipated finding so many times the day before. He hobbled to the door and told the owner they’d been lost and stranded outside all night. The man drove his snowmobile to a telephone to call the sheriff. Steve and Jim had trudged 13 miles to reach this cabin.

The Life Flight helicopter, already in the air, quickly located the cabin that sheltered the objects of the massive manhunt.

At Lakeview Hospital, Steve fell into his mother’s arms and felt her hot tears moisten his cheek. A nurse wrapped the men in warm blankets, and an emergency room physician examined them. “I think they’ll be fine after they get some rest and a hot meal,” the doctor said.

Carol smiled and pulled hot food from home out of a bag. Steve peeled back the foil and let the steam warm his face.

JeaNette G. Smith holds a degree in journalism from Brigham Young University. Her articles have been published in Women’s World, Lady’s Circle, and the Hartford Women. She is the mother of two preschool boys, ages 1 and 3, and lives in Stratford, Connecticut.