Steamboat Springs – It’s one of Charles Horton’s favorite places, a serene meadow surrounded by uplifting peaks near Flat Tops Wilderness Area.
He had been there dozens of times but had never seen it in snow. And time was running out, as spring was quickly moving over Dunckley Pass, 35 miles southwest of Steamboat Springs, on April 17.
So the 55-year-old Steamboat massage therapist, described by friends as a meditative and spiritual man, drove his Toyota van up County Road 132 as far as the road was plowed.
He was so eager to get out there, he left a half-eaten muffin in the van. No need for a cellphone. The idea was to leave civilization behind for a half-day. He left the phone in the van, too.
Eight long days later, Horton – nearly dead from hypothermia, dehydration and a twice-broken leg that left him barely able to inch along on his backside – was rescued from the forest. He had gone in seeking solitude, and emerged with a newly discovered character trait: the ability to survive.
He has not previously shared the intimate details of his ordeal with anyone publicly and has done only brief interviews with “Good Morning America” and his local newspaper.
This is the tale of his extraordinary survival, an eight-day test of will that many rescuers say they had never seen before.
“Usually, you’re calling a search off after nine days because there’s no hope,” said Marc Satre, a 36-year search-and- rescue veteran and a founding member of Routt County Search and Rescue in Steamboat Springs. “We started this one on the ninth day. We were sure we would never find him alive – if we found him at all.”
A sunny start
After a pleasant 3 miles up, Horton breaks his leg as he begins to ski back down.
It was noon on a glorious, sunny day when Horton strapped on a pair of cross-country skis and headed up the gentle incline of an old logging road. He skied 3 miles up the meadow, past Chapman Reservoir, to an elevation of 9,600 feet. He took off his boots in a snowless patch of meadow to warm his feet in the sun and ate a tuna sandwich and an apple. It was 2 p.m.
After lunch, mellowed by the sun and high mountain air, he headed back.
And then, almost immediately, it happened. His right ski punched through the snow and he went down hard. A jolt of pain spiraled through his lanky body.
A therapist schooled in osteopathic anatomy, Horton knew his injuries exactly. The tibial plateau – the plate just below the knee – was crushed, and the tibia was splintered.
The 3 miles back to the van might as well have been 3,000.
First, the survival instincts. An experienced wilderness trekker and 35-year skier, he fashioned a splint from his daypack.
Then, for the first time, he thought about what lay ahead. Would anyone come for him?
A graduate of survival classes, Horton knew he had made a mistake in not telling anyone when he would be back. He had vaguely mentioned to a handful of friends he was planning a half-day of touring below Dunckley Pass, but they were out of town for the week.
Though his colleagues at Skyview Acupuncture were vacationing for the week, his clients would see he was missing. His students and co-instructor at a ballroom dance class would miss him Tuesday.
It was Sunday.
“Conserve energy. Stay calm. Be patient. Help will eventually show up,” Horton thought.
With his skis off, he rolled onto his back and began dragging himself by the elbows, inchworming along the trail.
“Eight inches at a time gives you new perspective on a mile,” he said.
After an hour of crawling on his back, he stopped at 3 p.m. and took the last sips of water from his 70-ounce hydration pack.
“It didn’t dawn on me I wouldn’t have water for a long time,” Horton said. “Each day, I thought there was a possibility of being found. I saw each day as the day to get through.
“It was totally living in the moment – for a week.”
He found a dry spot under a pine tree. Sitting, he used a knife to nip off all the small branches he could reach. With matches, he built a fire that burned until midnight.
He was wearing four layers of wool topped by a nylon hooded jacket and stocking cap.
Horton said he was surprised by the lack of pain, even after an hour of dragging his leg along the trail.
“Only if I moved wrong or felt the bones grinding was it really painful,” he said.
He inventoried the contents of the pack strapped to his leg: binoculars, a disposable camera, a magnesium spark fire starter, two chocolate-chip energy bars, almonds, dried fruit, a half-bar of dark chocolate. A whistle.
He had no emergency blanket. He usually carried it but this time left it at home.
“Those are the little things that happen in any kind of accident. ‘I wish I had done this. I always do that. And I didn’t today.’ But you can’t let those things gnaw at you. You’re dealing with what you’re dealing with,” he said.
He fell asleep listening to coyotes sing.
The overnight temperature in Steamboat – nearly 3,000 feet lower in elevation – dropped as low as 23 degrees that week.
He woke up bone-cold Monday and looked at his watch – 3 a.m. The birds began chirping at 4. A different bird joined the chorus at 6. Woodpeckers at 10.
Then, suddenly, serenity shattered by a chaos of muscle cramps in his right leg that seemed to seize his whole body, straightening him like a board, sucking the breath out of him. Then another cramp. And another.
“I was uncomfortable, and sometimes I was scared and in pain, but I never really fought what was going on,” he said. “If I was cold or wet, that’s what I was dealing with. Other times, it was amazing watching the clouds and listening to the birds. At times, it was totally amazing and beautiful.”
His mantra: “Stay calm. Don’t fight it.”
But a constant, cottony thirst made it hard.
He remembered a wilderness wisdom not to eat snow for water. The calories required to melt snow in your mouth draw from a body trying to conserve warmth and energy.
He put a fistful in his mouth. There was a teasing trickle down his throat. Never mind the conventional wisdom, he decided: Those trickles would keep him alive.
By 3 p.m. Tuesday, 51 hours into the ordeal, his leg cramps were subsiding, thunderheads were roiling and a cold, driving wind scoured the meadow.
“I began thinking maybe I would have to get myself out,” Horton said.
He crawled on his back – backstroking with his right arm, pushing with his left heel – from 4 p.m. until dark. Another 800 yards.
Eating was difficult without saliva. The dried fruit bloated in his cotton-mouth. He never ate it all.
He dreamed of a glass of water.
Wednesday morning, Day Three, he tried to warm his frostbitten left toes by rubbing them with his hands. He began crawling again. This time for 15 hours.
He didn’t know it, but he had two broken ribs.
By midnight, he had slid down a 3-foot embankment and under a tree for shelter.
Rescuers would later calculate he inched seven-eighths of a mile from where he broke his leg. Still 2 miles from his van, he had gone as far as he could.
“I knew I was in trouble,” he said, “but I thought I could survive if I could stay calm. There were nights I thought I might not wake up. But I always did.”
The days wore on. Thursday. Friday. Saturday.
Cold, wet, dehydrated and unable to move.
“I thought of the people I know and love. I asked for forgiveness from the people I hurt in my life,” Horton said.
His body was shaking, his core temperature falling to 88 degrees. Another degree lower and he would have lost consciousness, doctors would say later.
Reported missing
Neighbors who had been gone for a week call search-and-rescue.
In Steamboat, Horton’s neighbors Gigi and Johnny Walker pulled into their driveway at 4:30 p.m. on April 24, after a week-long bike trip in Utah. They were surprised to see his van gone from the carport they share.
“I went into his apartment. The sink was dry; the sponges were dry; the plants hadn’t been watered; the cat hadn’t been fed,” Gigi Walker said. “I listened to his answering machine, and 20 clients left messages.”
After calling around to find that Horton hadn’t been in touch with clients or friends and that no one had reported him missing, Walker called search-and- rescue.
It was dark outside and snowing.
“It was a full-out spring blizzard,” said rescuer Hugh Newton, a friend of Horton’s.
To go out in those conditions would jeopardize the safety of the volunteer team. Instead, the team gathered at the search- and-rescue barn downtown and organized a search for the next morning.
Horton struggled through his worst night Sunday, drenched by 8 inches of wet snow, streams of water running against his clammy skin.
He didn’t sleep.
For the first time, doubt crept into his mind.
“I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” he said.
“Have I done enough in the world or should I let it go?” he thought.
Early Monday, 20 rescuers from two counties set out for Dunckley Pass on skis, snowshoes and snowmobiles and with dogs. They were expecting a long search, possibly for a body buried under snow.
“He’s a good skier, but he won’t go very far out,” Newton volunteered during the morning briefing. “He’s not a risk-taker. He’ll be within 4 or 5 miles of the trailhead.”
Less than an hour later, as two rescuers tried to free their stuck snowmobile, a faint noise pierced the morning air.
“Do you hear that?” rescuer Pete Schwartz asked teammate Karin Satre.
“No,” Satre said.
“There, there it is again,” Schwartz said. “A whistle.”
Satre blew her whistle three times.
A return whistle – three times.
After a short search to pinpoint where it was coming from, they spotted him.
There, 14 feet off the trail, something blue, covered by pine boughs and sloppy snow.
“Are you Charles Horton?” Satre asked.
“Yes,” Horton said, smiling.
Dehydrated, he was barely able to speak.
“I am going to give you water, but drink it slow,” Schwartz said.
“I will drink it slow, but I will drink it all,” Horton whispered.
Schwartz traded his dry gloves for Horton’s drenched pair.
Newton and the others arrived and put Horton in a fresh down jacket.Newton handed Horton a cup of chai tea diluted to body temperature. Horton asked for two more cups.
“He was in remarkable shape. It blew everyone away,” Newton said. “We were overwhelmed.”
The rescuers stripped Horton to his bottom layer and placed him in a vacuum splint – a bean-bag-type body splint – to warm him.
“It was a cocoon of warmth,” Horton said.
Outdoor emergency medical technician Kristia Check-Hill asked Horton simple questions to gauge his condition.
She thought: “Could I have done that? What would I have done?
“We were all asking ourselves that,” Check-Hill said.
An epiphany
As he recovers, Horton feels compelled to share his story, hoping to encourage others.
Today, Horton, 20 pounds lighter, gets hugs from well-wishers in Steamboat as he walks with crutches and a splint a month after having surgery. His surgeon promises he’ll be ballroom dancing again by fall.
A donation jar to help with his medical bills sits at Bamboo, his favorite health-food restaurant.
“You’ll do anything to get your name in the paper,” a friend ribs him over lunch.
In truth, Horton has largely avoided the limelight. Soft-spoken and unassuming, he turned down interview requests from all but one national morning show and the Steamboat Pilot.
Yet he had an epiphany he wants to pursue.
It came as his will was dissolving on his eighth and last night in the wilderness, as he fought to stay alive in a blizzard:
“Maybe if I can survive, I can show other people they can, too. Maybe if I survive, I can show people they can face their problems and struggles.”
Staff writer Dave Curtin can be reached at 303-820-1276 or dcurtin@denverpost.com.
