After spending three nights lost on a Summit County mountainside in bone-chilling temperatures with nothing but his snowboard to keep him company, John Ryan had much to smile about Sunday.
He was safe and warm at University of Colorado Hospital in Denver.
“I feel unbelievably lucky,” he said. “I have a feeling I’m going to appreciate every day so much more.”
Advice he got as a boy from his dad helped save him, said Ryan, 31, of Erie: Stay where you are if you get lost.
On his third run at Keystone Resort on Wednesday, Ryan decided to try snowboarding out of bounds.
He soon found himself in a heavily wooded area.
He was in snow up to his waist, and up to his chest in areas, and realized he didn’t know where the resort was.
Ryan said he didn’t have food or water but did have warm clothing in a backpack. He spend the first night sitting on a log.
“By morning I was pretty tired,” he said.
He gathered pine branches to make a bed and shelter. That’s where he spent the next two nights in temperatures that dipped as low as 5 degrees, constantly shivering and not sleeping much. He didn’t go anywhere.
“I didn’t have much in me to go anywhere, anyway,” he said of his waning strength.
He ate some snow, but because of the extreme temperatures he was hesitant to put too much of the cold snow in his body.
He tried to wave down helicopters that were flying low, but to no avail. He heard snowmobiles and voices far off, but he couldn’t make contact.
He said he thought of how long he would be able to live before he was found.
He said he was scared of “not being able to see my family.”
On Saturday morning he didn’t hear the helicopters, and he wondered if rescuers were still searching.
He decided to try to save himself. In his weakened condition and in the deep snow, he made it only about 24 steps before returning to his pine- branch shelter and lying down.
Then, “I heard some guys talking. I screamed out for them,” Ryan said. “They answered and I knew it was going to be OK.
“I wish I had one of those smoke flares; I wish I had more water; I wish I had a phone, too.
“I wish I had paid more attention to where I was.”
His rescuers said he was 500 yards out of bounds in the Jones Gulch area.
His family had flown in from Detroit to help search.
His wife, Karyn, was at the search command post when rescuers radioed that Ryan was alive.
“It was the most dizzying moment, most ecstatic emotion I’ve ever had,” she said Sunday.
John Ryan recalled: “There were many times I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it out. There was a ton of things I was worried about.”
He was overwhelmed by the effort to find him, and that he was found by searchers who came all the way from Gunnison.
Other than frostbitten toes, he emerged unharmed. It’s unknown if he will lose any toes.
He hoped to go home Sunday night. But he plans to be back on the slopes with his snowboard as soon as he can.
He said: “I love snowboarding.”
Staff writer Jim Kirksey can be reached at 303-820-1448 or jkirksey@denverpost.com.
