A New Jersey man who disappeared into a blizzard may have been so blinded by snow and befuddled by hypothermia that he looked for shelter when he was blocks from safety, Breckenridge police said Sunday.
Remains thought to be those of Alphonse “Mike” Barbiere, 23, were found Saturday in deep snow in an area few people had thought to search earlier. He disappeared nearly two months ago when he trudged into a blizzard from a Main Street bar where he had been drinking.
He left the bar wearing a light jacket. Search and rescue workers estimate that dressed the way he was, he would have become hypothermic within 40 minutes, said Assistant Police Chief Greg Morrison.
“We just don’t know how that 40 minutes was spent,” he said.
When Barbiere left Cecilia’s Martini Bar at 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 8, a friend saw him going toward the center of town instead of west, where he was renting a condo with family at Trails End Condominiums, his brother said Saturday.
“We were searching for him on the opposite end of town,” said Bob Barbiere, 46.
Barbiere apparently collapsed as he walked across a field toward the lights outside a closed skating rink. By the time he fell, his body temperature could have dropped to the point that he was hallucinating, Morrison added.
A Denver man who operates a ski lift at Vail resort found Barbiere’s credit card Friday night close to where the body was buried under snow and ice.
Barbiere wasn’t wearing gloves when he disappeared and carried the credit card in a coat pocket, Morrison said. “If he was putting his hands in and out of his pockets, it is possible it would have come out when he was going over the guardrail,” he speculated.
The lift operator told police he had been looking for the body for several days in hopes of collecting a $10,000 reward offered by the family.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
