Stranded in woods, man thought he would die

MULLAN, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho man who went missing during a weekend snowmobile outing says he gave up hope of surviving and wrote goodbye letters to his family before his friends found him, hypothermic and dehydrated, in a ravine in Mineral County in Montana.

“When you’re an extreme snowmobiler and you get lost, you’re usually dead,” Barry Sadler said. “You’re going places where people won’t go — where people shouldn’t go.”

Part of his extreme mindset was to ride without survival gear or water, the Mullan man said after he was rescued Tuesday morning.

He had been last seen Sunday afternoon just east of the Lookout Pass ski area. He had been snowmobiling with a friend until the friend left after his snowmobile ran low on fuel.

Sadler went on alone.

Sadler, 54, said he was “side-hilling” — snowmobiling along a ridge with one ski in the snow and one in the air — when the snow cut loose beneath him, sending him 3,000 feet down a chute into a ravine. He landed in a creek with his snowmobile on top of him.

Sadler was able to push away the sled, and he intermittently ran its engine for heat over the next 33 hours.

He said he wrote goodbye notes to his wife and children — ages 20, 18 and 16 — on his cellphone.

When the sled ran out of gas at about 10 p.m. Monday, he gave up any hope of surviving.

“I’m not a quitter,” he said. “But I knew there was no way I was coming out of there.”

He put his goggles on because he “didn’t want the crows to eat my eyes,” Sadler said.

“It was the worst, freezing to death. It’s not quick. It’s drawn out, and you’re shaking so violently it hurts,” Sadler said.

About two hours later, however, five friends who had followed his snowmobile tracks hiked into the ravine and rescued him.

“These guys shook me. I wake up, and all I see are two lights, and I thought they were angels,” Sadler said. “And I was kind of out of it, and the only thing I asked was, ‘What are you guys doing here?’”

The men gave him dry clothes, blankets and food, but they were still a long way from home. It took five hours to hike out of the drainage, and they had to walk an additional 2 miles to reach the snowmobiles. They rode an additional 6 miles to Sadler’s house.

“It was everything I could do to hold on,” Sadler said.

Sadler suffered some broken bones in his hands and frostbite and was dehydrated and exhausted.

He said he believes it will be at least a month before he’s healthy enough to snowmobile again.

Searchers from Shoshone County in Idaho and Mineral County in Montana looked for Sadler Sunday and Monday without success.

“He just got into an area where he couldn’t get out,” Mineral County Sheriff Tom Bauer said.

Bauer and Shoshone County Sheriff Mitch Alexander, while pleased with Sadler’s rescue, said he made a number of critical mistakes.

“I chewed him out because he’s riding by himself,” Alexander said. “He didn’t have his survival gear. He didn’t have his avalanche beacon on. I also talked him into buying one of those spot satellite locators.”

The satellite locators can summon help while also providing potential rescuers a location.

“There’s always a buddy, and you always stay with them,” Bauer said.