On a wintry Thursday in January, the kids in Pullman, Wash., got lucky. The snow wasn't letting up, so classes were canceled. Piling into the car for an impromptu ski trip, teenagers Andy Zeller, Jameel Itani and Eliot Thompson drove for three hours until they reached Silver Mountain in the Bitterroot Range of northern Idaho. The boys did a few warm-up runs and then stood at the summit of Kellogg Peak. From 6,300 feet, clouds lay low and heavy. Downy snowflakes filled the air. A hundred yards in all directions, the trees faded to ghostly shadows obscured by fog.
At 16, a year younger than his friends and skiing for only the second time in his life, Andy debated whether the sport should actually be described as fun. Already that day he'd done a few spectacular face plants in the snow. Jameel and Eliot, on the other hand, were ready for the mogul runs. Andy needed the beginner route —— the bunny slope. “Just follow the signs down,” Jameel told him. “We'll meet you at the bottom.”
That's cool. I can handle that, Andy thought. Soon he spotted a sign. “Easy Way Down for Beginners” it read. An arrow pointed the way. But this slope was anything but easy. In fact, this was one of the steeper, more difficult hills on the mountain. Strong winds and possibly even human mischief —— there was speculation later that someone had played a practical joke by twisting the sign so that the arrow pointed the wrong way —— directed Andy toward a dangerous trail.
Starting his first run, he tried to concentrate on his form —— and ended up skiing into a thicket of trees. How odd is this？ he thought. A thicket in the middle of a ski run？ Andy looked around. There were no other skiers here, only snow-covered forest. A queasy feeling stirred in the pit of his stomach.
He turned around, trying to backtrack, but he sank up to his neck, sometimes wallowing over his head. He felt like he was half swimming, half drowning, struggling against a strong tide. Still heading toward the ridge line, he popped off his skis. But on an icy patch his plastic ski boots were like out-of-control roller skates. Andy began to panic.
Steady, he told himself. The cold was seeping through his wet clothes. He was dressed only in a mix of wool and cotton, a nylon jacket and ski pants. The clothes were fine for an afternoon of skiing —— but sheer lunacy for anything much longer.
Jameel and Eliot, meanwhile, had been watching for their friend. They expected to see him waiting in line for the chairlift or wandering around in the lodge. While on the chairlift, they kept scanning the slopes. When the lift shut down at 4：30 p.m. and still there was no sign of Andy, the boys, truly alarmed now, reported his disappearance to the ski authorities.
Andy began remembering some lessons from his years as a Boy Scout. There has to be a stream in the bottom of the basin. He would follow it out to the nearest road.
An hour or so passed as he tore his way through deep snow and tangled brush. As daylight waned, he decided to pick a small grove of trees for a shelter. He was grateful he'd brought along a knife. With it, he trimmed some boughs off the evergreens and arranged them as a bed. He settled in and pulled more boughs over himself as a blanket. Night fell.
