2 Snowboarding Out of Bounds

On March 7, 2000, Trevor Szold took a chance. He nearly paid for it with his life. Szold was snowboarding at Snow Valley Resort in California. But he didn't stay on the marked trails. Instead, he went off into the woods. A short time later he became lost. Szold didn't know which way to turn. The soft snow was five feet deep. “I was getting confused about what was the sky and what was the snow,” he said.“Everything was white.”

Soon Szold grew tired and scared. He spent four cold nights in the woods. He drank water from a creek. Hunger drove him to eat spiders and insects. By the fourth day he had almost given up hope.“I was out of food and energy,” Szold recalled. “I was concerned that I might die.”

Luckily, a search team found him just in time. Szold had such a severe case of frostbite that he couldn't feel his hands or legs at all. His nose, fingers, and feet had swollen and turned black. “I'm just glad to be among the living,” he said.

Snowboarding, like skiing, is a risky sport. Every year snowboarders (also called riders) and skiers get hurt. Broken bones are common. A few people even get killed. Mostly this is due to high speeds. People crash into each other or they hit a tree. Still, millions of people ski and ride without injury. In part that's because they play by the rules. They stay in bounds. They ride or ski only on designated trails. But for a few people, staying on the trails doesn't seem exciting enough. They go out of bounds, turning a risky sport into an extreme sport. Sometimes this leads to trouble.

In 1995 13-year-old Matt Archuleta and two other boys found that out. They wanted an extra thrill. So they snowboarded out of bounds at a ski resort in Idaho. At the end of their ride, they were far from the resort. The snow in the woods was too deep for them to hike through. So they dug a snow cave and spent a long, cold, scary night inside it. Like Szold, they were lucky. Searchers found them in time.“I'm not going to [snowboard out of bounds] again,” said Archuleta.“We were really, really lucky.”

Kevin Williamson and Shane Volkerding came much closer to death. You guessed it: they, too, rode out of bounds. They were making their last run of the day at a ski resort in Nevada. The weather was brutal. Blinding snow was falling and winds were whipping along at 40 miles per hour. It was hard to see more than a few feet.

The two men thought it might be less windy in the woods. So they left the trail. They believed they could stay close to it by boarding straight down the mountainside. They didn't know that the trail veered sharply away. So by going straight they were really moving far away from the trail and safety. Also, the snow and wind turned out to be just as bad in the woods.

The men snowboarded quite a distance down the mountainside. At last, they reached a small riverbed. They couldn't ride any further. On all sides the land rose up around them. They had no choice but to take off their snowboards and start walking. But the snow was up to their waists. It was exhausting work. Soon Williamson and Volkerding were sopping wet from sweat. They struggled to the top of a ridge but couldn't see the ski resort.

As night came they used their snowboards to dig a cave. Although both men were wet and cold, they knew that somehow they had to stay warm. They huddled next to each other to share heat. They rubbed their feet. And they kept telling each other that they would be all right. Still, they had doubts. They thought about dying. Volkerding's mind began to play tricks on him. He thought he saw animals running within inches of his face.

At last morning came. The two men were rescued by a search team that had been looking for them since the middle of the night. Because Williamson and Volkerding had worked so hard to stay warm, they had no frostbite. “Many of these kinds of stories don't turn out nearly as well,” said one official.

The story of Jeff Thornton certainly did not have a happy ending. No one knows if Thornton snowboarded out of bounds on purpose, but somehow this ninth grader ended up far off the trail. It was February 7, 1998, and Thornton was riding with his uncle at a California ski resort. When he went off the trail, he also lost sight of his uncle. The uncle later made it back to the ski resort. But the boy did not.

Thornton rode down into a riverbed. He became trapped. The weather couldn't have been worse. One blizzard after another swept through the region. Over the next few days, three feet of snow fell. The winds hit 70 miles per hour. Worse, the boy had no food. How long could he survive alone in the wilderness?

A massive search effort began. At one point there were 120 people looking for Thornton. Two helicopters were used. Two rescue dogs also helped out. But the heavy snow and high winds made it difficult for the searchers. Several days passed. Slowly, people gave up hope. No one thought Thornton could survive that long. After six days, he was given up for dead. The searchers began looking for a body.

At last, two searchers saw footprints in the snow. They followed them and found the boy. Amazingly, he was alive. “We saw him sitting on the bank of the creek,” said one of the men. “He was just as surprised to see us as we were to see him.”

Said one searcher, “How he survived the storms... I have no answer.”

“I'm not sure if ever there was a more amazing rescue than this one,” said another man.

The rescue seemed to come just in the nick of time. Within 10 minutes, fog moved in. That indicated a new storm was brewing.

Thornton seemed to be in pretty good shape. But looks were deceiving. He had frostbite on his legs, arms, and hands. He had broken bones. Also, he drank very little water during those six days in the woods. All these things took their toll on his body. Less than two weeks later, he had a heart attack and died. His death was a sober reminder of just how dangerous it can be to snowboard out of bounds.