A true life story from Bryan Iguchi, as told to Ben Gavelda
It was November of ‘97 or ‘98 in Wolf Creek, Colorado, the first day of a Burton fall catalog shoot. We had arrived the day before to Pagosa Springs and drove up the pass first thing that morning. I was with Mark Gallup, Marcus Egge, Jason Borgstede and Jake Hasworth. We were going to ride this hourglass chute that was basically just off the highway. We had linked up with a local who’d spent a lot of time up there and knew the area really well. The conditions seemed right. It looked pretty straightforward. I mean you could see it from the road; you ride the chute then traverse out the snowmobile track then hike back up the road.
So we headed up the chairlift to sneak out the gate and about that time a storm rolled in and it began snowing pretty heavily. We started hiking and got close to the objective and by then it was really snowing hard, filling in our tracks. We got to the drop-in and started riding down, and it seemed like the most amazing run. We kept descending all this vert, the snow was great and we were having a good time. We eventually came down to this cat road but there weren’t any snowmobile tracks so we stopped the group there. We started walking in one direction then stopped and came back the other way. Then we decided we’d hike back up. We’d missed the line, figured we descended too far down the ridge and missed the chute. We figured we’d walk back up and find the road, find tracks and find our way out.
We hiked back up for quite a while, it was at least an hour maybe two, and thought that if we dropped in again we would probably hit that road. We couldn’t see anything at the time, it was a full blizzard, but we talked about it and decided to drop in again hoping to find the road below. We descended down and kept riding, dropping like 500–1,000 feet. By that time it was starting to get dark and at that moment we realized we were lost. Mark had the most experience in the mountains and spoke up like, “Hey, we’re not going to get out of here tonight, we should probably fill up our water bottles, find a place to build a fire and start making a shelter.” That was the turning point like, “Well, man, we’re really lost. We can’t keep going like this.” We were all sweaty and tired, and rather than push on into the dark all exhausted with limited resources we decided to stay put. That was the best decision we could have made.
By the time we actually got to the point where we were lost we had been hiking for hours, and we were drenched in sweat. At that time I had only been living in Jackson for a season or two and we were shooting catalog stuff, so I grabbed this cotton hoody I thought looked cool for a layering piece and realized the hard way that it wasn’t the best and that cotton absorbs water and is really hard to dry. We all had really minimal daypacks: beacon, shovel, probe, a bottle of water, food for the day and maybe an extra layer.
We all worked together collecting firewood and found a close group of trees and removed the snow from the ground and branches to build a shelter. We built this killer lean-to using our beacon straps to tie it off and our boards and pine boughs on top. We got a fire going and started drying out our gear. We would continuously walk out and try to yell and get people’s attention or look for lights, but there was really nothing.
We couldn’t see through the storm. We rotated collecting firewood and just hung around the fire. The fire warmed up the area and we were able to lay down. We got a little bit of sleep, but for the most part we were telling stories and laughing about the situation. It was like a longer night of camping around the fire, keeping our minds from thinking about other things, but at the same time we were trying to be aware by listening and looking for lights. The whole crew was really positive and kept it cool. No one panicked, no one was pissed, no one was complaining. All of us really came together in a positive way. We figured out what kind of food we had to ration and share — Powerbars and half a sandwich. It was ridiculous; it was the day before Thanksgiving.
Once we were feeling warm and our gear was drying out we started feeling more optimistic. We had water and enough to eat where we weren’t going crazy. We had an idea of where we were and knew that we could get out but understood the best thing to do was to hunker down and wait ‘er out.
Our team managers had called in when they didn’t see us after the lifts closed, and the head of ski patrol had formed a search party when we hadn’t shown back up to the lodge. At about one in the morning the search party came across our tracks, which were pretty well covered up by snowfall. They were able to find their way down to our little camp. They were pretty drenched and cold, so they warmed up by the fire. They brought some food and some extra headlamps and pulled out some maps to determine our location and what our route out would be. We planned to hunker down, wait for first light then go down to the road. It was a lot more crowded and uncomfortable with two extra guys, so after about two hours we decided we weren’t going to sleep and we should just go, plus we were pretty energized after the food and after seeing the map and knowing where we could exit down to the road. We packed up, put out the fire, pulled down the lean-to and made our way down the valley. In the darkness we went over frozen creek beds while hearing water rushing below, come out to a few rock outcroppings and cliff zones, then we had to backtrack and navigate these steep gullies. It was pretty sketchy, but we finally made it back to the road down by this waterfall about 15 miles from the resort as the sun was rising at 6 a.m. When we got back to town we slept most of the day and woke up to the most amazing Thanksgiving feast with the crew. I look back at that as one of the best learning experiences in the mountains I’ve ever had.
Read also: Gratitude: A Bryan Iguchi interview
Originally featured in Snowboard Mag 11.4: The Timeless Issue
