SUBZERO NIGHTMARE
Trapped in snow, he losses legs
A snowmobiler lost his legs after being stranded in subzero temperatures in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains last month, according to a report.
After David Madsen’s snowmobile got stuck at an elevation of about 8,000 feet on Feb. 21, the 65-yearold decided to wait out an incoming snowstorm by digging a cave under his snowmobile with a screwdriver, he told KTVQ on Friday.
“It changed within an hour,” the Hawick, Minn., resident told the station of the storm that brought 23mph winds. “When I got stranded, it was zero visibility. You couldn’t see your hand.”
By midnight, the temperature had dropped to 2 degrees and fell below zero the next day, with a low of minus 17, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Madsen, who survived on snow and a Baby Ruth chocolate candy bar he had in his glove box, said he knew he wouldn’t be able to walk due to the high snowdrifts, and mulled making snowshoes out of snowmobile parts as the frigid weather and winds continued to barrage him.
Things got so bleak that he considered killing himself. “By that time, I knew I lost my legs. They were frozen in a solid block of ice.”
Digging the snow and ice around him kept his fingers from suffering the same fate. Madsen told KTVQ that he started seeing “mirages,” thinking at one point he saw a snow tractor and an airplane.
When he was finally located by two snowmobilers three days after his ordeal began, he thought they were another hallucination.
“I said, ‘Are you guys for real? Or is this another mirage?’ And they said, ‘No we are real.’ And I just broke down,” he recalled.
Madsen was taken to St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, Mont., where he is being treated and will eventually be fitted with prosthetics before he is sent home.
“As soon as I get good on them, I am going to do everything I did before,” he told KTVQ.