Missing teen found alive: A Massachusetts 17-year-old boy was found alive, building a snow cave, after going missing in a Maine snowstorm for two days.
A Massachusetts teen who went missing who wandered off from the Sugarloaf ski resort in Maine and spent two nights out in a snowstorm was found alive.
Nicholas Joy, a 17-year-old from Medford, built a snow cave for shelter, drank water from a stream, and also walked toward snowmobile noises during the daytime, reported The Associated Press, citing local officials.
He was located by a snowmobile-rider on Tuesday morning near Sugarloaf Mountain. He was later taken to a nearby hospital.
“Evidently, he watches those survival shows,” Sugarloaf Mountain resort manager John Diller told the Boston Herald. “We were ecstatic,” Diller added. “I was with his parents about a minute after they found him. I cried along with them.”
Search coordinator Lt. Kevin Adam said he “did the right thing in building a snow cave, and obviously he’s still alive to talk about it, so he made some good decisions,” AP reported.
Doug Rafferty, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, told the paper that he is “alive and well,” while Diller said he is “walking and talking.”
Joy was with his father, Robert Joy, when disappeared at the ski resort on Sunday, officials said.
“There is great relief and happiness that Nicholas has made it through this difficult ordeal,” Joy’s parents said in a statement obtained by the newspaper.
To search for him, members of the Sugarloaf ski patrol, the U.S. Marines, the U.S. Border Patrol, and Navy SEALs were deployed on skis, snowshoes, and snowmobiles, according to the news agency.
The teen “told me he went down what he thought was a trail, but the trail ended,” said Joe Paul, a captain with the Warwick, Mass., fire department, who helped look for him. “He tried hiking back up where he came from and thought if he went through the woods he would get back on the main trail much quicker, and that’s when he got lost,” Paul said, according to the Herald.
