Lost Teen Skier Survived by Building Snow Cave

A 17-year-old skier, reported missing Sunday and found alive and well at Maine's Sugarloaf ski resort today, survived two nights in the wild by building a snow cave for shelter, drinking water from a stream, and walking toward the sound of snowmobiles during the day, officials say. The Maine Warden Service says a snowmobiler found Nicholas Joy of Medford, Mass., this morning on a trail off the western side of Sugarloaf Mountain. The snowmobiler was not part of the official search team, but had seen the story on the news and decided to conduct an impromptu search of his own.

Joy was reported missing Sunday afternoon after he and his father took separate trails from the top of the mountain and he failed to show up at the bottom. It turned out that the boy inadvertently skied off his trail and ventured down the west side of the mountain before realizing he couldn't make it back to ski trails. The weather conditions were bad enough that the search had to be suspended Sunday and Monday nights, but Joy was in "remarkably good shape" when found, the search coordinator says. Sugarloaf's general manager says Joy and his parents had a tearful reunion. (More skier stories.)