A wildly ill-prepared hiker is incredibly fortunate to be alive after becoming stranded on a Colorado mountain in a snowstorm with only a cotton hoodie to keep warm, rescuers said. The hiker went missing on a peak near Cottonwood Lake at around 7 p.m. last Wednesday, calling for help via a phone. The hiker could only tell search and rescue they were in an avalanche chute east of the lake. Rescuers set out into a severe snowstorm to find the hiker, locating what appeared to be footprints in the snow. At around 2 a.m., they found “an unusual looking rock,” Chaffee County Search and Rescue North said, which turned out to be the hiker “sitting upright in a fetal position covered in snow.” The person was alive but “very hypothermic,” and had to be warmed for around three hours before being extracted from the mountain.
Read it at The Sacramento Bee
