4 lost snowboarders spend night at Maine resort

Four teenage snowboarders who got lost at the Sugarloaf Mountain ski resort survived a cold night in dense woods and deep snow - despite their failure to start a fire by lighting a dollar bill - by continually moving around to stay warm.

The teens were rescued Monday morning after going out of bounds late Sunday afternoon in an area known as the snowfields, a large section of ungroomed expert terrain on the mountain's backside.

With snow falling and winds howling, the group stayed warm by pacing around through the overnight hours, Mark Adams, Sugarloaf ski patrol director, said he was told by ski patrol members who helped find them. At one point, the teens unsuccessfully tried to start a fire by burning the money, he said.

"They were fortunate it wasn't brutally cold," Adams said. "We've had people spend the night out there in 3-degree weather."

The Sugarloaf ski patrol and the Maine Warden Service searched late into the night Sunday, communicating with the lost snowboarders by cell phone and text messages and coming within shouting distance. But the search was hampered by high winds, steep terrain, thick spruce woodlands and the more than 5 feet of snow that had fallen since Wednesday. The temperature fell to 22 degrees.

Around midnight, searchers decided the conditions were too dangerous to continue. So they told the snowboarders by cell phone that they were suspending the search and would resume early in the morning, said Sugarloaf spokesman Ethan Austin.

"They told them to hunker down, dig themselves into the snow, line it with pine boughs and just huddle together to stay warm through the night," Austin said.

The search resumed at 5 a.m. Monday. Wardens found 18-year-old Luke Poisson, of Lewiston, who had become separated from the three other snowboarders, four hours later after hearing his shouts and determining his position using a compass, said warden service spokeswoman Deborah Turcotte. Poisson but didn't require hospitalization, she said.

Three others - 18-year-old Cory Koop of North Pole, Alaska; 19-year-old Malachi Belluscio of Keene, N.H.; and 15-year-old Aaron Nadeau of New Portland - were located a short time later. They were not injured, Turcotte said.

The teenagers told wardens they were following snowboard tracks and did not see the out-of-bounds signs when they made their way into the woods and got lost.

Koop and Belluscio are students at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Sugarloaf is reviewing whether to suspend the teenagers' skiing privileges, while the warden service is assessing whether to charge them for costs associated with the search.