Three Valley Men Help Find Missing, Frostbitten Skier Survival Instructors Drag Teen Over Snow Almost Two Miles

Colin Junkins, Shawn Cross and Sean Sarver are heroes in everyone’s eyes but their own.

Last Saturday, the Spokane Valley men were part of a five-member group that found a frostbitten Pullman teenager missing on Silver Mountain and dragged him to safety.

But two of the Valley rescuers said this week that 16-year-old Andy Zeller was the real hero of the ordeal.

“All we did was get him home,” said Cross, an instructor at the Fairchild Air Force Base Survival School.

But they got him home alive.

Their adventure began Jan. 26, when Cross saw a television news report that said searchers were having a hard time locating Zeller, who got lost after he accidently skied out of bounds.

Cross said he decided to round up some of his colleagues from the Survival School, including Junkins, Sarver and South Hill resident Todd Foster, and volunteer their services to the Shoshone County, Idaho, authorities.

Shoshone County officials said yes.

The four men left the Valley at 4:30 a.m. last Saturday and headed for Silver Mountain.

When they arrived at the gondola for the ascent up the mountain, a woman approached them, Cross said.

It was Zeller’s mother, Eileen.

“She kind of grabbed me by the arms and started pleading for us to find her son, find her son,” Cross said. “I told her, ‘Don’t worry, ma’am, we will.”’

Then they did. But it wasn’t easy.

Following tracks that were located by searchers the day before, the group set out looking for Zeller in freezing temperatures.

Cross and Junkins said the snow was waist-deep in most places, chest-deep in some.

It took them nearly four hours of “slipping and sliding” through a steep ravine before they heard some muffled cries for help, Junkins said.

Moments later, Cross spotted Zeller through binoculars.

The group made their way uphill to where Zeller had dug himself a hole in a snowbank, Cross said.

“Andy was just amazed to see us,” he said.

Junkins said he gave Zeller, who had been missing for 45 hours, a swig or two of some Starbucks Christmas blend coffee he had carried up in a thermos.

“That’s my favorite coffee in the whole world,” Junkins said.

“We also plugged him full of Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Ranchers. He said, ‘Oh, you guys are great.”’

They then wrapped Zeller up in a rubber poncho and a sleeping bag and started to drag him out.

“He looked like a cannelloni,” Cross said.

Getting out was the hardest part of the trip, Cross and Junkins said.

The exertion of plowing through the deep snow while dragging Zeller, who couldn’t walk because of a frostbitten foot, took its toll on the rescuers.

They fought off leg cramps and exhaustion as they dragged Zeller nearly two miles to a logging road, Cross said.

“It’s probably the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Junkins, who underwent intensive training to become an survival instructor.

Cross said Zeller kept his rescuers’ spirits up by singing songs and telling jokes.

At one point, when the group stopped for a break, it was Zeller who asked if everybody was all right.

“He did great keeping our morale up,” Cross said. “He helped us as much as we helped him.”

There was a huge sense of relief when the group finally passed Zeller off to a waiting deputy on a snowmobile who whisked him away to an ambulance, Cross said.

“We all just looked at each other,” he said. “We did it.”

Silver Mountain resort officials are throwing a dinner for Zeller and the searchers Sunday night.

Cross, Junkins, Sarver, Foster and the rest of Zeller’s rescuers surely will be honored as heroes.

Both Cross and Junkins said heroics had nothing to do with it.

“We’ve all got kids,” Cross said. “We could relate to his parents.”

Junkins summed it up this way: “Let me just say it should be everybody’s duty to help out someone who needs help.”

Spoken like a true hero.

, DataTimes