Injured lone snowmobiler rescued from frigid Mount Peyton

A man is lucky to have been found so quickly, after calling for help when he was snowmobiling atop Mount Peyton in central Newfoundland in frigid conditions Sunday night.

Roger Goobie ofExploits Search and Rescuesaid when the man was found, he was in a "fairly hypothermic" condition and barely responsive.

"He was fortunate enough to be able to make a phone call out to the family and give us a rough location of where the incident occurred, so we assembled a group of 18 snowmobilers last night from our team and we headed into the mountain," Goobie told CBC Newfoundland Morning.

It don't take long to get into trouble very quickly.- Roger Goobie

The phone call came in around 6:45 p.m., and the 48-year-old man was found just two hours later.

"The gentleman is very fortunate that everything was on his side last night. If not, we could be talking about a different news story this morning," Goobie said.

Mount Peyton is a "vast area," Goobie said, and the man, while an experienced snowmobiler, was out on his own in 30 C conditions in the dark.

"We had to get blankets around him and we all huddled together as a group to try to block the wind the wind was very high there last night, so we managed to get him fairly conscious and get him mobilized in our rescue sled," he said.

A couple of the rescuers went ahead to a warm-up cabin the association has about four kilometres from where the man was found to start a fire and warm the spot up.

"Then we brought the gentleman back to the chalet and got him stabilized there and about 9:30 last night then we left the chalet then to bring him out to a waiting ambulance," Goobie said.

By the time the man was loaded into the ambulance he was chatting and coherent, so while Goobie didn't have an update on the man's condition Monday morning, he thinks he's probably fine.

Goobie said incidents like this one, and the ongoing search on the Northern Peninsula for a missing snowmobiler, are examples of how fast things can change, even for experienced snowmobilers.

"It don't take long to get into trouble very quickly."

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