‘I really wanted to either die or kill myself.’ Rescued teen hiker recounts Utah ordeal
Shivering and alone along a snowbound Utah trail, Nicolas “Nico” Stacy-Alcantara considered giving up during his 30-hour ordeal, KUTV reported.
“I really wanted to either die or kill myself,” the 17-year-old Californian said, according to the station. “It was just that cold. I was shivering to death.”
Huddled in a snow cave in Millcreek Canyon, Stacy-Alcantara even wrote goodbye letters to his family in Fresno, KTVX reported.
“I pray you guys find happiness after I’m gone,” he wrote, according to the station. “Just that, I love you guys, you never did anything wrong. Don’t blame this on yourself. This was a dumb mistake in the first place.”
But then Stacy-Alcantara decided to fight to stay alive, KSTU reported.
“I did not want to have a PB&J be my last meal,” he joked, according to the station. “I also wanted to see my family.”
Skiers found Stacy-Alcantara on Friday afternoon and he’s now being treated in a Utah hospital for frostbite to his feet, KUTV reported.
“Those were the longest, scariest hours of my entire life,” said his mother Jennifer Stacy-Alcantara, KSL reported. “My biggest fear was what if they don’t find him? I’ll never know what happened to him.”
In Utah to visit friends and tour colleges, Nico Stacy-Alcantara had taken an Uber ride to Millcreek Canyon on Jan. 2, planning to hike to Park City, according to the Associated Press.
He packed six peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and some water for the journey, reported the publication.
“The wind started picking up, the snow started picking up and I noticed I wasn’t going to make it back all the way,” Stacy-Alcantara said, KTVX reported. He had a trail map on his phone but no service, and decided to hunker down for the night in a snow cave to try to stay warm.
As he thought about giving up, the teen says he found a necklace given to him by an ex-girlfriend in his backpack, the Associated Press reported.
Stacy-Alcantara said the necklace helped him remember all the people who cared for him and fueled his desire to make it back, according to the publication.
He set alarms on his phone to go off every 30 minutes to keep him from falling asleep overnight and focused on keeping the core of his body warm, not his frozen feet, KSL reported.
“I knew if I lost those, I could still live, so I really just tied the ends of my jackets together,” the teen said, KSTU reported. “I tucked my arms inside my jacket and tucked my head inside my jacket.”
Stacy-Alcantara had an extra pair of socks, but after he changed into them, his frozen fingers couldn’t retie the shoelaces on his boots, KTVX reported.
When he left his snow cave to look for help Friday morning, the 17-year-old walked right out of his boots, according to the station.
Cross-country skiers found Stacy-Alcantara, wearing only his socks in the snow, a few hours later and he was airlifted to a hospital with frostbite and hypothermia, KUTV reported.
“My toes are blistering. They’re nasty,” he said, KSL reported. “But at least they’re not gone. I can play basketball.”
Stacy-Alcantara says he knows he was “very lucky,” Associated Press reported.
“I know I shouldn’t have survived. I am a 17-year-old kid with no survival instincts from Fresno, a city of 110 degrees,” he said, KSTU reported,
“It was scary, but I was learning something new about myself,” he added, KSL reported “It was discovering that I had something in me that I didn’t know I had. I didn’t know I had this ability to push past a situation where I knew I was going to die.”
