CARRABASSETT VALLEY — Two young skiers from the town of Oxford were rescued Thursday morning after spending a cold night lost on the backside of Sugarloaf Mountain.

A game warden service plane spotted the two shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday in  Rapid Stream Valley, an out of bounds area on the back side of Sugarloaf.

Wardens used snowmobiles to reach them, said Ethan Austin, spokesman for Sugarloaf USA.

“Bradley Snow, 16, and Sven Bergeron, 20,  told  game wardens this morning that they had taken multiple runs earlier in the day, and sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. —  they decided to follow tracks made by another skier that led underneath an orange distinctive rope that marks trail boundaries,” according to a press release issued by the Maine Wardens Service.

“They admittedly followed another skier’s tracks in the snow, and they did go under the rope that signifies out of bounds,”Maine Warden Service Sgt. Scott Thrasher said in a prepared statement. “In that area of the mountain, if you go out of bounds it’s almost impossible to get back on Sugarloaf’s trails.”

Carrabassett Valley Police Department received a call from parents of each skier about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday night when they had not returned home as expected. The two are not related.

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Their vehicle was found in a parking lot at Sugarloaf and when officers tried calling their cell phones, they heard the cellphones ringing from within the vehicle, Police Chief Scott Nichols said.

Game wardens, the Sugarloaf Ski Patrol and local rescue services were then called out around 11 p.m. Rescuers used snowmobiles to do an initial search of common areas where skiers might be on the mountain, Austin said.

From the top of the mountain they had gone into an out of bounds area on the back side of the mountain but rescuers had no idea where they were and the young skiers didn’t have their cellphones.

Temperatures dipped below zero last night on the mountain, said Nichols who thought some wardens and rescuers had continued searching through the night.

The ski patrol stopped and resumed their search early this morning, Austin said.

abryant@sunjournal.com


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