Rescued Colorado Skiers Tell of Mistakes : Survival: At news conference, three say they were unprepared for blizzard and that errors in judgment caused group of seven to become separated.

They had originally planned to spend their first night in the backcountry wilderness south of Aspen last Friday sitting around a crackling fire in a mountain hut and feasting on a gourmet meal.

Weather reports of impending snow were an exciting dividend for the group of seven avid backcountry skiers who intended to return home on Sunday.

Instead, they found themselves marooned and, they now say, unprepared for the subzero, blizzard conditions that dropped an inch of snow an hour for four days and eventually divided the party into three groups many miles apart.

At a news conference at Denver’s Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center on Wednesday, three of the skiers rescued during a massive search-and-rescue operation the day before told of mistakes in judgment that could have proved fatal.

“We did have a little bit more cavalier attitude than we should have,” acknowledged Rob Dubin, 38, as he sat beside his wife, Dee, 40, who doctors said may lose parts of her severely frostbitten fingers and toes.

Lost in a blizzard, the Dubins, Ken Torp, 50, Brigitte Schluger, 50, Elliot Brown, 43, Andrea Brett, 42, and Richard Rost, 34, never made it to the Goodwin-Greene Hut and decided to dig an ice cave in which to sleep Friday night.

Awakening Saturday to more snow, they decided to call off their journey and try to retrace their steps.

But first they had to find their bearings. Torp, former chief of staff for ex-Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm and an experienced mountaineer, and Brown, a metallurgist from Golden, Colo., struck out for the top of a nearby 12,400-foot ridge to look for a route back to safety. The Dubins and Schluger followed.

Rost, of Boulder, Colo., and his girlfriend, Brett, of Denver, who was beginning to suffer from frostbite, balked at climbing the ridge and decided instead to ski along an easier path toward what they believed (correctly) was the way back.

Seven hours later, Rost and Brett arrived at a town and told authorities about their missing friends.

Brown and Torp continued on to the top of the ridge, where they were met by 100-m.p.h. winds. “That’s where I got these,” Brown said at the news conference, holding up his gauze-wrapped fingers.

The Dubins and Schluger, who owns a Denver art gallery, tried to catch up with Brown and Torp, the most experienced skiers in the group, but lost their way.

“There was a point at which we were 500 yards apart,” Rob Dubin said. “Ten seconds later we couldn’t see our ski tips.”

“It’s unfortunate that we climbed a little bit faster than the rest of the group,” Brown said. In retrospect, he said, that “may have been a bad decision.”

“There was never any intent on the part of Ken or myself to purposefully separate the group,” Brown added.

Said Dee Dubin: “It’s a rule of mountaineering to keep together in a group because people are watching out for each other’s safety. . . . I didn’t feel comfortable that the group was split up, but hey, we all needed to get out too.”

Saturday night, the Dubins and Schluger slept exposed to the elements and had only half a pint of water to share among them. The women began to suffer from exhaustion, dehydration and frozen extremities.

They spent their third night in a snow cave, but the fourth night was spent in a federal Bureau of Land Management cabin, where they discovered a note that had been left by Torp and Brown the previous night.

“In the space of a second, we went from a terrible blizzard to warmth and safety,” Rob Dubin said, “and wind no longer howling in our ears.”

Brown and Torp said they survived for three days on high-energy snack bars and snow that they melted in a pot on a portable camp stove. They said they were able to take shelter from the blizzard by standing in wilderness outhouses and, on one evening, sleeping on the porch of a cabin that Brown described as “cushy.”

However, they said they didn’t sleep much at night as they attempted to keep warm by flexing different muscles and concentrating on their next moves.

They said they rejoiced at the sound of dogs barking Tuesday near the Colorado Dream Ranch at Taylor Park, Colo., where they were able to place an emergency phone call.

Four hours later, an Army helicopter that had been following ski tracks in a region that had not been scoured by searchers spotted Rob Dubin waving frantically from the BLM cabin.

Times researcher Ann Rovin contributed to this story.