American Man Is Rescued After Nearly a Week on an Alpine Slope During Storm

A 23-year-old American has been rescued after being trapped for nearly a week on a Swiss mountain, where he sought shelter under a rock from subzero temperatures and 124-mph wind gusts.

Matt Sanders of Austin, Texas, said Friday that a warm sleeping bag saved his life while he was snowbound by one of Europe’s worst storms of the century. Sanders, who was rescued late Thursday, astounded Alpine experts.

“I have never heard of someone surviving that long in such conditions,” said Markus Rieder, spokesman for the Valais cantonal, or state, police. “It was nearly seven days.”

“I may lose a couple of the toes, but overall it looks like I may be very lucky,” Sanders said from his hospital bed in Bern, Switzerland.

Sanders said he set off before dawn on Christmas Eve from Zermatt on the famed Matterhorn to make a one-day hike through the snow. He was en route to a gondola station, where he expected to be able to get a ride back down before the bad weather hit.

A student at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, Sanders said he had extensive experience at trail hiking and was well prepared. Police said that in addition to being warmly dressed, he had ample trail food in his pack.

“My biggest mistake was to overestimate my abilities to get through the snow quickly,” he said. “I didn’t make it quite as far as I hoped. I decided to make camp under a rock in a kind of semi-cave.”

The storm struck during the night. Winds reached 124 mph, and temperatures dove to 22 degrees below zero, Sanders said.

“That’s what I encountered for about 48 hours,” he said. “I had a sleeping bag, a very good sleeping bag made by the North Face company, and all I did was hunker down in that and pull it over my head and keep my body heat in there and keep under my rock.”

By Monday, the weather improved.

“At this point, my feet were frostbitten really badly, and it was very difficult to walk,” Sanders said. “But I felt I had to get a little bit higher in elevation so I could be more visible to a passing helicopter, which I felt at that point was my only way of getting out of there.”

Sanders climbed about 200 feet up the mountain to another ridge. But the wind continued, preventing search helicopters from getting close enough for the pilots to see him waving frantically.

By Thursday, Sanders said, searchers had given up. Even his mother, Annetta Alms of Springfield, Ill., had accepted that he must be dead. But she asked the rescuers to go out one last time to look for his remains so she could take them home with her.

There was a break in the weather, and a helicopter was able to fly close to the mountain.

“It was very overwhelming,” said Sanders, who turned 23 on Thursday. “I jumped up out of my sleeping bag and ran the best I could on frozen feet, waving my arms in the snow.”

The rescuers were incredulous.

“Suddenly, at an elevation of about 3,000 meters [9,843 feet] in the area of the Trifti Saddle, we saw a red cloth moving,” said a statement from Air-Zermatt. “That which no one thought possible was true. It really was the missing American.”

Sanders said he hopes to be able to resume hiking, though he will probably stay away from high-altitude climbing for a while in the wake of his tumultuous experience.

“I had huge fluctuations of what I was feeling, from great optimism when the helicopters were flying to dramatic lows when the sun set and I knew I had to stay another night up there,” he said.

He said he also had religious thoughts.

“I don’t think you can go through that without having some sort of spiritual movement at all. Of course I did,” he said. “I felt somebody was looking out for me and taking care of me.”