Freezing rain poured down on hiker Steve Stephanides as he narrowly faced death on Colorado's 14,231-foot Mount Shavano just weeks ago. For 30 hours, as the temperature dropped into the 20s, he prayed he would get back to his family in Apopka, Florida.
The 47-year-old double University of Florida business graduate had gone on a company-led charity hike with his co-workers to raise money for the World Central Kitchen nonprofit on Aug. 23. After reaching the mountain summit around 11:45 a.m., Stephanides prepared to head down the peak. The next several hours would test his faith and his fortitude.
Losing his way
There are no markers on the mountain for the trail down the peak, Stephanides soon learned. He wasn't concerned about this fact at first, considering how many people were going up and down the mountain at the time; he figured he could simply follow.
"I quickly ate a sandwich because you want to fuel for the way down, and I started heading down the way that I came up," Stephanides said. "And when I got down, let's say 500 feet, I looked down and couldn't see any trail, and I couldn't see any people, so I started to question whether I was heading in the right direction."
At that moment, Stephanides decided to go in the opposite direction. By about 1:30 p.m., he still couldn't successfully find his way back down, so he texted a few people from his group and sent them a pin of his location. Two people responded and explained that the quickest way to get back was to re-summit the mountain.
Using the compass on his iPhone, Stephanides began the trek back to the summit. Once he was around 100 feet away from the top, he realized he had lost all cell service. Unable to resend a pin of his location, he chose to go around the summit and stay heading in a south or southeast direction, as he was told to do by his co-workers.
At around 4 p.m., he began noticing some bad weather, and Stephanides was faced with the first of many tough moves: he needed to get to the summit, try to figure out where the tree line was from there, and attempt to take cover.
"It was told to us before the hike that, if you ever get into a dicey situation with the weather, you definitely want to get below the tree line, especially with lightning, because if you're above the tree line, you're the tallest object and you know your chances of getting struck by lightning are significantly higher," he said. "So I looked at the situation and said, 'Well, instead of meandering around, trying to find my way to find the trail, my number one priority is to get to below the tree line and I can reevaluate from there.'"
Unfortunately, the tree line was in the opposite direction of where the trail was, which landed Stephanides on the wrong side of the mountain. In-between Stephanides and the tree line was a massive rapid, so he began to travel alongside it and he soon encountered a waterfall. It was now around 7 p.m., it was getting dark, and he was quickly realizing he had nowhere to go.
Braving the elements
A thunderstorm had hit and the temperatures were lowering into the 30s. Cold, tired, and soaked, Stephanides decided to hunker down. Having no cell service, he turned his phone completely off to preserve the battery.
"I basically laid on the ground on an incline, because you're on a mountain, and I just tried to keep warm. I tucked my two layers into my pants and then I pulled my hiking socks over my pants down at my ankles," he said. "And then I zipped up my outer layer over my nose so that all of my exhale – the heat – would go into my layers and wouldn't escape."
Stephanides explained that, in these extreme situations, you can choose one of two mindsets: "One is, 'Oh, my God, I could die here. I could die of hypothermia.' And that's not a good thing to think about because it can take your eye off the ball of what you need to do. Or you can have a mindset of, 'I am not going out like this, you know. I have a wife and kids. I'm too young and I'm going to fight like hell to try to make it through this.'"
Between praying and his determination to make it to tomorrow – thinking about his wife, Amy, and their two children – he was able to clearly consider his next steps.
During the night, however, Stephanides encountered more obstacles. Around midnight, he saw a helicopter and was struck with hope. Waving his hiking poles around, he prayed someone would spot him. Unfortunately, the helicopter was too far away and he was out of view, which he said felt like it was straight out of a movie.
Further into the night, he saw a man and his dog down the stream. After yelling and trying to get their attention, Stephanides realized he was hallucinating.
"I don't know a lot about hypothermia, but I was thinking to myself, 'I wonder if this is like a symptom, you know, where you start seeing things that aren't there,'" he said.
Awakening
When he woke up the next morning, Stephanides could barely stand due to the position he had slept in to try to keep warm. He ate his banana and drank a few sips of water and, once he regained some strength, he resumed hiking around 6 a.m. He knew he needed to head up the mountain, so that is exactly what he did.
Stephanides fell over 20 times during this experience. At around 11:30 a.m., he was crawling down boulders like someone would walk down a ladder. While crawling, he misjudged one of the rocks and slammed his knee into it. Whether or not this was divine intervention, Stephanides was not sure, but after the fall, he decided to turn on his phone. He was shocked to learn he had cell service.
Stephanides was able to call 911 and give the dispatcher his name and coordinates. He learned that a search had already begun, so he sat tight and awaited rescue, which came about 30 minutes later.
Danny Andres, head of Chaffee County Search and Rescue South, called Stephanides' wife to inform her that her husband had been located. Andres also told her that, if her husband had not called, the team probably would not have found him in time because he was in an area where they had not been searching.
Stephanides was taken to the hospital immediately. While he did not have any physical injuries, he was suffering from pure exhaustion and severe dehydration. He learned that he had also experienced symptoms of hypothermia on the mountain. He received intravenous treatments and was kept overnight due to the dehydration that affected his kidneys. Still, Stephanides had a positive take.
"I was such a mess, but again, they took all these X-rays, they did all these tests – blood tests, urine tests, MRIs, you name it – and they were like, 'The only thing is your kidneys, which, if we get enough fluids in you, that'll go away,'" Stephanides said. "But no broken bones, no strained muscles, which is just amazing, you know?"
He also expressed gratitude for the efforts of his co-workers.
"There's a whole other set of experiences for the rest of the group, as you can imagine. Everybody's waiting for me to come down the mountain and I don't come down. They call search and rescue, and share as much information as they can," he said. "Everybody's frantic. People are crying. Two people took it upon themselves to go back onto the mountain, into the woods during the thunderstorm at night, to try to find me. They stayed in that parking lot where the trailhead is until midnight, until search and rescue was like, 'You gotta get out of here.'"
Stephanides is still trying to wrap his head around the whole experience, which he said gave him a new perspective on life. He learned that there is nothing more important than having a strong mindset in dire situations like these.
"If you encounter adversity," Stephanides said, "your mindset will help dictate the outcome."
