Frozen In Time Pullman Teen Can’t Forget Near-Death Experience In The Snow

Andy Zeller introduced himself.

“I’m the person that was really, really cold for a couple of days,” the 16-year-old said.

For the 100 or so Boy Scouts sitting cross-legged in the Lincoln Middle School gymnasium Wednesday night, he was Be Prepared personified.

A former Scout, Zeller was lost for 45 hours in the ravines off North Idaho’s Silver Mountain Ski Resort in late January. He made do with a knife, a ski pole and two surgical gloves.

“It was pretty amazing that he lived through it,” said Andy Ruddick, sixth-grader and Boy Scout Tenderfoot. “…Scouting really helped him.”

From most appearances, Zeller’s only injury was to his left big toe. Frozen solid by the time he was rescued, it is now healing reasonably well.

“This is my public service message - don’t ever get frostbite,” said Zeller, a Pullman High School junior and aspiring actor who gets around on crutches for the time being.

He spoke in tones that ranged from sheepish to flippant, glossing over what may be the strongest emotion of all: a premature appreciation for his own mortality.

“Mentally, it’s no fun, I can tell you,” he said earlier in the evening between sips of coffee and ice water at Shermer’s Restaurant in downtown Pullman. “It’s like the whole Vietnam vet thing, that post-traumatic stress thing going on. I see snow falling and it’s terrifying. It brings me right back.”

Zeller disappeared from the Silver Mountain slopes early on the afternoon of Jan. 25. What he thought was an easy run turned out to be no run at all, just a steep, tree-choked ravine. It was his second time skiing.

Realizing he was lost, he took off his skis and went looking for the track of a trail groomer. He found none.

“It was a really, really, really long night,” he told the Scouts.

He spent the next day climbing to a clearing, where he fashioned a snow cave with his ski pole and hands.

Late the next morning, he was found by volunteers from the Fairchild Air Force Base Survival School. Their expressions of surprise told him he had endured something remarkable.

“I’m alive,” he recalled thinking, “and real men are amazed.”

The most important lesson, he told the Scouts, is he “didn’t freak.” It helped that he didn’t eat snow, which would have lowered his body temperature. He regretted not using a second latex glove to melt water for drinking.

Rubbing sticks for a fire was out of the question.

“It only works in Boy Scout camp,” he said.

His foot, he explained, is healing well. The black pieces of skin have fallen off, which is good. Now he spends several hours a day in physical therapy getting dead skin “picked and flicked” from his foot and swimming in a small pool to increase circulation and flexibility.

He regularly meets with friends for $1.08 bottomless cups of coffee at Shermer’s, but he acknowledges that his head is not always here.

“He’s still on the mountain,” his mother, Eileen, said in a subdued voice after he spoke Wednesday.

“He stared death in the face and he didn’t blink,” said his father, Jeff. “But it’s a monumental occurrence. He grew up very fast.”

Making it all the more difficult is that he went through the experience alone, his parents said.

In a way, said Andy, it was like a mid-life crisis, a premature reckoning with his own mortality at an age when most young men feel invincible.

“Confronting your mortality is a touchy subject,” he said. “It was a pretty big physical challenge, but it was a great mental difficulty as well. One thing I know is since I’m OK and probably am going to be all right, I’m actually kind of happy. I’ve found out things about myself that I wasn’t going to find out for 50, 60 years.”

In less than two weeks, he will turn 17.

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