A fifteen-year-old boy who went missing while snowmobiling atop the Grand Mesa Sunday has been found by the Mesa County Search and Rescue Team.
The boy was reported missing by family members around 3 P.M. Sunday. 15 members of the Mesa County Snow Skippers snowmobile team were dispatched to an area near Highway 65 and Lands End Road on the Grand Mesa north of the Mesa Lakes Lodge.
The search was temporarily halted at 2:30AM because of exhaustion and began again at 8 this morning. Conditions were poor at first, with light snow and fog limiting visibility. By late morning clouds began to break, and a helicopter from Rifle was called to assist in the search.
A crew on that helicopter finally found the youth in trees less than 2 miles from the Incident Command Center south of Lands' End Road on Highway 65.
Mesa County Sheriff's Deputies say the 15-year-old was wearing a snowmoblie suit, but otherwise had neither water nor food with him. Deputies say overnight temperatures and relatively low snowfall amounts of 6 to 8 inches aided the boy's survival.
