Eric LeMarque was born in the US in 1971, and from an early age loved to play ice hockey. He was always one of the best players in the local teams he joined and it didn’t take long for him to get noticed by some major league players. Since he had duel citizenship for the US and Europe, he was eligible to play in France’s national hockey team were he played in the winter Olympics of 1994.
Unfortunately players in national teams normally have a very short shelf life, and LeMarque’s career came to an end. As a replacement for the excitement he felt when on the ice, he developed a very serious drug addiction which saw him isolated from his friends and family.
Sometimes people can come out of an addiction by replacing it with something else, and this is exactly what LeMarque did, switching Crystal meth for snowboarding. He became so involved in his new hobby that he even competed in the X-games, and it was this new interest that led him to the top of the Sierra Nevada mountains in 2004.
On February 6, LeMarque was on a snowboarding trip to California’s Mammoth Mountain when the ski patrol started to move people off the slopes. He was about half way up when this happened and remembers wanting to make one last ride, so he hitched a lift and walked the rest of the way to the top of the run.
LeMarque made it to the top of the run and started to make his way down, even though he knew it would involve going through thick fog. Just as he hit the icy cloud of mist shrouding the lower half of the run, visibility disappeared almost instantly and LeMarque became horribly lost.
After it started to become dark he realised there was no chance he was going to make it to the bottom, so he stayed where he was for the night. He recalls not being able to get any sleep, and spent the night sitting by a tree to shelter from the wind.
His plan was to start walking down the next day towards Tamarack lodge, which he believed to be no more than 1.5 miles away. After walking a short distance he heard water, and since he hadn’t drank anything all night and didn’t have any kind of water bottle, he went for a drink.
Knowing he could be walking for a while he decided to try and drink as much as he could before setting off, and crept onto an a ledge hanging over the river. This turned out to be a bad idea as the ledge gave way and LeMarque fell into the water.
He managed to climb out easily and wasn’t hurt, but he was now in a freezing environment with soaking wet clothes. He found somewhere slightly sheltered and took off all his clothes and tried to move around to get warm. This did very little though as he was forced to put the wet clothes back on, and in such a bad condition wasn’t able to make any progress down the mountain that day.
He climbed up on a small sheltered cliff ledge and went to sleep for the night. The next morning was the first time he realised his life was in danger as he couldn’t feel his feet. Slowly peeling off his still wet socks revealed black and purple toes, non of which he had any feeling in.
He managed about 7 miles that day, but since he was walking in the wrong direction was now about 9 miles away from safety. After he had been gone for a total of 5 days his mother became seriously worried he hadn’t returned any of her calls. She convinced her husband to go to the authorities and report him as a missing person, and since he hadn’t checked in on his way off the mountain, a search and rescue party was launched right away.
LeMarque spent the 6th and 7th night sleeping in small snow caves he dug out with his snowboard, but at this point his feet were completely frozen and the risk of gangrene was rising.
Luckily on the 8th day one of the search helicopters spotted him and dispatched a ground team. He was taken to hospital but was still far from being safe, as his body temperature was 86 degrees, and he had lost 40 pounds. His feet were also in the worst state they possibly could have been and LeMarque was no longer able to stand up.
There was no saving his feet and he lost both of his lower legs from just below the knee. But this didn’t stop his love of snowboarding as he is still a regular on the slopes, but this time he’s learnt his lesson, when the ski patrol close down the slope and move people off, its for a good reason.