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6 Lost Snowmobilers Found Alive

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By ROBERT WELLER, The Associated Press

Published: January 8, 2008

CONEJOS, Colo. - Six snowmobilers missing in the mountains for 2 1/2 days while a howling blizzard swirled around them were rescued on Monday. They were hungry and cold but unhurt after taking shelter in a cozy cabin and calling 911 on a cell phone when the storm eased.

The group, consisting of two couples and two teenagers, broke in to the cabin, huddled around its gas grill and dined on popcorn and chicken bouillon they found inside.

"We counted 18 blankets. We were cozy," Shannon Groen, 31, said after rescue crews on snowmobiles brought the group to safety.

"God was looking out for us. When we knew we were safe we began to worry about the rescuers and we prayed for them," Groen said.

Groen and the others were trapped by one in a series of storms that killed at least three people across the West, unloaded as much as 11 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada range, flooded hundreds of homes in Nevada and knocked out power to a quarter-million Californians.

Groen and her husband, Jason, had gone snowmobiling with their daughter, Aspen, to celebrate her 14th birthday.

Also along were one of Jason Groen's employees, Mike Martin; Martin's wife, Missy, and their son, Jessie, 13. All are from Farmington, N.M.

The group had set out on what was supposed to be a daylong adventure.

However, they got lost and ran out of gas on Friday night near 10,222-foot Cumbres Pass, just north of the New Mexico line.

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