A Fresno teen speaks out Wednesday about getting stranded overnight while hiking in Utah mountains.
He shared his experience in this exclusive interview with KMJ’s Liz Kern.
It was ultimately a choice between live or death for Nicolas Alcantara, surviving nearly 30 hours in the cold.
“Shivering to death, I didn’t want to die like that,” said Nicolas, who told KMJ he frequently hiked in Yosemite and the Fresno area but was not prepared for the rapid change of weather that stranded him overnight in Millcreek Canyon.
“When the weather changed I was too far into my hike to turn back,” said Alcantara, but Park City, where he was expected for dinner at 6:00 pm was still too far away. When he didn’t show up, his friends phoned his mother, and they called authorities to report him missing.
A press conference was held at 1:30pm Wednesday, at the University of Utah Hospital where Nicolas is recovering from frostbite.
His doctors, Giavonni Lewis, MD, FACS, from the University Hospital Burn Unit, and Robert Brickley, MD, Wilderness Medicine said his instincts saved his life.
“So tucking himself inside a jacket was a great idea. Actually digging out a shelter to help conserve some of the heat around him was a great idea,” said Brickley.
Nicolas said his goal was to protect his core, and he made the decision if he had to sacrifice his limbs he was choosing to save his hands over his feet.
In his pack, he had his cell phone, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, water, and a change of clothes for the dinner that night.
“I set alarms for every 30 minutes because if you fall asleep there’s a very likely chance that you will pass away. And then I decided ‘You know what, there’s a likely chance I’m going to die.’ And so I started praying but then what I did was I started writing letters, so I wrote about 5 or 6 letters to my mom and dad, my brothers, my ex-girlfriend Courtney, and then I took a couple of videos,” said Alcantara. “Then at one point I started to turn on the flashlight to warm me up a little bit, and so as I was laying in the snow and I tucked in, and laid there with my face just tucked in and warmed myself up.”
Alcantara said he later deleted the ‘goodbye’ videos on his phone after he was rescued.
His sense of humor, and wit is part of the teen’s strong personality that kept the 17-year-old Bullard High School student fighting to stay alive.
“I also didn’t want a PBJ be my last meal,” joked Nicolas, eliciting laughter from reporters in the room.
“I also wanted to give my mom a hug,” he continued, sitting next to his mother, Jennifer Stacy-Alcantara, there in the room with the medical staff at University of Utah Hospital, who were responsible for his treatment.
He told KMJ that he was able to meet with his rescuers and others who came to check on him at the hospital, after he was flown out of the mountain area.
It’s still a week before the teenager can fly back home to Fresno.
He said the doctors told him they would have released him this day, but he can’t sit flat yet because of his feet, so they told him it would be 7 to 10 days before he can get on a plane.
He’s counting the days.
A GoFundMe page set up to help the family with expenses. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-fresno-nicolas-recovery-fund
