The temperature in remote western Maine had fallen below zero, but the visibility was good Monday evening on a sleek, groomed snowmobile trail.
But what started as a deep-winter lark turned perilous when Tyler Howard-Gotto and Jonah May, 15-year-old friends from Rhode Island, became stuck on a side trail, lost in a bitter, arctic wilderness.
They abandoned their snowmobile, their toes began to go numb, and they began moving just to keep moving. They tried to start a fire using a sock and the snowmobile’s gasoline, but failed.
Somehow, through will and luck, they survived for 14 hours without injuries. But for much of the time after Howard-Gotto fired up the snowmobile at his mother’s home in Mexico, they trudged through the snow and huddled in the cold until a passing motorist gave them a lift.
“They are lucky to be alive,” said Corporal John MacDonald of the Maine Warden Service, which led dozens of searchers by land and air after the teenagers were reported missing around midnight Monday. “If they hadn’t left [home] at all, they’d be even luckier.”
The cross-country trip to Andover, where Howard-Gotto’s grandfather lives, should have taken little more than an hour. But Howard-Gotto took a wrong turn, authorities said, and when he realized his mistake and tried to backtrack, the snowmobile became bogged down.
After the fire failed, they began walking — stumbling forward, really, in the deep snow — to ward off hypothermia in temperatures that plummeted to 12 degrees below zero. Howard-Gotto had spent many years in the area before moving to Rhode Island, authorities said, and he knew his way around the outdoors.
But in thick woods and darkness, with no clear path to follow, they also needed a stroke of good fortune.
The pair found that help on the frozen banks of Richardson Lake, where they spied a small shed. Howard-Gotto ripped off some of its plywood, discovered containers of gasoline inside, and took down a sign that quickly became fuel for a fire.
They also found a few hours of rest by huddling in a golf cart inside the shed, MacDonald said. In the morning, the friends resumed their trek until they reached a road. And finally, at about 10 a.m., they were picked up, cold and tired, and driven to safety at Howard-Gotto’s grandfather’s house.
Despite their ordeal, the pair suffered “no injuries at all, other than being hungry,” MacDonald said. That outcome, he added, is remarkable.
“Had they been stuck out in the middle of the woods [without shelter] or overexerted themselves or gotten really sweaty, they very quickly could have gotten hypothermia,” MacDonald said.
“When snowmobiling, you’ve got to think of the worst-case scenario. And when it’s 10 below zero in a remote area, you don’t want to take unnecessary risks,” MacDonald said. “They just didn’t have a good plan B.”
Part of that plan would have been to take a second snowmobile, MacDonald said. Another part would have been to avoid traveling at night.
Nick Brown, president of the Mexico Trailblazers Snowmobile Club, knows the danger of snowmobiling in a remote area. In January 2014, he broke his leg in a snowmobile accident, at night, and crawled more than a mile to the home of a friend.
But he was fortunate, Brown said. The temperature was a relatively balmy 22 degrees, and he did not suffer a puncture wound, which could have caused excessive bleeding.
Still, the pastime is popular and generally safe in a state that has more than 14,000 miles of snowmobile trails. Gary Wentzell, the club’s trailmaster and Mexico’s fire chief, said all of the main snowmobile routes are maintained, groomed, and well marked.
Wentzell said he was awakened at 5:30 a.m. Monday and reported to a local command post, where he helped monitor the search.
The friends were lucky but also helped themselves, Wentzell said. When faced with the worst, he added, “they used a little bit of ingenuity.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@ globe.com.