After a snowmobile outing goes terribly wrong, a husband and wife find themselves freezing, and terrified, but they got out alive. Victoria Wendt told Action News Friday she is so grateful to be back in the Valley. She and her husband worked here, commute from Overton, and were snow machining in Southern Utah last weekend and it truly came close to being their last.
"I was going to walk out of there. One way or another, I was getting out of there," Victoria Wendt said from her hospital bed.
Even though every step she took was on feet so badly damaged, doctors don't know if they can be saved, Victoria Wendt did what she had to.
She and her husband were snowmobiling near Brian Head when things went terribly wrong.
A winter storm caught the couple and separated them.
"I mean we were getting two to four feet a day in snow. I mean the wind was howling..." Victoria said.
Four days apart they spent in the forest, unable to move, watching the snow pile-up around them.
"I had no food or water provision, so I just ate snow," said her husband Randy. He did not realize that less than a football field's length away, his wife was doing the same.
"I don't want to die out here. That exactly were I was at. I don't want to die," Victoria recalled thinking.
Meanwhile, the rescue effort was on, after a snow plow driver had seen the Wendt's abandoned truck.
But Victoria wasn't waiting. Moving at a rate of only 1 step every 5 minutes, on Wednesday, she finally found her husband.
"And he was so happy to see me. He said 'because now I know I don't have to sit here and die by myself, because I know I'm going to die,'" Victoria recalled.
The tearful reunion turned joyful when a volunteer pilot spotted them minutes later, and the rescue was on.
"I want to say thank you to everyone involved," Randy Wendt said on scene.
"They won't know anything for months, what's going to happen to my feet," Victoria said from her hospital bed.
Victoria is recuperating at UMC right now. Her husband is having trouble with his feet too, but nothing as severe as what Victoria is suffering. Even though their snow machines were stuck, Victoria's husband had the idea of turning his on, and curling-up around the engine for warmth. Keep it tuned to Channel 13.
