Former Olympian Had Frostbitten Feet Amputated After Surviving 8 Days on Frigid Mountain by Eating Bark, Fending Off Coyotes
- - Former Olympian Had Frostbitten Feet Amputated After Surviving 8 Days on Frigid Mountain by Eating Bark, Fending Off Coyotes
Virginia ChamleeJanuary 10, 2026 at 2:00 AM
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Vivien Killilea/Getty
Eric LeMarque in 2017. -
In February 2004, a snowboarder set out for a quick run down the mountain, but wound up lost in the woods for eight days
Eric LeMarque was a practiced athlete, having had a successful career as a professional ice hockey player, even competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics
But LeMarque was unprepared for eight days lost in the woods, surviving only on bark and nuts
Eric LeMarque was a practiced athlete, having had a successful career as a professional ice hockey player, even competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics as part of the French national hockey team.
So, when he headed out to go snowboarding on Feb. 6, 2004 — and without the sort of essentials he'd usually carry — it didn't seem like a big deal.
"I figured three hours of riding and then I'd hit the Jacuzzi," LeMarque, then 35, told PEOPLE in a 2005 interview.
On his final run at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., LeMarque opted to take a secluded trail. However, with darkness and a storm closing in, he soon realized he was lost, and with only a light jacket, a dead cell phone and an MP3 player at his side.
LeMarque would spend the next eight days in the wilderness — surviving off of pine nuts and bark, and sleeping in a shelter he dug out using his snowboard.
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty
LeMarque being wheeled back into the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital in Sherman Oaks, Calif., at the end of a press conference.
He tried to use radio signals that he picked up on his MP3 as a compass, but no matter where he turned, he found himself deeper in the woods. At one point, he slipped and fell into an icy river, leaving him freezing and even more vulnerable to the harsh elements.
When he looked at his feet, he saw that they had turned black and were bleeding. "I knew I had to get out of there," he later told PEOPLE.
In pain and losing hope, at one point, he even found himself surrounded by three coyotes — screaming until they ran away.
Finally, on the eighth day, help came when a helicopter rescue crew found LeMarque via infrared imaging they used to locate his body heat.
At that point, he was suffering from severe frostbite, hypothermia and dehydration. Once at the hospital, doctors determined his legs would have to be amputated six inches below each knee.
LeMarque was fitted with prosthetic feet and went through months of rehabilitation.
In an essay he later penned for Backpacker, LeMarque wrote of his rescuer: "He had rappelled from a helicopter to save me. My body temperature, he’d just told me, was 86 degrees. That I even had a pulse was remarkable considering I’d been wandering in the snow for the last seven nights. One foot was naked, and the other was frozen in its boot."
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Elsewhere in the essay, LeMarque wrote about the challenges of going from elite athlete to amputee, writing, "My feet had been my livelihood. They’d taken me to the NHL and the Olympics as a hockey player. As a snowboarder, it was my feet that had conveyed those sensations of gliding and floating. What had I done to end up here without them?"
The first step to acceptance, he wrote, was "humility."
"I’d been an elite athlete for so long, it was hard to start at the very beginning. I had to learn to walk with the prosthetics. I needed help at every turn," LeMarque wrote. "But I realized that asking for that support was the first step toward finally growing up."
He later wrote a book about the experience, Crystal Clear, in 2009. In 2017, the book was adapted into a film, 6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain — starring Josh Hartnett as LeMarque.
In recent years, LeMarque has worked as a motivational speaker and advocate for resilience, while also getting back into snowboarding. He launched a GoFundMe effort in late 2024 to fund his journey to the Paralympic Games.
on People
Source: “AOL Sports”
