Reveler survives 15 hours lost after Tahoe new year

STATELINE -- A California teenager was recovering from mild exposure Thursday in a South Lake Tahoe hospital after surviving 15 hours lost in the snowy back country in temperatures hovering just above zero.

Brian Drake, 18, of Danville was found Wednesday afternoon about 2 miles north of the Stateline casino area.

"Mr. Drake had been enjoying the festivities of the night when around 4 a.m. he decided to walk to his parents' cabin in the South Lake Tahoe area and became disoriented," the Washoe County sheriff's office said in Reno.

He called 911 on his cell phone about 7 a.m. after realizing he was lost in a wooded area near rocks and in waist deep snow, but could not say where he was.

A search by about 30 people in the air and on the ground ended when a Douglas County sheriff's deputy spotted Drake's footprints and heard him yelling. The Washoe County Sheriff's Department helicopter, which had been taking part in the search, plucked him from the area, which was inaccessible by ground vehicles because of the snow cover.

Despite the bitter cold, he was being treated only for mild hypothermia.

Drake, a sophomore at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Valley, Calif., was wearing a ski jacket, jeans and tennis shoes but had no hat or gloves, according to Douglas County Sheriff's Deputy Joe Duffy.

Wednesday's search covered a "very large" area that straddled the state line and included much of the out-of-bounds parts of Heavenly ski resort, Duffy said.

"He said he couldn't remember where he wandered in and at what time he wandered in," Duffy said.

"After the first call, he was calling maybe once an hour until about 12:30 this afternoon," Duffy said on Wednesday. "His battery was dying and he was moving in and out of cell phone range. He was so disoriented he couldn't remember phone numbers, so he would call his dad, who would then call us.

"In his last call, he said he couldn't walk any more."

Search and rescue crews from Nevada and from California's El Dorado and Alpine county sheriffs offices and members of Heavenly's ski patrol participated in the search.

Duffy said the district attorney's staff would decide whether to seek any of the costs of the rescue effort from Drake.