Eddie "Cola" (Fitzgerald) was a very nice, quiet guy who loved to drink Coke (hence the nickname COLA). He had aspbergers but altogether he was a very nice man and he loved LOVED to ski. He belonged to a local ski group that traveled the world and he went on every trip. I had been on many of the ski trips but didn't go the year Eddie died...
The group went to Jackson Hole that year and they trekked to Gran Targhee to ski, which is on the Wyoming / Idaho boarder. My sister, who was on the trip, did a few runs with Eddie. My sister decided to retire and asked Eddie if he wanted to retire with her. Him being a very competent skier as he always was, he said he wanted to stay on the mountain and do a few more runs (Eddie had been on a dozen trips with my sister and the group and skied alone quite often, this is not my sisters fault.)
Sister left Eddie and the group ended up leaving without a headcount or roll call on the bus and didn't realize that Eddie was not with them. Eddie's roommate realized about 6 hours later that Eddie wasn't returning to the room and reported to the group that Eddie wasn't around and the now panic stricken group called 911... 911 reported that they had received intermittent calls from Eddie and that he was lost in the woods. He had skied out of bounds and was lost. He made 3 calls to 911 but didn't keep the calls long enough to be located or for them to make any sense of where he was.
Search and rescue were released but conditions were bad. There was a mix up between who should've been doing what - Wyoming or Idaho. Idaho thought Wyoming was looking for Eddie and Wyoming thought Idaho was looking for Eddie, so effectively no one was looking for Eddie.
Eddie should have just hunkered down for the night but he didn't. He was treading through deep snow, and it was snowing and he didn't see it but he walked strait into a stream, crawled his way out of it and died of hypothermia a few feet from the water. His body was found the next day.
Dude just wanted to ski and have fun. Not even his parents came out to Wyoming to get his body. My sister and her friends picked up his ashes and brought them home. Eddie's father is currently suing both Idaho and Wyoming for their wrong doing BUT YET WOULDN'T GET HIS SONS ASHES and let his ski buddies bring them home.
Here's the story from the paper... that's a horrible death to me.