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It's the night of January 6th, 1982, and it's the dead of winter in Colorado, US of A,

minus 28 degrees Celsius, to be exact.

Fire chief Dave Montoya is driving his truck over a snowy mountain pass near the ski town

of Breckenridge.

A blizzard is raging all around him.

Flouries of snow are reflected in his headlights as he trundled slowly along the path, barely

able to see the road ahead.

He wishes he was tucked up in bed and he's been called out to investigate a vehicle that's trapped in the snow.

Earlier that night, a call had come in stating that an aeroplane passenger

flying over the mountain path had looked down to see headlights shining through the blizzard.

Headlights that flash the SOS code.

Three short flashes, followed by three long

ones, then three short flashes again. The passenger alerted the pilot who called the police.

Must be a tourist, thinks Dave as he drives on, someone who doesn't understand how dangerous this

road is in a storm. Eventually, through the blizzard, Dave sees two dim lights glowing in front of him.

He slows down.

A head, a truck has become stuck.

Its rear end sunk into a snowdrift.

Dave parks up and gets out to take a closer look.

To a surprise, he sees that the driver is not a tourist after all.

In fact, Dave knows this man. It's 30-year-old Alan Phillips, an old colleague from when he worked in the mines nearby. What are you doing out here, Alan? he asks. Alan explains that he got drunk in town and decided to drive home the mountain way so that he didn't get caught by the police on the main road. The blizzard had got worse and he'd ended up stuck in a drift.

...