Boy found alive after three days in Colorado wilderness

An eight-year-old US boy who wandered away from his campsite was found alive after more than three days in a rugged area of Colorado with steep cliffs and narrow ravines.

Evan Thompson was found yesterday, four and a half miles from where he had been on his first camping trip with family friends and a teacher.

He was reunited with his legal guardian – his aunt – and was taken to a hospital, where he was in good condition.

“We are overjoyed and overwhelmed to have Evan safe and back with him in our arms,” said his aunt Teddi Gray while clutching the boy, who looked tired and sleepy after spending nearly 80 hours in the elements.

When asked how he was feeling, the boy answered: “Good.”

Evan, who has attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, had been without his medication, Gray said.

He wandered away from the campsite on Saturday morning after breakfast. Nearly 100 rescuers and three aircraft searched for the boy in the area about 90 miles south of Denver. A team on all-terrain vehicles found him in an area called Hole in the Wall Gulch.

The area is so remote that it took rescuers nearly one and a half hours to take him to a staging area.

Gray and other family members rode in search vehicles and called for the boy over loudspeakers in case he was hiding from rescue teams.

“Younger children, they may think they’re in trouble, so they might hide,” said Zak Slutzky of Western State Mountain Rescue.

Rescuers and his family remained optimistic throughout the search that the boy could survive in the clothes he was wearing because the weather had been mild.

Searchers had earlier investigated reports of a child crying in the area, but the crying turned out not to be the boy's, Slutzky said.