‘Lost Boy’ Marty Koether returns for 60th anniversary of incident that made him a legend in Vail
Jordan Harris/Sebastian Vail
Many people have trouble remembering their dreams within minutes of waking up, but for Marty Koether, the namesake for Vail Mountain’s “Lost Boy” run, his dreams from April 1, 1964, are still vivid.
Koether shared those dreams and more in an emotional trip to the Colorado Snowsports Museum on April 2. The visit coincided with the 60-year anniversary of Koether’s fateful night alone on Vail Mountain, in which he slept in a tree well after making a wrong turn into Game Creek Bowl, which had not yet been developed for skiing.
By the summer of 1969, when Game Creek Bowl was being developed, mountain managers had already come up with a name for several of the runs, including Lost Boy.
Koether said he can’t remember exactly when he learned there was a run being named after him and his experience, but it was decades before he became fully aware of how renowned the run was on Vail Mountain.
“I’ve had so many experiences in life beyond the Lost Boy, that this just didn’t seem that monumental to me,” he said, adding that he hoped the statement didn’t come across as egotistical.
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“It was just something that happened,” he said of being lost on Vail Mountain. “I lived through it, it was great, and I pretty much just put it in the back closet after that. But now that I’m here, I never realized how many people liked the story.”
Koether was invited to town by John D’Angelo, general manager of The Sebastian, who developed an interest in the Lost Boy story after learning to ski last year.
D’Angelo said the effort to bring Koether to town started with a question.
“I know Riva Ridge, and I know Pepi’s Face — a lot of these have stories behind them. What is the story behind the Lost Boy?” he said.
After learning the story, he found Koether on Facebook and began developing a relationship with him.
“I said, ‘Hey, it’s 60 years, come on out man,'” D’Angelo said.
“When he first contacted me on Facebook, I thought, ‘I don’t know what’s this guy up to,'” Koether said. “It took me about six months I think to convince me that this is something I should go for.”
Koether had not skied in 15 years before heading to Vail from his home in Arizona. He met up with D’Angelo who had arranged with Vail Mountain to have a few special surprises waiting for him.
On March 30, the duo took Vail’s Gondola One up the mountain, then took Chair 3 to the top of Wildwood. Koether examined the area, realizing that’s where he was 60 years ago when he made his wrong turn. Koether and D’Angelo then skied the Meadows run down to Mid-Vail on the route Koether should have taken.
Two days later, on April 1, Koether and D’Angelo skied Lost Boy. Koether said it went well, but the elevation was a challenge. He said the experience has motivated him to get in better shape so he can come back and ski Vail without feeling so winded.
To save him the trouble of having to ski all the way back down, Vail Mountain had a special snowmobile waiting for him at the top of Game Creek Bowl. And that’s when the nostalgia really kicked in, because when Koether got lost in Game Creek Bowl 60 years ago, he was also snowmobiled out from the top of Game Creek Bowl. He shared the whole story with the ski museum audience, recounted below.
“60 years ago, April 1, spring skiing in Vail, 14 years old, here I am with friends’ family. There was a group from my high school back in Chicago that was here that I wasn’t really with, but we were having a lot of fun, and I was taking the last run. Went up, waited, couldn’t find my people, so I said, ‘I can do this myself.’
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“And I can’t remember the trail, but basically you would come off the top and you’d either go back in the bowls, or you’d kind of take a run around, back into Mid-Vail. I missed the turn, and that’s all there was to it. There were no signs like we see here now. There were two-by-fours with some markings and some arrows.
“So I just missed the turn and just kept going down, thinking this is great, you know, when I get to the bottom I’ll be here with everybody and it’s hunky dory. So I skied and skied and skied, and all of a sudden it was flat and I realized there was nothing there but me. And that’s how it started.
“So that’s April 1, it’s starting to get dark, snow is starting to fall, and I knew was in trouble. Started, maybe hiking a little bit, trying to go back the way I came, there was no herringbone for this kid in the snow, I tried that. I abandoned my skis — I learned a word from my nephew, who is an avid skier at Crested Butte — I was postholing. The skiers know what that means. So there was some of that, taking these little crunchy steps and, probably up to there (motions to his chest.
“So it got dark, and I had had some boy scout training — I wasn’t an Eagle Scout, contrary to rumor, I didn’t get that far — and I also had training at a place called Teton Valley Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where we did a lot of hiking and backpacking up in the mountains, glissading and things, so I had some knowledge, a bit, on what you do.
“I found a big fir tree, crawled under that well. I’m wearing a cotton ski parka — the weather was like today, people were skiing in t-shirts, it was hot — and so I didn’t have a lot on but I pulled bows down and got in this little snow cave underneath and just curled up and pretty much fell asleep.
“There’s all these people out searching for me, and that was the amazing thing because I’m down there and my perception is, ‘Geez I wonder if anybody even knows I’m lost.’ And of course yeah, the word came out, my aunt who we were with — my aunt Sally and uncle Herb — they were beside themselves, the word got, they were looking for me everywhere in the village, ‘maybe he hitchhiked down to Denver,’ you know, all sorts of weird gossip on how maybe I’m not out there lost.
“So it got dark, I’m under this thing, and I basically fell asleep for the night. I’ll have to tell the hallucination or whatever it was — some of us are old enough to remember Lassie and little Timmy — I got the parka like this (makes a pulling motion around his neck) and I wake up and I dreamt or hallucinated it was Lassie, licking on my face.
“So that wasn’t a reality, and the other one was I hallucinated myself in a local blurb in my hometown, like the Daily, that the kid didn’t make it. (Audience members say ‘aww’) Anyway, it’s alright, it snowed and snowed and snowed, and morning came and I was up and got out from under this cave and under the tree and resumed my hike, because I knew where I came from.
“And that was all day, I think they figure it was about 2,000 vertical feet, maybe 2 miles of a hike, and I got right back up to the top area where you can see the Back Bowls, I had lost my glasses and I’m thinking well maybe I can parka slide down there. And then (John Adams) and another ski patrol skied on me and there I was, almost back to where I made my wrong turn.
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“So that was great, and those guys were so amazing to me. So anyway I got a candy bar at a hot chocolate up there and they took me down in a snowcat, down to the village.
“Again, I’m 14, I’m so happy that I’m there, but I’m embarrassed. The village was very small, all the kids from my high school that were there, they were all rooting me on, so I got down and Ed Talmage, who was one of the founders and a big Realtor with Siebert, had me up at his place, a warm cocoa and coffee and what not, and that’s pretty much the story.”
