A 26-year-old man was forced to spend the night in the freezing cold, after he rolled his vehicle off a remote northwestern Alberta highway on Boxing Day.
Spirit River RCMP, Wanham firefighters and STARS Air Ambulance were called just before 8 a.m. on Dec. 26, after a passerby noticed a crashed car in the ditch on Highway 733 near Sexsmith.
RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Curtis Peters said the man was alert and talking to people at the time he was found.
According to STARS, the man said he had rolled his car and became trapped inside nearly 12 hours earlier. That night temperatures plunged well below -20 C.
Firefighters used the Jaws of Life to free the man from the car. He was then airlifted by STARS to the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Grande Prairie with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
Mounties said the man was in the rural DeBolt area to visit relatives, who reported him missing the night before when he never arrived.
Sexsmith is about 20 kilometres north of Grande Prairie, and 470 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
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