When Murray Martin heard his grandson, Jamie Martin, had been missing for three days in the mountains outside Vancouver, he braced himself for the worst.

"It was devastating," the Whitehorse resident and Star columnist said in an interview today. "At the time, when he'd been gone for that long, you'd given up hope."

But, as Martin regularly reminds readers of his outdoors column, one of the most valuable survival tools is a positive attitude.

"Lisa, my wife, kept saying to me, 'He's a Martin; he's stubborn; he knows what to do.'"

And she was right.

Jamie accidentally went out of bounds while snowboarding on Mount Seymour in North Vancouver, said his grandfather, who spoke to Jamie yesterday.

He didn't leave the marked area on purpose, but said the run was not well-marked so he didn't realize he had left the regularly groomed and patrolled runs until it was too late.

The 21-year-old, originally from Orillia, Ont., grew up hunting and fishing in rural Ontario with his father and grandfather, and is an accomplished outdoorsman.

"He didn't grow up like other teenagers,"Murray said. "He always seemed to have a plan and he stuck with it - ever since he was a kid."

Even when Jamie's plan for a day on the slopes went awry, he kept his head.

"He said when he was lost, he knew he was lost," his grandfather said.

"Most people panic at that point, but he kept calm, and that's how he survived."

Things went from bad to worse when Jamie slipped into a creek, soaking both his feet.

"He got the frostbite on his feet pretty bad," Murray said, but saved them from worse damage by quickly getting his boots off, wriinging out his soaking socks and then putting them back on.

"The thing is to get your feet back in there," Murray said, "because if your feet aren't frostbitten yet, they will warm up to a degree."

But with wet feet and no sign of help coming, Jamie knew he would be spending at least a night in the cold. Once again, he used his survival skills to lifesaving effect.

"He threw down boughs," Murray explained. "He broke boughs off a tree and put them down on the snow to protect himself from the cold. That's what saved him."

As Murray, a former conservation officer and avid survivalist, explained, the tree boughs put a layer of protection between the snow and his grandson's body, while the snow provided insulation from the frozen ground.

Jamie slept on the first night, but realized that if he slumbered again, it may well have been for eternity.

"He knew he couldn't sleep by the last days," Murray said. "Even though he was exhausted, he knew he couldn't close his eyes."

It wasn't until Tuesday, almost three days after he had gone up the mountain, that co-workers reported Jamie missing because he didn't show up at work.

Police located his truck on the mountain and search and rescue teams began the search, but they were not optimistic.

"I hate to say this, but his chances of survival are very low," search-and-rescue manager Tim Jones told reporters as he launched the search. "It is a bad set of cards for this guy."

On Wednesday afternoon, almost four whole days after he got lost, Jamie Martin was found.

"You can't imagine how happy we are," his grandfather said today. "I talked to him and he is out of the hospital and back at his apartment now."

The young man has suffered frostbite on his hands and feet, said his grandfather, but still has all his fingers and toes. It was a sobering experience for Jamie, Murray said, but it hasn't scared him away from his favourite winter pastime.

"Oh, he'll go snowboarding again," Murray said with a laugh.