Three Good Samaritans are being thanked for helping two teens stuck in the snow for 10 hours earlier this month.

Dustin Moore and Daniel Frost-Reed were out on a snowmobile two Sundays ago.

The machine became trapped in deep snow near the south side of Mount McIntyre at around 5 p.m.

With a single metal avalanche shovel, the 17-year-olds tried to dig themselves out for hours before making cell phone calls to their parents just before 9 p.m.

"He told me they were stuck and had been stuck since about five o'clock; they were trying to get out and could not get out,” Lois Moore, Dustin's mother, said in a recent interview.

With only the limited information the teens knew about their location — they had gone up Copper Mine Road to the communications tower and turned —the parents began planning a way to get the boys out.

At about 9:40 p.m., the cold pair called 911 but their cell phone died before the GPS could get an exact location.

"We received a call from one of the youth (Daniel) saying he was stuck on his Ski-doo and then his cell phone died,” RCMP Const. Mike Seidmann told the Star.

"I contacted his mother, who advised me they were aware that they were stuck and were making arrangements to go and find them.”

Family friends Mark Stenzig, Peter Jensen and Shane Buchanan had begun a search by 11 p.m.

Stenzig, founder of Up North Adventures, is familiar with the landscape after having led many tours in the area.

Even with his experience, Stenzig said the wind was an obstacle to finding the teens.

"We kept on following the freshest tracks we could find, but as the wind would blow, it was hard to follow anything,” he told the Star.

It was around 3 a.m. that the search party spotted the snowmobile's headlight.

The teens had heard the trio coming and switched the light on.

"Dustin was in relatively good shape,” Stenzig said. "The other fellow was in running shoes and had frostbitten ankles.”

By the time they were rescued, Frost-Reed had "stopped shivering and was beginning to doze off,” Lois Moore said.

To keep themselves warm, the younger Moore had managed to start a fire using a scrap of paper dipped in gasoline and had also built a wind wall.

"It is very resourceful and it's not something I would have thought of him even knowing,” his mother said.

Lois Moore wonders at what point a search and rescue team would have been called in to look for her son.

"I just wonder where the line is when someone decides they need to be called in,” she said.

RCMP Sgt. Don Rogers said the decision to call search and rescue personnel is made on a case-by-case basis.

"In this particular case, they weren't lost, they weren't injured, they had communications with the family, the family indicated they were going to go get them and they had the means, the ability and the knowledge to do that,” he said.

Search and rescue is also not called out to attend in the middle of the night, he said.

"If we had a situation where there was no means to go get these people and no ability to do it, we would have gone and got them ourselves, but that situation wasn't present.”

The experience was a learning opportunity for both of the teens, Lois Moore said.

"It made him stop and think that next time he goes out, he needs way more equipment,” she said.

"Not just assume that a quick afternoon trip was going to stay a quick afternoon trip.”

It was also a chance to recognize the importance of having good friends.

"I really think we had the Yukon's best possible team out there looking for them.”