After becoming lost and running out of gas along Cascade Lakes Highway, snowmobilers Eric Abney and his son spent the night in a snow cave in 2013.

Lost, tired and cold, Hunter Chase Abney said he kept telling himself to stay calm throughout a chilly night in a snow cave with his dad.

He tried to focus on one thought.

“I just kept thinking about the story I would tell when I got back to school,” said Abney, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Sky View Middle School.

Hunter and his father, Eric William Abney, 40, both of Bend, had set out for what they planned to be a two-hour snowmobile ride early Sunday afternoon from Edison Butte Sno-park southwest of town. But they took a wrong turn, became lost and eventually ran out of gas in both of their snowmobiles — first Eric Abney’s and then Hunter’s after he gave his dad a tow.

The Deschutes County Search and Rescue team started a hunt for the pair after Leroy Abney, 60, Eric Abney’s uncle, reported them missing early Monday morning. Nearly six hours later, a snowmobile guide with Central Oregon Adventures found Hunter at 1:22 p.m. about three miles south of Elk Lake on the snow-covered Cascade Lakes Highway, miles past where it is closed for the season to cars and trucks. Then, at 1:50 p.m., a search team found Eric Abney, also on the highway, about a mile south of Elk Lake. He had left his son to try to walk to Elk Lake Resort.

“It sounds to me like they kept a level head,” said Sheriff Larry Blanton, shortly after Eric Abney was found. “Everybody is in good shape.”

Neither needed medical treatment after they arrived Monday afternoon at Mt. Bachelor’s West Village, where the Sheriff’s Office had set up a command post. In all, about 70 people were involved with the search for the Abneys. This included more than a dozen Search and Rescue volunteers on snowmobiles, more in snowcats and even more on snowshoes. Close to 30 members of the Central Oregon Snowbusters and the La Pine Lodgepole Dodgers snowmobile clubsjoined in the search.

Blanton said he is thankful the search Monday didn’t have the same sad result as a similar search for a father-and-son snowmobile tandem from Bend who became lost in the woods north of Mount Bachelor.

Roger Rouse, 53, and Brian Rouse, then 29, had set out from Dutchman Flat on Nov. 26, 2006. The pair spent two nights in the snow before being found. Both were hypothermic and Roger Rouse, who was nonresponsive, died shortly after rescuers reached him.

Brian Rouse was among the volunteers for the Search and Rescue team and was set to join the search for the Abney’s Monday afternoon before they were found.

Leroy Abney said he expected Eric and Hunter to return home by 5:30 p.m. Sunday.

“They’re kind of experienced snowmobilers, so I wasn’t extremely worried,” Leroy Abney said. “But the time was kind of going by so that worriedness was creeping up on me.”

It was the pair’s second ride of the year and their first time riding out of Edison, Eric Abney said. They picked the unfamiliar sno-park because of the crowd at Wanoga Sno-park for the Central Oregon Snowbuster’s Snowmobile Drag Races. Edison is about 19 miles west of Bend on Cascade Lakes Highway and then four miles south on Forest Road 45, the road connecting the highway to Sunriver.

Hunter grabbed a map at the sno-park, and they intended to ride out to a shelter on Kwolh Butte.

“That was the plan,” said Eric Abney.

Early in the ride things went awry. They went the wrong way at an intersection and in trying to later correct their mistake became lost in the tangle of trails.

“They got lost — made loops,” said Chris Sabo, trails specialist for the U.S. Forest Service.

They finally ran out of gas about three miles south of Elk Lake along Cascade Lakes Highway, Sabo said.

Abney said he knew they were on the highway and likely near Elk Lake, but he didn’t know their exact location because the antennae broke on his Global Positioning System device.

“When I saw that, it was a sinking feeling,” he said.

He’d also left his cellphone in his truck at Edison because its battery was nearly dead and he didn’t think they’d be gone for long. In all they tried to find the way back to Edison for about five hours, Abney said, before they ran out of fuel.

So they hunkered down, using survival gear they’d brought with them. Between them they had two shovels, a saw and emergency blankets. They built a snow cave and a fire, Sabo said. The snow cave measured about 3 feet wide, 6 feet long and 2 feet high.

“It was literally just big enough for two people to crawl in there and curl up,” Sabo said.

They also had food, including the snacks they’d brought for the trip — cinnamon gummy bears for Hunter and glazed donuts for dad, Snickers for both — as well as a stash of Power Bars and Cliff Bars for emergency eating, Abney said. They tried to turn snow to water over the fire in a plastic bottle, but the bottle melted, so they held scoops of snow over the flames in their shovels.

Thanks to the fire, extra clothes and the snow cave the pair made it through a cold night. Eric Abney said a thermometer he has read 8 degrees early this morning.

Saying he’s a 16-year U.S. Air Force veteran with two tours in the Middle East and two in Afghanistan, Abney said he specialized in combat rescue. This is the first time he said he was the one who needed the rescue.

“Last night was rough, and I know tonight would be rougher,” Abney said Monday night.