Published December 10, 2013 FoxNews.com

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  These photos show 34-year-old James Glanton and 25-year-old Christina McIntee (AP Photo/Family Photos via Pershing County Sheriff's Office)
  
  
  Rescue teams racing against the clock and the bitter cold worked into the night and were hoping to resume an aerial search Tuesday for a couple and four children who have been missing since Sunday when they went to play in the snow in the remote mountains of northwest Nevada.
  
  "It's got to be brutal out there," said Mark Turney, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "Let's hope they are found quick."
  
  The temperature was expected to drop below zero again Tuesday after plunging to minus-16 degrees the day before in Lovelock, the rugged area where the group was believed to be, about 100 miles northeast of Reno.
  
  Pershing County deputies said aircraft and crews on the ground were searching for James Glanton, 34, his girlfriend Christina McIntee, 25, and the four children: a 10-year-old, two 4-year-olds and a 3-year-old.
  
  Two of the kids are the adults' children, while one is a niece and one is a nephew, according to the Pershing County sheriff's office, which identified them as Evan Glanton, Chloe Glanton, Shelby Fitzpatrick and Tate McIntee.
  
  The family has not had any communication with others since they went missing, according to Sheila Reitz of the sheriff's office.
  
  They went to the Seven Troughs area on isolated federal land about noon on Sunday in a silver Jeep with a black top, authorities said. It was unclear what supplies they might have been carrying.
  
  "I'm hoping they all huddled together and stayed in the Jeep," said Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Chuck Allen, who added that the area has spotty cellular coverage. "That would be a best-case scenario."
  
  The search for the group began Sunday evening. A Navy search-and-rescue team and the Civil Air Patrol, an all-volunteer auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, were assisting the sheriff's office by searching a concentrated area where the group is thought to be.
  
  Two planes scoured the area Monday and three could go out Tuesday if the group isn't found, Maj. Thomas Cooper said. Several inches of snow was on the ground in the area, but the black top on the silver 2005 Jeep should help make it easier to spot from the air, authorities said.
  
  While the cold made for dangerous conditions, the clear weather was working in the pilots' favor. The forecast called for mostly sunny again on Tuesday with clouds moving in Tuesday night.
  
  The cold "is not a big issue," Cooper said. "We're concerned about stuff coming out of the sky."
  The area is on land managed by the BLM.
  
  "It is a beautiful area out there. Parts of it are extremely remote," said Turney, who was there three weeks ago. He said that other than one main road, most of the roads are dirt and more easily traveled by ATVs or other off-road vehicles.
  
  "The roads are basically improved two-tracks out there," Turney said.
  
  The Seven Troughs area is named after a series of seven parallel canyons below Seven Trough Peak -- elevation 7,474 feet -- in the Kamma Mountains stretching north across the Pershing-Humboldt county line.
  
  It's about 20 miles northwest of where Lovelock sits on Interstate 80 and about 20 miles southeast of the Black Rock Desert, where the annual Burning Man counterculture festival is held.
  
  "It's remote, and it's rocky," Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Chris Healy said. "There are good dirt roads into the place, but they are dirt roads, and it is cold and snow so it's not ideal."
  
  Healy said Seven Troughs is a popular area for hunting chukars, a pheasant-sized winter game bird.
  
  "So it's not the kind of area where there would be nobody around," he said Monday. "But most chukar hunters are smart enough not to go out in the weather we have now.

Updated 12:41 AM EST, Wed December 11, 2013




The 2006 silver Jeep Wrangler with a black top carried the excited family of six into the back country of northwestern Nevada for a playful weekend outing in the snow.

Those moments of adventure dissolved into a fight for survival after the vehicle turned over, slid down an embankment on its top and ended up in a crevice 15 miles from Lovelock.

When dawn broke Monday to a temperature of 21 below zero, the situation for James Glanton, 34, and his girlfriend, Christina McIntee, and four children could have been desperate.

Instead, they kept their heads. They didn't try to walk out of danger, thereby making it easier for rescuers to find them.
Those rescuers did find them about midday Tuesday, nearly 48 hours after the ordeal began. And, within hours, an incredible story of resourcefulness and steady nerves began to trickle out.

Keeping warm:

The couple, who were without extra blankets, started a fire outside after the Jeep overturned. They heated rocks and placed them in the spare tire to keep the children, ages 3 to 10, warm at night.

"I have never heard of such a thing, but I think it was pretty clever of him," Paul Burke, who coordinated the rescue effort for the state Department of Public Safety, said of Glanton's tactics.

"To the extent he was ingenious about it, that is one for the books," Burke told CNN on Tuesday evening.

When three residents finally found the family and their vehicle during a massive search, the family had little food left, so resident Salvador Paredes pulled a candy bar from his pocket and shared it with them.

Glanton and McIntee, 25, along with their two children -- Evan and Chloe -- and McIntee's niece and nephew, were taken to Pershing General Hospital.

Doing 'very well'

Dr. Doug Vacek told reporters they all were doing "very well."

"They just expressed that they're really happy and they're going to enjoy this Christmas" more than usual.

Remarkably, the six had no frostbite, instead displaying symptoms of mild hypothermia and dehydration.

Vacek and others recounted the factors that worked in the family's favor: They had water and some food, heavy winter clothing, they stayed near the vehicle and were able to start and maintain a fire.

Speaking of the adults, Chris Montes, another rescuer, told CNN that "obviously they knew what to do. They kept those kids safe 48 hours in subzero temperatures."

The group apparently ran out of food on Monday, he said. The children, Montes said, "did not seem too bothered. They were in good spirits. They just figured they were camping."

Survival expert Joseph Teti said it's the little decisions that add up to an enhanced chance for survival in brutal conditions.

"Mother Nature will not allow you to make too many mistakes at all," said Teti, co-star of Discovery Channel's "Dual Survival."

Massive search:

The group was found safe in an area called Seven Troughs, according to the Pershing County Sheriff's Office. They were discovered from a distance by a volunteer searcher using binoculars to scan mountainsides, the sheriff's office said. It wasn't immediately clear which of the three rescuers made the discovery.

The search, which involved at least 200 people and spanned 6,000 square miles, was aided by technology.

Officials remained undaunted despite the fact they no longer received pings off the cell phone of the missing persons, said Sheila Reitz of the Pershing County Sheriff's Office.

On Monday, authorities had been encouraged when they were able to receive a couple of pings from the phone of Glanton. Cell service is spotty because the area is so remote.

The Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, said its cell phone forensics experts "played a critical role in helping rescuers narrow the search area," according to a statement by the patrol.

"The cell phone forensics team pinpointed where they could not possibly be," Nevada Wing Commander Col. Tim Hahn said in a statement. The forensic efforts "were very time-consuming," he said.

"This morning they provided a key clue that redirected the search and led to the rescue," Hahn said.

Weary and ecstatic:

One of the CAP crews spotted the family's Jeep about the same time that the searcher with binoculars found the lost group, the patrol said.

The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center will award the Nevada Wing with six saves, Hahn said. The children's ages are 10, 4, 4 and 3, the patrol said.

Amanda Fitzpatrick, mother of 10-year-old Shelby Fitzpatrick, one of the missing children, joined the search in the bitter cold.

"It's been extremely hard, probably the hardest 24 to 36 hours of my life," she earlier told CNN's Piers Morgan. "It's my baby girl."

The close-knit community was both weary and ecstatic after the family was found. Pershing County Sheriff Richard Machado became emotional as he detailed the effort.

Jo Ann Weagant, a family friend, told CNN, said no one in Lovelock wanted to give up the search.

"I truly believe there was an angel in the sky watching over them," she said.

The family's disappearance was among the most dramatic developments in the Arctic-like weather shocking much of the Lower 48 states.

Big flakes of wet snow and ice snarled travel across the country Tuesday and hit major airline hubs in the Northeast, with about 1,200 flight cancellations reported by Tuesday evening.

Temperatures in storm-stricken parts of the country are expected to stay about 10 to 20 degrees below normal for the rest of the week, the National Weather Service said.