SURVIVAL -- In the span of a week, a snowmobiler near the Montana-Idaho line and another sledder hundreds of miles south in Utah became stuck -- and each had to endure two cold nights in the winter wild before being rescued.

Both of them made the critical mistake of riding in the backcountry alone.

Barry Sadler, 54, who lives near Mullan, Idaho, got stuck in a steep drainage just over the state line into Montana on Sunday as he continued riding in heavy snowfall conditions after his buddy went home.

Lawrence Orduno, 48, of Phoenix, got stuck Dec. 27 and in a remote northern Utah canyon after he and a friend were separated while riding near Logan.

Saddler apparently had little more than a space blanket, which he draped over himself as he hugged his engine for its warmth. He started the engine off and on, but ran out of gas and was writing goodbye notes to his kids because he didn't think he'd survive.

Orduno used a cigarette lighter to make a fire and shaped the snow around him into a cave-like shelter, using the side covers from his snowmobile to help protect him from the wind. But he said he started to worry the second night and considered taking more desperate measures, including setting his machine on fire.

Neither man had significant food or water, snowshoes for navigating out of the deep snow or other survival gear.

Both men thanked their rescuers profusely.

"It's so painful to freeze to death," Sadler told the Coeur d'Alene Press. "It's one of the most brutal ways to die.... I was dying a little bit every day, getting colder and weaker."

"He's pretty lucky," said Shoshone County Sheriff Mitch Alexander after five of Sadler's buddies found him, helped him get through the second night and led him to safety on Tuesday.

"I chewed him out because he's riding by himself," Alexander said. "He didn't have his survival gear. He didn't have his avalanche beacon on. I also talked him into buying one of those SPOT satellite locators."

The satellite locators can summon help while also providing potential rescuers a location.