Snowboarder rescues horse stuck on mountain

YouTube

Watch On

A snowboarder made a surprising discovery of a stranded horse while boarding down a mountain on a birthday trip.

Rafael Pease was snowboarding with a friend in El Colorado, Chile, on his 21st birthday this summer (13 July).

“I pointed out a rock that was in the distance and realised it was a horse,” he said.

“The horse was going to die unless someone did something.”

Using a shovel, he and a friend dug the wild horse out of the deep snow she had become stuck in.

“From the point of when I took her out of the ice and snow to the grass pastures in the mountain, it took about four to five hours,” he told H&H.

After the pair had freed the chestnut mare, they then led her the six-miles down the mountain to safety and reunited her with the rest of the herd.

It is stated in the video that she had been up there for four days.

Rafael, a student at the University of Colorado, filmed the rescue on his GoPro and the camera company uploaded the video to YouTube on 6 October.

So far the film has had more than 100,000 views.

H&H has previously reported on a number of unusual horse rescues.

These include a horse that had bolted and swam out to sea of Hayling Island, Hampshire, being coaxed back to land by a lifeboat crew in July 2014.

H&H also reported on a horse being airlifted three miles to safety after falling down a canyon in California in March last year.

Stay in touch with all the news in the run-up to and throughout the major shows and events during 2026 and beyond with a Horse & Hound subscription. Subscribe today for all you need to know ahead of these major events, plus online reports on the action as it happens from our expert team of reporters and in-depth analysis in our special commemorative magazines. Have a subscription already? Set up your unlimited website access now