"I was nervous, but I knew he wouldn't be too far away," she said Monday. "It's not like my dad to get stuck. Lost, but not stuck."
The 65-year-old horseman from Monroe got lost on Monroe Mountain on Friday night. He finally made it back to the trailhead where his truck was parked just after 11 a.m. Monday and used a friend's cell phone to call his family. Search and rescue crews met him there.
"I said, 'Cancel the memorial service, I'm not that easy to get rid of,' " Runolfson said.
Fealy said her father was a little dehydrated but in good physical condition. He survived by eating berries and drinking from two springs, one he found Saturday morning and another he spotted Sunday evening.
"The worst thing was thirst," he said. "I would touch my tongue to the roof of my mouth and it would get stuck there."
Runolfson, his wife and a friend had gone riding Friday and got lost when they couldn't find an old trail that no longer existed in one of the canyons.
The trio stayed together until about 10 a.m. Saturday, when Runolfson left the others to try to find a return route. Later, the other two were able to get cell phone reception and called 911 and they, too, were met by searchers.
On Sunday, searchers found Runolfson's horse with no bridle or saddle. They also found bootprints in the ground and tracks consistent with a saddle being dragged, the sheriff's office reported.
Fealy said her father took the riding equipment off his horse, which hadn't been ridden much, because the animal refused to go anywhere.
"I figured she would be better off getting down by herself," Runolfson said. "The most frustrating thing was that I could never find that trail."
He tried to sleep at night, but only got a couple hours of shut-eye because he'd wake up shivering from the cold, he said. Moving kept him warm. "I basically stayed at it 24 hours a day," he said.
Runolfson found a creek at about 7:45 a.m. Monday and followed it back to his car.
"I'm pretty good [now]," he said from his home in Monroe. "I got a shower and some food."
jbergreen@sltrib.com
