#ICYMI: A Horse Missing for Seven Months Was Found Alive (and Rescued!) From Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains

In case you hadn’t heard, a horse named Mouse, missing since July 2025, was found alive seven months later in the Wind River Mountains — and his rescue is incredible.

Mouse the horse, out on the trail.

This is one of those stories that almost never ends the way this one did.

In case you hadn’t heard, a horse named Mouse, missing since July 2025, was found alive seven months later in the Wind River Mountains near Dubois, Wyoming. And thanks to a group of quick-thinking snowmobilers, cowboys, and volunteers, he made it home.

If you’ve spent any time around horses, you already know why this story stopped people in their tracks. Horses that go missing while out on the trail are often found injured, trapped, or not at all. Exposure, predators, terrain, and weather usually stack the odds hard against them. Seven months — through fall and into a Wyoming winter — makes survival almost unthinkable.

And yet, Mouse did.

Lost in July, Found in January

Mouse went missing during a backcountry packing trip last summer. Dubois resident Preston Jorgenson was headed toward Moon Lake for a fishing trip when Mouse got loose and disappeared into the mountains.

“We put the word out, and I thought, for sure, he’d come down when it started snowing,” Jorgenson reported to Cowboy State Daily.

He didn’t.

Despite multiple attempts to locate him in the months that followed, Mouse vanished into the vastness of the Wind River Range. Like so many missing-horse stories, it quietly slid into the category no one wants to say out loud.

Until Jan. 18.

That’s when Tighe Krutel, a snowmobile mechanic with Union Pass Rentals, spotted a horse while riding near Union Pass Road. Not tracks. Not remains. An actual, standing, living horse.

Krutel dropped a GPS pin immediately. Word spread fast.

“It Was Worth the Effort”

Union Pass Rentals owner Tim Koldenhoven didn’t hesitate.

“Once we found the horse, we went in there and winged it,” he said. “We immediately realized this was worth the effort.”

A small group, including Krutel, Jorgenson, and local cowboy Buster Campbell, headed back into the mountains just to lay eyes on Mouse and get hay to him. Finding him again wasn’t immediate, even with GPS coordinates. Deep snow and rugged terrain made every step a problem to solve.

“He wasn’t initially at the spot where the pin had been dropped,” Campbell said. “So we ran around in there until we found and fed him.”

For the next several days, volunteers hauled food and water in while trying to figure out the impossible question: how do you get a horse out of six-to-seven feet of mountain snow?

Leading him wasn’t an option. Horses don’t post-hole well, and Mouse was already exhausted.

“He probably had a couple weeks left in him,” Koldenhoven said. “If we had another big snowstorm, I think it would have been the end of the horse.”

It was now or never.

Horsepower, Manpower, and a Very Unusual Plan

What followed was a true coalition rescue effort. Specialized snow machines from Union Pass Rentals. A snow groomer from Crooked Creek Guest Ranch. A Snow Cat. And a group of people willing to try something no one had a manual for.

The solution? A whitewater raft.

Photo courtesy of Preston Jorgenson

Sourced through Facebook and picked up from River Runners in Cody, the raft became what Koldenhoven jokingly called the “one-horse open sleigh.”

When the moment came, Mouse didn’t fight it.

“He stepped right into the raft and lay down,” Koldenhoven said. “He was super tired.”

Secured inside the raft and towed behind a snow machine, Mouse was carefully hauled across the snow to the Snow Cat for the final leg of the journey. By 4 p.m. Sunday, he was home.

“It was a half-assed game plan that we put together on the fly,” Koldenhoven said. “But everything went great.”

A Survivor, In Every Sense

Against every expectation, Mouse is in surprisingly good shape. Thin, tired, and in need of recovery time, yes — but alive, alert, and very happy to be home.

Those involved credit a combination of luck, terrain, water access, and Mouse’s own instincts.

“You could tell he’d been hanging out in that place for a while,” Koldenhoven said. “He had a decent food source, water, and a place where he’d been bedding down. That’s how he held on.”

Still, no one involved pretends this outcome is typical.

Most missing-horse stories don’t end this way. That reality is part of what makes Mouse’s rescue hit so hard. It’s a reminder of both how vulnerable horses are in the wild and how extraordinary it is when community, skill, and timing line up just right.

“The rescue would have never happened without the equipment,” Campbell said, “but it also never would have happened without the boots on the ground who knew what they were doing.”

Photo courtesy of Preston Jorgenson

How to Support Mouse’s Recovery

Mouse’s journey isn’t over yet.

His owners have set up a website where people can follow his recovery, learn more about what he’s been through, and find ways to support his ongoing care as he regains weight, strength, and condition after seven months in the mountains.

You can follow along in Mouse’s journey here. The wesbsite allows you to

• Follow updates on Mouse’s condition and recovery
• Learn more about the rescue effort
• Support the costs associated with veterinary care, feed, and rehabilitation

This is one of those rare stories that reminds us why we keep hoping, even when experience tells us not to. Mouse is a true survivor. And because a group of people refused to write him off, he gets a second chapter.