Ryan became stranded after reversing into a snow ditch.
That's when Ryan clicked to send a text to his wife before attaching his cellphone to a drone and sending it up several hundred feet to pick up a signal.
"I had actually seen that movie 'Fall' recently and my friend had remembered watching on the news a couple of years ago that there was people dropping phones into jails for inmates. We realized we just have to get as high as the mountain," he said.
Rescuers were then sent out to find him where they also rescued the other motorist who started the whole ordeal and had been stranded for several days.