A proposal on a high suspension bridge in Michigan took an unexpected twist when Trevor Van Camp’s engagement ring slipped from his finger and plunged 118 feet into the snow below. He had just knelt down to ask his girlfriend, Danielle Jenkins, to marry him beneath the festive Christmas lights at Boyne Mountain’s skybridge. But, in a moment of mishap, as he was retrieving the ring from its box, it fell through the bars of the bridge.
“When I realized what happened, I was really upset and thought, ‘Oh no, this isn’t good,’ and, well, the ring just dropped,” Van Camp recalled.
The couple felt a wave of panic but soon focused on retrieving the lost ring.
With permission from the resort, they embarked on a two-and-a-half-hour search of the snowy landscape, armed with metal detectors and joined by Pat Harper, the overnight snowmaking supervisor at the resort.
As their spirits began to wane, Harper detected something around 10 p.m. After clearing some snow and debris with his hands, he uncovered the ring partially buried in the ground. “I thought, there’s no way I’d find something like that right now,” he reflected.
When he found it, the couple was ecstatic. Jenkins expressed her gratitude, saying, “Big credit and kudos to Pat for doing that for us. He saved the day.” She added that it was a unique experience that would forever be a part of their engagement story.
Eventually, the ring was placed on Jenkins’ finger, and after some heartfelt conversation, the couple decided they’d return to complete their walk across the bridge. Jenkins noted, “We’ll probably come back in the winter to finish the journey under the lights and enjoy the experience we cut short to find the ring.”
