Man Gets Hypothermia in His Quest to Save $15 on a Pizza

If someone offered you $15 and told you to do something stupid, ill-advised, and all-around life-threatening, your first question might be "Why?" Your second question might be "Does this involve watching Snatched?" Even the most depraved among us probably wouldn't risk an emergency room visit in exchange for a wad of damp $5 bills, but tell somebody that there's a free pizza involved and it's "Hold my beer, and keep that ambulance running."

Just ask the 30-year-old Arizona man who attempted to climb the steep trails of 9,301-foot Mount Elden all in exchange for a coupon for a free pizza. The fact that we're writing about this is probably a tip-off that the hike went poorly, and not just because this skilled outdoorsman was dressed like he was on the way to the locker room at Planet Fitness. The mountain was covered in between 3 and 5 inches of snow, and the man and his shorts quickly realized that Nature didn't care about his pizza coupon.

A Forest Service ranger—who was presumably wearing pants and sleeves—saw the man from his lookout tower and went onto the trail to rescue him. According to the Arizona Daily Sun, the man had some mild hypothermia and was taken to a shelter and parked by a fire to warm up.

"Coconino County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Unit responded to a report of a hypothermic adult male hiker on top of Mt. Elden…The hiker was either unaware of the weather forecast or disregarded the forecast and set off ill prepared wearing shorts and light clothing," the Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

The man was responding to a challenge from Pizzicletta, a Neopolitan-style pizzeria in Flagstaff, that promised free pizza coupons to anyone who hiked or biked to the top of Mount Elden during the 21-day Giro d'Italia bicycle race. The participants in Pizzicletta's "Giro d'Elden" would meet at a specified time and, if they summited the mountain, they would get a stamp good for a free pizza at the restaurant that night.

"We never want anyone to risk their life for pizza. It's certainly not worth it," Pizzicletta owner Caleb Schiff told KPNX. "In truth, what we really want is people to make great decisions about their health and be active."

Well, you got one out of two, Hypothermia Guy.

If you're interested in scoring a pizza from Pizzicletta, the Mount Elden promotion will theoretically keep going for the next 15 days, until the race concludes in Milan. Or you could just, you know, buy one. They're about $15.