Boyne Mountain employee finds lost engagement ring after it falls from SkyBridge during proposal
BOYNE FALLS, MI – Some couples have a good proposal story to tell at their wedding. Then there’s the amazing lost-and-found tale that Trevor Van Camp and his bride-to-be, Danielle Jenkins, get to share as their engagement story.
It started with a nervous Van Camp, a ring that dropped 118 feet down into the snow, and ended with a Boyne Mountain snowmaking night supervisor with a metal detector who just wouldn’t give up.
Like many couples who see Boyne’s SkyBridge attraction as a picture-perfect spot for a proposal, Van Camp, from Rochester Hills, and his girlfriend took the resort’s chairlift up to the spot recently. The world’s largest timber-towered suspension span, SkyBridge stretches between two of the resort’s high peaks and is currently decked out in 200,000 twinkle lights for the winter.
Van Camp had planned a surprise getaway there after Jenkins sent him some TikTok snippets of the colorful bridge. But when Van Camp stopped on the the walk and suggested they take a picture, he went down on one knee and pulled out a box with Jenkins’ ring inside. Then the unthinkable happened. He dropped it, and it fell through the grates on the bridge floor, disappearing on the snowy ski slope below.
Trevor Van Camp and Danielle Jenkins on SkyBridge, seconds after losing the engagement ring.Photo provided by Trevor Van Camp and Boyne Mountain
“We panicked for a minute and then said, we need to find it,” Van Camp told Boyne Mountain, who did a video recap of the story – which does have a happy ending.
The couple searched the slopes underneath the bridge. They used metal detectors offered by Pat Harper, the resort’s night shift snowmaking supervisor.
After a couple hours of searching, the couple had lost hope. They were ready to end the search about 10 p.m. that night. But Harper promised them he’d keep going.
Harper kept searching on his own, using the detector to see if it registered any metal under the snow. After about a half hour, he got a ping over some snowy footprints.
“He began digging through the snow, as he had done several times already that evening, but didn’t see anything,” Boyne staff said. “Then he pulled up a handful of snow, and there it was – the edge of the ring.”
The resort called the couple with the good news.
Pat Harper of Boyne Mountain found the engagement rink Trevor Van Camp had given to Danielle Jenkins.Photo courtesy of Boyne Mountain and Trevor Van Camp
“I give big props and kudos to Pat for doing that for us, because he saved the day, he really did,” Jenkins said. “It was an experience that we now have; a story to tell of our engagement.”
The couple plans to return to Boyne Mountain soon to complete their walk across SkyBridge.
“We’ll probably come back in the wintertime to finish our journey across the bridge with the lights and enjoy the full experience that we cut short to find my ring,” she said.
