Proposals can be nerve-racking on their own. Add a tall bridge and a fear of heights, and the pressure is on.
Trevor Van Camp and Danielle Jenkins were on a weekend getaway at Boyne Mountain Resort in Boyne Falls, Michigan, after Jenkins had sent Van Camp several TikTok videos about the resort’s SkyBridge.
“It was something that she really wanted to do, so I kind of just made it a surprise,” Van Camp said in a social media post shared by the resort.
The couple took a chairlift to the bridge for an evening walk. Before they started, Van Camp asked Jenkins to pose for a photo, and proposed instead.
“I was high up. I was terrified for my life. I’m about to ask this woman to marry me. I was in complete shock,” he later told ABC News.
Jenkins accepted. But as Van Camp reached down to place the ring on her finger, it fell from the box and dropped 118 feet into the snow.
The couple cut their walk short and began looking for the lost ring.
Pat Harper, a night shift snowmaking supervisor, became an unlikely hero. He happened to have two metal detectors in his car and brought them to the couple to help in the search.
After 2½ hours, the ring was still missing, Jenkins said in the Instagram post.
That is when Harper took over, focusing on “a really good area for it,” he said in the video.
Harper promised they would find the ring. “There was no ifs, ands or buts about that,” Jenkins said.
About 30 minutes later, he heard the tone of the metal detector. It wasn’t the first time he had heard it — he said it had sounded 30 to 40 times before, all false alarms. Still, he got down on his knees, dug through the snow and dirt, and found the lost ring.
Jenkins said they were packing up to go buy a new ring at Kay Jewelers when they got the call the ring had been found.
“I’ve had a lot of people ask me if (the dropped ring) ruined the proposal, and it didn’t,” Jenkins told ABC News. “It made the proposal.”
The couple said they plan to complete their walk across the bridge on another trip to Boyne Mountain.