Boy Found Alive Four Days After Disappearing on Camping Trip

CANON CITY, Colo. – The family of an 8-year-old boy who went missing from his Colorado campsite four days ago says it's a miracle he came through the ordeal unscathed.

Evan Thompson was found alive Tuesday after spending nearly 80 hours wandering through the wilderness near the site where he was camping with a school teacher.

"He’s doing remarkably well," his aunt, Terri Gray, told FOX News on Wednesday. "It’s a miracle that he wasn’t injured in any form or any way whatsoever."

Gray, who is Thompson's legal guardian, said the boy was thirsty, hungry and tired when he was found.

"I think that something may have caught his attention, whether it was a bug, a butterfly, a snake, something like that," Gray said. "And he followed it into the mountains, away from the camp area, and then he got turned around and he didn’t know what to do."

Evan Thompson was found in a rugged area with steep cliffs and narrow ravines, roughly 4-1/2 miles from where he had been on his first camping trip with family friends and a teacher on Saturday. He was reunited with Gray and was taken to a hospital, where he was in good condition Tuesday night.

"We are overjoyed and overwhelmed to have Evan safe and back with him in our arms," said Gray while clutching the boy, who looked tired and sleepy after spending nearly 80 hours in the elements.

Evan, who has attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, had been without his medication, Gray said.

He wandered away from the campsite Saturday morning after eating breakfast. Nearly 100 rescuers and three aircraft searched for the boy in the area about 90 miles south of Denver. A team on all-terrain vehicles found him in an area called Hole in the Wall Gulch.

The area is so remote that it took rescuers nearly 1 1/2 hours to take him to a staging area.

Gray and other family members rode in search vehicles and called for the boy over loudspeakers in case he was hiding from rescue teams.

"Younger children, they may think they're in trouble, so they might hide," said Zak Slutzky of Western State Mountain Rescue.

Rescuers and his family remained optimistic throughout the search that the boy could survive in the clothes he was wearing because the weather had been mild.

Searchers had earlier investigated reports of a child crying in the area, but the crying turned out not to be the boy's, Slutzky said.

FOXNews.com's Sara Bonisteel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.