MEXICO — A Maine man crawled 2 1/2 miles in below-freezing temperatures to get help after breaking his leg in a snowmobiling accident.

Nicholas Brown says it took him more than six hours to crawl down a hill in Mexico last week to get to a friend’s house.

The 57-year-old Brown tells the Sun Journal he had gone to his snowmobiling club’s clubhouse last Thursday to leave membership applications and maps.

He lost control on some ice on his way home at about 9 p.m. and broke his leg.

“I lost control going around a corner and the sled went kind of broadside, and it was sliding sideways down the trail and I put my feet down thinking that (the sled) was going to flip over,” Brown said. He then overcorrected and the sled came back toward a leg.

He didn’t have a cellphone, so he used his elbows to crawl on his belly a mile and a half to a road. Then he got up on his hands and knees to crawl, arriving at the friend’s home at 3:30 a.m. Friday.

Brown said Warden Dave Chabot told him he was lucky that he wasn’t bleeding from a puncture wound. The warden told him he didn’t think Brown could have crawled as far as he did for help.