An Ontario snowboarder lost for three days on Mount Seymour near Vancouver says his rescue was the perfect way to begin the new year.

"It's wonderful to live another day, to live another year. It's wonderful to make it out alive," James Martin told CTV British Columbia.

In an exclusive interview from his Vancouver General Hospital bed, Martin said that although he was stranded in the cold for three nights after getting lost on a trail, he never gave up hope he would make it off the mountain alive.

Martin became lost on December 28, but wasn't reported missing until Tuesday. That's when North Vancouver RCMP received a report of an abandoned vehicle at the top of Mount Seymour's parking lot.

North Shore Search and Rescue then began to scour the mountainside and canvass the area by air. But Martin, who had been walking for days by that point, had taken shelter under a tree and wasn't visible by air.

"Even today when the helicopters were around me, there were three of them, I waved them down," he said after his rescue.

"I thought he was coming down for sure but he didn't come back."

On Wednesday, rescuers came across Martin's tracks, which led them to the lost snowboarder. They said he wouldn't have survived much longer in the cold.

"Today, this particular subject would have succumbed to the cold," said the North Shore Search and Rescue spokesperson Tim Jones.

"His lower limbs had frozen on him. He was done for."

Martin -- who is originally from Orillia, Ont., and works for a roofing firm in Langley, B.C. -- has severe frostbite. But he says feeling is returning to his limbs.

He said he always believed search crews would find him, but his ordeal took its toll.

"I thought I was going to get out every single night I was there ... I thought (my rescue) was just around the corner, but it never was (until Wednesday), he said.

Martin's mother, Debbie, called the rescue "a miracle" and said she was grateful that North Shore Search and Rescue kept up the search for her son.

"I'm glad they didn't give up because they gave us the best new year's gift we could ever get," Debbie Martin told reporters Thursday upon arriving at Vancouver International Airport.

She described the ordeal as "scary, a nightmare," and joked that when she first saw her son she would "hug him and then smack him," for scaring her.

Martin said that he'll be more prepared when he goes snowboarding again.