There are a lot of different ways animals can kill you, whether itā€™s through a bite, a sting, or a kick. Every six yearsĢżor thereabouts, the scientific journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine publishes a study breaking down direct fatal encounters between human and beast. This January, the journal put out the latestĢż, which references CDC data from 2008 to 2015.

ā€œUnderstanding the most common reasons for human deaths after encounters with animals is important for improving overall public health and forming sound strategies to reduce these risks of death,ā€ says Jared Forrester, a doctor at Stanford andĢżthe lead author on the study. We took his results and combined them with stats from a few other sources to give you a look at the numbers.

201

Deaths per year caused through direct contact with animals in the United States.

49

Percentage of all deaths suffered by people in the American South, one of four regions.

72

Deaths caused by ā€œother mammals,ā€ the most represented category in the study. Itā€™s estimated that most of these injuries are farm-related and caused most often by horses and cattle.

1

Death per year caused by sharks, according to data from theĢż.

60

Deaths perĢżyear from hornets, wasps, and beesā€”the second most represented category in the study.

72

Percentage of all animal-related deaths suffered by men.

6

Deaths from venomous snakes eachĢżyear.

34

Deaths per year from dogs, the third most represented category in the study.

9

Deaths perĢżyear from dogs to children age four or youngerā€”they suffer at a rate nearly twice that of the next closest age group.

4.5 Million

Dog bites per year in the United States, a number from aĢż.

80

Percentage of all animal-related deaths suffered by Caucasians.

1

Death caused by a crocodile or alligator over the eight-year study period.

189

Deaths caused byĢż, a type of fatality not included in the study.

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The Attack (As told to Joe Spring):

I decided to go camping on short notice as an end-of-the-summer deal with five friendsā€”my girlfriend, her sister and brother-in-law, and two male friends. We drove up by Cass Lake, Minnesota, to Camp Winnibigoshish.

We were hanging out until about three in the morning. My girlfriend Rachel wanted to sleep outside. As she got ready for bed, everybody else went into their tents. She picked a spot by her Jeep. She had a blanket on the ground and another on top of her. Once she was situated, I walked over and lay next to her.

I had sweatpants and a sweatshirt on. I had my back down, my elbows on the ground, and my hands on my hipsā€”all of which allowed me to have my head up to look at Rachel. We were awake the whole night, talking.

Around 4:30 A.M., I was mid-sentence when I felt something clamp down on the back of my head. I could feel the teeth, but I couldnā€™t see or hear anything. Rachel was looking at my eyes as I was talking, so she actually saw the wolf bite down.

I reached for the back of my head. My hands went to wolfā€™s jaws. Itā€™s not like there was any precision to what I was doing. It was kind of a mess. I struggled. I moved my hands around, from its jaws to the side of its jaws, near its cheeks. I put pressure on its head with my hands. Eventually I just held its head in place and jerked my head forward really hard. I didnā€™t pry its jaws open. I just put pressure on its head and then pulled my head forward.

After my head came out, I jumped up. It was maybe seven feet away from me, pacing back and forth, growling really loud. It was shaggy and pretty big. It looked like a coyote, but bigger.

My family is really big into hunting, so Iā€™d seen wolves from our deer stand, but I never had fear of wolves. The other times Iā€™ve seen them, they ran away from me. I have never seen any aggression. I had no idea this could even happen.

I thought the wolf was going to lunge back at me or Rachel. I started kicking and screaming at it. Rachel had had her head under the covers, but as I was kicking and screaming, she got up and ran to the jeep.

Rachelā€™s brother in law was in his tent. I yelled for him a couple of times. ā€œMax! Max!ā€

After maybe five or ten seconds of yelling, the wolf turned and ran. It wasnā€™t a panicked run. It just kind of trotted into the brush. I donā€™t really know where it went after that. I was just focused on my head.

I could feel the blood dripping down the side of my face. I reached up with my bare hands. I was bleeding really bad, but there wasnā€™t really much pain. I donā€™t know why. Maybe adrenaline? Or maybe I just wasnā€™t able to focus on the pain because I was focusing on getting out of there? I quickly threw a blanket over my head and pressed down. Max ran out of his tent and helped me to the truck.

It took us a moment to clear the front seat. By that time, the blood had soaked the blanket, so we took it off. We grabbed a roll of paper towels and used them to bandage my head.

When I sat down in the truck there was this really sharp pain, and then throbbing.Ģż I could feel each tear. I had a huge gash that was maybe four inches and then a bunch of puncture wounds. I could feel each individual thing and they all they had their own kind of pain, but the gash hurt the most.

I called my dad right away and told him I had been attacked. He told me, ā€œCall 911.ā€

I called them next. They told me theyā€™d send somebody out to see what was going on. Iā€™ve never hurt that bad. I thought I was going to vomit all of the way into the ER. It was a 45-minute drive.

The paper towel soaked through a couple of times and I just kept putting layer after layer on. I knew I didnā€™t want blood all over the place. I had people telling me what to do. ā€œPut pressure on it,ā€ they said.Ģż Everybody was a little shook up, but they handled it really well. ā€œItā€™s going to be OK,ā€ they said.

My dad met me at the ER. The bleeding had pretty much stopped. A nurse cleaned out my wound, but I had to wait probably an hour for the doctor. He came in and cleaned everything out real well, too. Once they cleaned my head, the bleeding started again. It wasnā€™t gushing, but it took probably three hours before the bleeding stopped. They put 17 staples in my head, gave me rabies shots, and bandaged up the area.

Iā€™ve always told my friends, ā€œYouā€™re safer outside than you are in the city.ā€ I just never dreamed something would attack me. My family is pretty outdoorsy and we camp a lot. I donā€™t fear that I will be attacked in my life again. It might be weird camping outside at night again, but I just have to work up to it.

Analysis:

Graham did the right thing by fighting off the wolf and then standing and yelling. ā€œHe needed to challenge the animal,ā€ says Tom Provost, a regional manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. ā€œRunning away may have further triggered the predatorā€™s natural reaction to attack.ā€

Two days after the incident, officials trapped and shot an 84-pound wolf nearby. The dead animalā€™s muscle tissue matched DNA from saliva taken from the blanket Graham wrapped around his head. The DNA showed a pure wolf, not a coyote-wolf hybrid. The animal tested negative for rabies and showed no signs of canine distemper virus. Officials dug more. A necropsy, the animal equivalent of an autopsy, revealed the left side of the wolfā€™s jaw was shorter than the right side. His left upper canine had never irrupted out of the gums, and his upper molars and lower molars didnā€™t line up. A healthy adult male wolf can exert enough pressure with its jaw to snap a mooseā€™s femur in a string of bites. The wolf that attacked Noah Graham was a one-and-a-half-year-old male with a messed up jaw.

The wolfā€™s stomach included only fish spines and scales. Not far from Lake Winnibigoshish, there are resorts with fish cleaning stations where fish guts and scales remain on the round. There are still other areas on the shore where fish are cleaned, or where dead fish may wash up. Campers reported seeing the wolf walking near tents the weekend it attacked Graham. Itā€™s quite possible the animal was scavenging around the lake for fish or around campsites for garbage.

Further examination of the skull showed more. Sometime in the past, the wolf had an injury to the face that damaged its upper jaw. His nasal cavity suffered an inflammation at some point, and, as a result was deformed and smaller than average. The injury to the upper jaw may be the reason that several teeth didnā€™t irrupt. There was also a large dental cyst. The left front side of the brain was different than the right front side. The animalā€™s nasal nerve, olfactory bulb, and frontal lobeā€”which helps control emotion and decision-makingā€”had severely atrophied. He had remarkable brain lesions that were more accentuated on the left side of the brain than the right side.

ā€œWe canā€™t know with certainty why this wolf approached and bit the teen,ā€ says Minnesota wildlife health program supervisor Michelle Carstensen. ā€œBut the necropsy results support the possibility that its facial deformity, dental abnormalities, and brain damage predisposed it to be less wary of people and human activities than what is normally observed in healthy wild wolves and also affected its ability to effectively capture wild prey.ā€

Context:

Almost everything about a wolf evolved to run and hunt, and, at times, to decide whether to do one or the other. The animals often prey on ungulates, teaming up in packs of two or more to run down deer, elk, moose, and bison. Theyā€™ll also kill other predatorsā€”including cougars, black bears, and polar bear cubsā€”though they rarely dine on the meat. At times, they scavenge. In Minnesota, they may consume anything from chokecherries to cows, but they mostly hunt deer, which they track with an exquisite sense of smell. They usually go for the neck, slice open the abdomen with their canines, and then dine on everything from the entrails to bone marrow. It is not unusual for wolves to cover 25 to 30 miles in a day, and hundreds of miles of territory in a month, looking for food. State officials have witnessed the animals sprinting at speeds up to 35 mph. When theyā€™re not pursuing prey, they may be running from perceived threats, which might include anything from the sound of an avalanche to the sound of a Chevy Avalanche.

Itā€™s not an easy thing to count a population of wolves. Since they often avoid people and the scent of people, capturing them is difficult. They often live in dense forests and run over long distances, so aerial surveys have their limits. Their tracks often overlap and disappear, so counting signs is a monumental and sometimes misleading task. Still, officials in Minnesota did their best last winter. In November, they asked for wolf observation data from 11 national, state, and private organizations whose field employees might see wolves or signs of wolves. By the end of winter, they had received .

The majority of those observationsā€”61 percentā€”were tracks. The next biggest chunk of data included howls, kills, dead wolves, and scat. Less than ten percent of the observations were of living wolves. Officials took all those observations and mapped them out to figure out the wolfā€™s range. They combined the observations with other considerationsā€”such as habitat type and pack sizeā€”and came up with an . Though the degree of error predicts the number of wolves could be anywhere between 1652 and 2640 animals, the current population estimate is much higher than the 750 estimated gray wolves living in Minnesota in the 1960s. Itā€™s also a lot lower than the 2921 wolves estimated for the winter of 2007. The drop comes from a number of factors: the state instituted a 2012 hunt that claimed , nearly 300 wolves were killed in response to depredations on livestock in the nine months leading up to the winter wolf survey, the state expanded hunting of ā€œā€ , a mild winter made it harder for wolves to hunt the deer that were left , and the Minnesota moose population declined.

Any skeptical reader might think that the number of animals hunted for sport and killed in response to taking livestock almost matches the decline of the last five years. They wouldnā€™t be wrong. Any skeptical scientist might point out that because the confidence intervals of the 2007 and 2013 surveys overlap, itā€™s possible that there has been no change in the numbers between the two surveys. They wouldnā€™t be wrong either. Estimating the population size of wolves is a .

Itā€™s much easier to estimate and calculate the numbers of wild wolves that have attacked people in Minnesota. The state offers an interesting study area because it is the only place in the continental United States, aside from an island in Michigan, where the animals were not wiped out in the mid-1900s. The Minnesota DNR says this is the only documented incident in state history.

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To some photographers, the sudden explosion of image sharing on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram must have seemed as and as the giant, three-lipped, waves that rare up and smash Oahu’s North Shore in winter.

Clark

By 2010, a lot of shooters were already being asked to do more for lessā€”video shorts, online galleries, and behind-the-scenes narratives. The new platforms meant more work, with no direct payoff. Some photographers understandably saw a threat.

saw an opportunity. He had already made a career out of jumping into mutant waves and coming out with pretty pictures. He dove into the digital mess and came out with a clean strategyā€”sharing those things that he loved. He posted photos of his favorite waves, videos of himself at work, pictures near his home on the North Shore, and, eventually, he started offering compliments for others shooting shorebreak. Now he has 700,000 followers and counting on , , and .

Early on a fall morning, I sat down with Little in the shade of some ironwood trees on Oahu’s North Shore. Small three-foot rollers lapped the coast, a light wind blew, and a homeless person slept under a camouflage tarp fifteen feet away.Ģż Everything was calm, except for Little’s iPhone. Every time he pulled it out of his pocket to show me a picture, the phone registered dozens of likes, follows, and comments. I wanted to find out how the 44-year-old lensman’s social media strategy is evolving, and learn more about his newest professional project, a good, old-fashioned photo book, .

OUTSIDE: How have things changed since you started?
³¢±õ°Õ°Õ³¢·”:ĢżWhen I started seven years ago, there were always people shooting Pipeline and other waves, but as far as someone just shooting shorebreak? I was the only one doing it 110 percent every day. I didn’t know I was going to get into it as a career because I was still learning the camera. I was in these big barrels and I thought, “How fun and exciting; you’re getting exercise and are able to be in the moment.” Then I put my pictures up on the screen and I was able to look at the moments again. It was addicting. I can see how all of these people are right behind me doing the same thing and just loving it. I can see the passion in their eyes. I know where they’re coming from. I don’t blame anybody.

In the beginning I was kind of like, “Oh no, people are trying to follow what I am doing, ” Of course, I was trying to be protective. Now, I’m kind of like, “You know, there are just so many people. Let’s embrace it instead of trying to fight it.” I mean, if the waves are perfect and a guy goes in front of me and doesn’t know better, I’ll tell him, “I’m trying to shoot into the sun there.” And 99 percent of the time he’ll go, “Oh, thanks.” On a bigger day it will be less crowded. I don’t know what it will be like this year, but every year so far the number of people has doubled. So, we’ll see.

How many people would you estimate go out now?
It depends on the size of the waves, but on a smaller, clean, perfect day? Geez, I’ve seen probably 20 or 30 at some spots. Where as a few years before you would have just one or two guys starting out. Seven years ago, there would have been nobody.Ģż

How is your new book is different from your first book?
There are a lot more locations. We’ve got Japan, California, and the outer islands in there, meaning Maui, Kauai, the Big Island. It’s a mixture, but it’s still mostly the North Shore. It’s a smaller bookā€”10×10 with fewer pagesā€”but it’s got some gnarly stuff. Of course, a lot of its images have been on social media, and I can get a good gage from that. There are also some images that are very special to me that I put in there.

Did you use social media to test what images went in the book?
I definitely did. If they’re hot, they’re hot. If they’re not, they’re not. Everybody has their own eye. I have my own eye. And I share images with my wife, my son, my daughter, my dadā€”all of my family and my friendsā€”to see what they think too. I like to get other people’s opinions. And I want people to enjoy the book, so I want the photos in there that have had mad reviews on Facebook or Instagram

So do you look at the likes or the comments? I see some photos get 30,000 or 40,000 likes.
No so much the likes, because there are a lot and they fluctuate. I often go more by the comments. I sometimes get between 200 and 2,000. I try to respond sometimes and tell people thank you and answer some questions. It just depends whether I’m at my son’s baseball game or my daughter’s soccer game or whether I have some time alone at home. Social media is so big now. If I want to keep up with it, it can almost be a conflict at home.

Do you feel pressure to be on social media?
Well, if I’m in the mood and it feels fun, then I’m on there and going back and forth. I’ll talk story for as much as I can with people. But if I’m not in the mood, maybe I’ll just post one photo. I have to ask myself, “OK what’s my mojo today?” If I’m feeling good and I want to strike, then I’ll be on it. That’s the key, because people can tell. It’s funny how feelings, how momentum, can come across on social media. You do want to be real.Ģż

So you don’t have to be snarky? You can be sincere and get a good reaction?
You definitely can be sincere. There’s no question. And you’re always going to get haters. That’s a big part of it too. And you have to try and put out the fires. If you don’t, you’re going to have a number of people talking smack.

What kind of smack will people talk with you?
You’ll just get guys that will just straight out say something to get your goat. They just want to fish. They say this sucks or screw this. They’ll even talk about your kid. They’ll say anything. A lot of it doesn’t really bother me. And I’m not one that’s going to start a fight because you can’t win. It would just keep going on. I just use the block tool if it gets to that point.

I choose to focus on myself, focus on my images, and focus on what I do. Every once in a while I get sucked into something, but in general, I try to stay positive and share the beauty with the world. A lot of people appreciate that. I’m stoked to see guys that say, “Yeah, you inspire me to shoot.” Sometimes I even get some guys that I’m fans of, like , commenting. I don’t know the guy, but we’re going back and forth over social media. ,Ģż he’s my friend, but it’s the same thing, we go back and forth. It was funny. Back in the day, when I first started and had 5,000 followers, I said to Slater, “If you want you could give one of my waves a shot out?” He said, “No problem.” A week later he went out and said Clark Little has some of the best wave photos on Instagram, and boom, all of a sudden I had 10,000 to 20,000 new followers. He shared an image that’s in the new book.

And now you’re climbing so fast with followers, soon Kelly Slater will be asking you for promotion on social media?
Haā€¦. I doubt that, but I love the guy. He’s honestly my favorite surfer. I’ve known him ever since he was a kid and coming to the North Shore of Oahu. He’s always been supportive. I know it changes momentum if somebody huge like Kelly Slater gives you a shout. It was fun because he’s a legend.

Is there an image that you’ve been surprised at the number of likes and comments?
Oh, for sure. There was one with just a turtle coming up for air. The head was drawn back in the original picture and I zoomed in when I shared it. It just went berserk. It was something like 1500 comments in three hours. I didn’t expect it, but different people have their own creative eye. I didn’t even have a watermark on it. I just thought, this is kind of cool and put it up. You just don’t know.

recently I’ve put up of me shooting the shorebreak have gotten some huge responses. I was kind of happy to see that people appreciated me taking some hits from waves to get the shot. Like a seasoned surfer, shorebreak photographers might make a bystander think their craft is easy, but both take a lot of ocean knowledge and experience. You need to know what you are doing. You still get cracks and beat up sometimes to get the shot. Most of the time I enjoy getting tumbled.

Tell me about the physical aspect of your job.
Talk about being healthy. In the winter, when it is firing, I’ll go out anywhere from three to six hours in two sessions. I will lose up to 15 pounds during the season. I don’t have time for anything but being out there and running down on the shore or swimming in the shorebreak. It’s almost a sport. You have to be an athlete and a photographer. You have to be in shape and know the ocean, especially when it’s bigger and gnarly. To get that heavy, big, five-lip shot, you got to put yourself in some heavy situations.

How has your photography changed in the last three years?
I’m still doing my thing here, but I’ve gone on a few tripsā€”to Tahiti for Apple computer and other odds and ends. I’ve also gone out here with tiger sharks, to swim freely with them without a cage. It’s up to you on how close you want to get, but it’s just rad. I love to get the great shot, but I don’t want to get grinded. You’re looking at the shark, and he’s looking at you. Sometimes they give you a good vibe and they just circle around, but I’ve had one tweak and look at me. Then I was like, “OK, I’m done.” I got out of the water.Ģż

How big were the sharks?
There were two, and the guy that took me said they haven’t seen them here the whole year. So I was lucky enough to shoot with them. One was ten to twelve feet. One was a smaller one, maybe eight feet.Ģż

I saw the black and white photo.
Yeah, it was a really cool experience. I respect them. I won’t be cocky at all when it comes to those creatures. It’s their home and I try to be as mellow as I can when I’m out there. Of course I was stressing while I was out there, and the guy who took me said, “Yeah, they can pick up your heart beating.” I was like, “Oh sheez, well then I really have to remember to take a breath.” I guess no matter what, if you put yourself out there with them with no cage, anything can happen.Ģż That is part of the excitement.

How close were you?
Probably at the closest five feet, which is at the point when they come up and then turn their head. They’ll get real close, but I’m not one to shove my camera into their teeth. You just kind of feel it out. That was a very cool experience that I won’t ever forget. I might go again if it’s a variable day and there are glassy conditions, because you get these reflections on the top of the water. I want to see if I can get a real tack sharp picture, because people have been coming into the gallery often and asking about the picture of the shark.Ģż [61,000 Likes, 1400 Comments]

Wait, so do you get orders right after you post to Instagram?
Yeah, I’ll put up an image quick on my phone, and people ask, “Can I purchase it?” The gallery starts getting calls. It’s amazing what Instagram can do. It’s a positive thing. I mean, these posts can go anywhere in the world. When we put photos up on Instagram and Facebook at the same time, the Website server kicks into overdrive to handle the traffic spike.

Has there been a photo that you thought would do really well that hasn’t?
There’s a handful of them. I can’t think of a single one. I’d have to look at my phone. Here, let’s seeā€¦

This shot to me is really nice. It’s a clean, big, kicking shore break and it didn’t even get 100 comments. So that’s one where I was shocked. Then again, you look back and say, I’ve taken tons of shots like that. So I understand.

This is a picture of my niece, and people harassed her in the comments. It’s like, What? She’s 14 years old. She won the ISA Longboard Championships in Peru against men and junior champions. All some people could do is compare her to Miley Cyrus. So I had to put out the fires for three hours. That was a trippy thing.

I took this picture at “The Wedge,” in Newport Beach. If you’re talking about using Instagram as a tool, all I did was one thing. All of the groms had been asking me, “When are you coming to California?” I was in California because had donated some shirts for and we had one more day and I thought we could try something. The guy from Hurley said, “You know what, let’s just do it.” I said, “OK, I’m going to be here at 5 o’clock and let’s invite the groms. We’ll talk story and jump in the water.” It was the coolest thing. Hundreds of grommets showed up with their little and questions. That was one of the gnarliest moments of my career. It was chaosā€”almost too much.

Do you have a shot you really want?
The sharks are something new and different that I’ve never done. I want to get out there and get different things. The ocean is definitely my second home and it’s where I want to be, whether it’s shooting turtles, sharks, dolphins, big shorebreak, small shorebreak, clean little barrels, backs of the waves. There’s so much, but I do just want that perfect wave. I’m always going to strive for a better wave that has a better arc or the sun is in a better spot. I’m always pushing it in the ocean and having fun. I don’t feel like I have to go out and shoot. I feel like I can’t wait to go out and shoot. I want to keep that stoke. If I lose that drive, then I’ll relook at things. But right now, I still have it. I still am excited and happy, like a kid at a candy store, waiting for the perfect shorebreak wave to come up. When it gets to that size where it’s gnarly and you’re screaming “Go, Go, Go,” and there are 15-foot faces? That’s what I want.Ģż Then sharing that with people, whether it’s through social media or my gallery, because I want to allow people to go, “Oh that’s cool,” as if they’re with me in that moment.

Some of the negative comments say things like, “Clark Little only shoots one thing.” But it seems like you’ve been rewarded for shooting one thing?
Yeah, it’s so trippy. As I watch some other popular Instagram or Facebook sites, I see they gather their content from various artists and photographers. My Instagram and Facebook showcase photographs just from me. It’s original content. I’m proud of Hawaii as a beautiful place. I get to capture the beauty of the North Shore and these people here back me up because they love Hawaii too. This is a special place in the world.Ģż

Do you think there is something to be said for developing one skill in one place?
Yes. I’m overwhelmed at the positive feedback. I saw more of that negativity in the beginning. I haven’t heard that as much now. Some people, I don’t know, maybe they move on. It’s such a simple thing. Either you enjoy it or you don’t.

And even I see beautiful stuff out there where I go, “Wow, I like it. I’m impressed.” The kids have GoPros and are getting great shots. I’m like, “Wow, that is pretty cool.” It’s neat to give back and see the kids get all psyched after I write a comment.

I am happy to be a shorebreak photographer. That’s my love. That’s my core. That’s where I started. I’ve always loved sharing it with the world in a positive way. I’m just grateful that I get to do it, and that there’s so many people that just appreciate the power and beauty of it.

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As Daniel Coyle, co-author of The Secret Race, has pointed out, Lance Armstrongā€™s story is not new. Itā€™s an archetypal tragedy fueled by greed and hubris.

, the new documentary by Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi To The Dark Side) isnā€™t entirely new either. The narrator (Gibney himself), originally enlisted to document Armstrongā€™s comeback in 2009, wound up making a film about the manā€™s dramatic rise and fall. Gibney came to understand that Armstrong’s invitation into his inner circle was a calculated move. Who better to bolster the power of his story, to help weave a more elaborate cloak over the truth, than a director with a reputation for exposing abuses of power?

The film’s two producers, Frank Marshall and Matt Tolmach, already called Armstrong a friend. But just as the team finished its original comeback documentary,Ģż, a string of admissions followed by a hit the news. The filmmakers shelved their first movie. They needed just one thing to happen in order to make a new film: Armstrong to play along.

You shelved your first movie, The Road Back, after Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, and others made allegations against Lance. But then Armstrong contacted you. Talk about that moment.
FRANK MARSHALL: He asked Matt and I to come down to Austin during the Livestrong Fundraiser, , last October.

MATT TOLMACH: It was surreal. The USADA report had come out and people were bailing from the Lance train. Frank and I had long ago drunken the Kool Aid, so we were somewhere in the middle. I was a little skeptical; Frank was wanting very much to believe that there was no substance to this.

And we were in Austin. Lance said, ā€œCome into my office, I want to talk about doping, and I want to come forward, and I want to maybe say something in the movie.ā€ And he came clean.

We were gobsmacked. This came from the mouth of a guy who had been so vehemently denying it for so long. It was just an insane moment in life, to be in the same room with this guy as he comes clean. It was a lot to process. As filmmakers, we were incredibly excited because it meant a whole new life and angle for our movie. But as people who knew him for a long time? It was a stunning and shocking moment.

Did you ask many questions?
MARSHALL: I mostly listened because it was such a stunning revelation. We asked him if he would be prepared to talk to Alex again because there was no movie unless we had a new interview with him. He agreed, and then Matt and I got on a plane the next morning so we could meet with Alex. Then we met with Sony Classics. A new movie evolved.

Did you set up any guiding principles?
GIBNEY: At this point, what you have to understand is that the first film was primarily a comeback film. The Road Back contained within it the idea of the road into the past, a kind of reckoning with past accusations or allegations of doping. Slowly, those failed accusations and allegations became very real.

It became a different kind of investigation, not into whether it happened, but how it happened, and how the lie obscured the reality of what had happened. And so a different kind of move had to be made.

We had on film the anatomy of a lie. It was like that moment in when David Hemmings suddenly realizes he has something in the lens of his camera that he didnā€™t understand. And so now weā€™re going back and doing a different kind of an investigation, moving back and forth in time. Although I was kind of reluctant to put myself in the movie, we all agreed to make my own story part of the storyā€”to really convey the emotional depth of what it’s like to believe and then to have a lie revealed.

Alex, what was the biggest challenge in terms of putting yourself in the story?
GIBNEY: Well, I think the biggest challenge was being honest. I had become a fan. I had to really reckon with my own role in the story, as having been, in effect, part of the cover up.

Why do you think Armstrong gave you full access to document the comeback in the first place?
³Ņ±õµž±··”³Ū:ĢżI think it was hubris. I think it was a sense that he had this act wired, that he had done it before, and he was going to do it again. Everybody could watch, and they could look under the bed, and wherever they wanted, and they could talk to whomever they wanted, but he had this down. It didnā€™t matter if they gave us access, because we wouldnā€™t be able to see anything.

In the film I ask him: ā€œWerenā€™t you concerned that people were going to raise questions about doping when you came back in 2009?ā€ And he said without missing a beat, ā€œOf course.ā€ Not, ā€œYes.ā€ So, there was an expectation that he could give us lots of access and it wouldnā€™t make any difference.

°Õ°æ³¢²Ń“”°ä±į:ĢżLance did let Alex do this. Thereā€™s part of me thinks it was 99 percent hubris. At the same time, thereā€™s something kind of nuts about doing that with someone like Alex who emerges with the truth. Maybe he knew subconsciously that couldnā€™t hold on to this thing anymore, I donā€™t know. Iā€™m always amazed that he did let Alex in.

Were there moments when you felt that Armstrong was trying to control your story?
GIBNEY:ĢżHe is a storyteller, at least when it comes to his own story and his own myth. Itā€™s as if he wrote the script for himself in the morning and then lived it in the afternoon.

There was one day where he lost very badly to rival Alberto Contador. We were hanging out in his hotel room filming him. And he looked me in the eye and he said, ā€œIā€™m sorry. I fucked up your documentary.ā€ I think there was an aspect of bluster to it, but I think there was something very true about it. It was as if he had written the screenplay, but it hadnā€™t come out the way he wanted. He had a narrative for himself that he believed in, and a lot of others believed in.

That was the thing, he had created a story that was so big, and so fantastical, and he even called it a miracle at one point. On the 2005 podium, he said, ā€œIā€™m sorry for those of you who donā€™t believe in miracles.ā€ When you have a guy whoā€™s scripting miracles, heā€™s going to try pretty hard to control that story.

°Õ°æ³¢²Ń“”°ä±į:ĢżThereā€™s an amazing moment in the movie that also speaks to how strange it all was. The moment I showed up at the Tour that year, he’d had a bad day. I went up to him and said, ā€œHey dude, howā€™s it going?ā€ He gave me a hug, and he whispered to me, ā€œWhatā€™s going to happen with the documentary if I donā€™t win?ā€ He was so acutely aware that we were telling a story about him. And so he was trying to be the storyteller and the main character.Ģż

GIBNEY:ĢżThis guy had come to realize that the enormity of his story was so powerful, so financially and emotionally beneficialā€”both to him and to many others.ĢżI think he felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to keep delivering that lie, over and over again.Ģż

Where did his ability to craft a story come from?
°Õ°æ³¢²Ń“”°ä±į:ĢżI think thatā€™s whatā€™s the movie about. He was this angry, fatherless kid who came out on a tear, and then suffered an enormous blow [cancer] and came back to the sport in spectacular fashion. And thereā€™s a whole sequence about the power of that revelation to him and everybody else. Thatā€™s where it all began. And I think the movie kind of examines why he was so ripe for playing the lead in this story about the creation of a myth.

GIBNEY:ĢżJust like he learned to do everything on the bike, he learned how to be a great storyteller because he understood that he was at the center of an extraordinarily powerful story. He learned on the job. I donā€™t think it was innate. I think as Matt says, it was nature, not nurture.

Whatā€™s the ultimate motivation driving that?
³Ņ±õµž±··”³Ū:ĢżI think it just evolved. I think at some point, he understood that the story was enormously profitable, and not just for him. It was profitable for the sponsors, and the sport. And frankly, it was also very powerful to millions of cancer survivors all over the world. We say in the film, itā€™s not a story about doping, itā€™s a story about power.Ģż

Did power motivate him more than money?
GIBNEY:ĢżIā€™m not sure. I think he sees the world in very binary terms. You either winā€”and if you win, you win all out.ĢżOr you lose. Thatā€™s it. Win or lose. End of story.

Why were there no interviews with his mom, or his ex-wife, or anyone from his family?
GIBNEY:ĢżI tried to keep it to the team, to keep it professional. It really became an investigation about his professional life, and not his personal life.

There’s a moment in the film when Armstrong, Bruyneel, and Stapleton are talking about the possibility of Armstrong not being invited to compete in the 2009 Tour. What did you think about that moment after you learned that Lance had been doping?
GIBNEY: Thatā€™s just an unbelievable scene in retrospect, but at the time it was just part of the constant bravado and clamor about doping accusations. You know: How dare they? Which was a constant refrain. But they all knew he was doping. Johann doesnā€™t say, ā€œHe didnā€™t dope.ā€ He says, ā€œHe wasnā€™t busted. He wasnā€™t busted.ā€

GIBNEY: And so it has a whole different subtext.

Can you summarize your relationship to Armstrong? How much did you correspond before the making of this movie?
MARSHALL:ĢżI met Lance before the Sydney Olympics in 2000 through his agent Bill Stapleton; we were both on the Olympic committee. Bill came to me when Lance wrote his book, after the Olympics, and said, ā€œWe think this could be a movie.”Ģż

TOLMACH:ĢżAnd we spent a lot of time with him. We went to every Tour. We rode with him. Lance and I would go out and just hammer the hills, and Frank would be in the car behind us taking pictures. We spent a lot of time with him developing a narrative, so we knew him very well.

Matt and Frank, Ģżhow important was it to have Gibney as the director?Ģż
MARSHALL:ĢżWe selected him to do the first version of this film because as a producer, I like to go with the best. Heā€™s a fantastic documentarian, heā€™s won an , heā€™s done , and he’s also a big sports fan. But when we met with him, he admitted he didnā€™t know anything about cycling, which was actually great because we wanted the film to reach a broader audience.

He was also really fascinated by Lanceā€™s will. Really, he was interested in why Lance was making a comeback. I was interested in that too, and so it made sense to have him as our guy.Ģż

TOLMACH: I think the most important thing to understand is that Frank and I were insiders in the world of Lance.ĢżEven in the previous version of the movie we really wanted to get under the skin of this guy and try to understand him. We needed someone who approached his subjects more forensically and analytically then we would. Alex is the best in the world in that.

Alexā€™s first cut of the movie was brilliant, and was quite biting in its own way. But once everything became clear a year ago, the journalist in him just lit up. He can find sources that no one else can find and weave a narrative that breaks through a very complicated story. It all ended up being really perfect casting.

Was there ever a moment when you butted heads with Alex?
TOLMACH: Absolutely. There was one evening when we were in the cutting room in Columbia Pictures and we were, in the most productive way, having a very heated debate about some of the stuff Alex was putting in about doping.

MARSHALL: It was about balance.

TOLMACH:ĢżAt that point we tended to be the counterbalance to anything that had to do with doping. Long before all of this stuff came out, Alex was hot on the trail on all kinds of noise and allegations that were already out there. He had already and people who nobody was talking to back then.Ģż

MARSHALL:ĢżWe thought, in some instances, the allegations were not relevant to the story we were tellingā€”the incredible story that happened on the mountain in the battle between Contador and Lance. We wanted to err on the side of the exciting race, and also have sort of the smoke that was swirling around. Again, it was about balance.

What was the lesson in making this movie?
TOLMACH: I found the process to be so eye opening, and oddly, the idea that the truth is a ever-moving target is actually a gift when youā€™re making a documentary. Youā€™re given a story that is ever changing. When you make a documentary, youā€™re very nimble, youā€™re not locked into a strip, you can roll with events as they happen. It certainly forced me to take a broader view of things, things that you believe in and things that you are not necessarily willing to question because it might be uncomfortable to go against the grain. I think Alex showed us the importance of always looking for the whole truth, and keeping our eyes wide open at all times and not getting lost in the narrative. It’s been an amazing ride.

MARSHALL: I agree. Unfortunately, the desire to win at all costs has been woven into our culture. I look at things a little more carefully. Iā€™m glad we hung in there to discover the real truth. I mean, Lance was a hero to me. Iā€™m a bit more cynical now. I was probably naĆÆve, probably too idealistic. But winning at all costs is not a good ethic to have; it causes a lot of damage.

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THE PIG matters. It determines the taste. It also anchors the stories that will fuel the 24-hour culinary marathon that, hopefully, has background music provided by a friend with a fiddle.ĢżHunt your own hog, and share the tale about vanquishing of one of North Americaā€™s most destructive invasive species as it smokes.ĢżBarring that, order a pig that.ĢżChef Nick Pihakis guarantees it will taste better.

He would know. In 1985, he opened his firstĢż.ĢżMore than 28 years and 31 restaurants later, he bought a slaughterhouse. In five years, he plans to provide his restaurants with 400 million pounds of free-running hogs raised by 50 Southern farmers. That coalition, called the Fatback Project, evolved after Pihakis joined a motley crew of award-winning chefs and pitmasters to cook a whole hog the old-fashioned way at the Memphis in May barbecue competition. They took third, by avoiding fancy injections and store-bought charcoal and letting the true flavor of the meat stand out byĢżĢżā€œFrom there, we grew, and over the years weā€™ve added several people,ā€ says Pihakis. ā€œOur mission is to learn from each other, teach each other, and teacher other people.ā€

We joined Pihakis, pitmaster Drew Robinson, and local Jim ā€˜N Nickā€™s owner John Haire as they cooked a whole hog in the alley during Charleston Wine + Food Festival. They sweated the technique, but never let it get in the way of the number-one rule of a Southern swinefest. ā€œItā€™s as much about the ceremony of the event as it is about the end result,ā€ says Robinson. ā€œItā€™s a bonding experience.ā€

Hereā€™s Robinsonā€™s advice on how to do it yourselfā€¦

WHAT YOU NEED

ĢżA HOMEMADE GRILL: Follow the instructions atĢżĢżorĢżand build your own slow cooker out of cinder blocks and a large metal grate.

A DEEP FRY TEMPERATURE GAGE: A 200 lb. pig should cook at roughly 210 degrees for 20-24 hours, depending on airflow within the pit. That will feed 100 people, with a good possibility of leftovers.

HICKORY: About a half cord will burn over 20 to 24 hours, depending on the wind. Stack a full cord to be safe.

BURN BARREL:Ģż To fire the hickory into charcoal. A homemade device can be made out of an old 55-gallon barrel, rebar, and a pipe for chimney. (Check out Robinsonā€™s barrel in the video above.)

SHOVEL: To move the coals to the grill as you cook

RUB: AĢżĢżor homemade seasoning (recipe below).

HOW TO COOK

MAKE: the rub. Whisk these base ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, and feel free to tweak with your favorite spices.

Kosher Salt 1 cup

Granulated Sugar Ā½ cup

Brown Sugar Ā½ cup

Paprika Ā½ cup

Black Pepper 2 Tablespoons

Cayenne Pepper 1 teaspoon

Ģż

LIGHT: the hickory in the burn barrel, which is really just a big chimney to turn the wood into charcoal. The wood sits on top of a grate. Embers fall through the grate to the bottom of the barrel. The coals wonā€™t have the harsh taste of wood, but will have that beautiful hickory smoke that you wonā€™t get from just opening a bag of charcoal from the grocery store. ĢżIt will take an hour of burning to get coals.

TRIM:Ģżany excess fat around the belly of the hog and remove any organs that may be left in the pig. Trim a little skin around the hams and the shoulders and expose a little more meat that will become the barkā€”the crispy outside meat coated in rub that caramelizes over time.Ģż

RUB: seasoning over all exposed meat and skin. Be generous.

BUILD: two beds of hickory coals under each end of the grill where the shoulder and ham will lay. Donā€™t spread the coals underneath the entire animal. The belly and tenderloin meat in the middle, which is thinner, will cook faster, and dry out or burn if you do. The temperature should reach and stay at 210 degrees.

PLACE: the the hog on the grill, skin side up. Place the cover over the top.ĢżĢż

STAY: tend the fire for the next 20 to 24 hours. Shovel the coals as needed every 30 minutes to an hour to keep the temperature at 210 degrees. Typically, flip the hog once at after six to eight hours. The meat should turn a deep, smoky brown while cooking.Ģż Don’t wait until the outside is fully caramelized into a dark crust before turning. ĢżPlay cards. Build a fire. Request a song from that camp fiddle player, but donā€™t pine for ā€œIslands in the Streamā€ until at least 4 A.M. Crack open beers as needed.

TEST: the bones and meat after roughly 20 hours. Grab the ham bone and shoulder bone and lightly turn. If they move easily, the pig is ready. If not, cook longer. The rub should be caramelized, with juices dripping into the belly. All of the bones should separate easily from the meat, which should be tender and pull with a pinch. Ask someone to take a close-up picture of the pull, and try to restrain yourself from a money shot joke.

PULL: the hog off the fire. Place on a counter. Pull meat from the ham, the shoulder, the tenderloin, the belly, and some skin. Chop. Mix.

SERVE: it up immediately on a white bun with your favorite barbecue sauceā€”Ģżā€”and pickles. Leave the carcass to be picked by the ravenous masses. Crack open another beer. Soak everything in.

from on .

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RAMSHACKLE IS THE WORD 35-year-old filmmaker Joe York used to describe everything about his first documentary film shoot. In the spring of 2003, the 25-year-old University of Mississippi graduate student set off on a 10-hour drive, from Oxford, Mississippi, to Berea, Kentucky, in a silver 1992 Saturn SL2 with an odometer that had tired of ticking off miles at 220,000. In the backseat, York had thrown a Canon GL2 camera and a Sennheiser shotgun mic that he had rummaged out of boxes found in an Ole Miss AV room. He had little experience making a film, but figured his knowledge of how to tell a good story would suffice. He spent four days shooting, drove ten hours home, and looked at his nine hours of footage. ā€œIt was like that moment you return from the one-hour photo and realize you donā€™t have anything,ā€ he says.

York said his career path up to that point was a string of lucky lottery tickets. He grew up in Glencoe, Alabama, the son of a steel foreman and a world history teacher who told him to work at what he loved. After earning degrees in archeology and anthropology from Auburn University, he worked as the foreman on an archeological dig near Phenix City, Alabama. Eventually, he tired of digging up relics at a fort used during the War of 1812, and began to spend his free time searching backroads for the wildest Southern personalities he could find. He recorded and edited their oral histories, for fun. During a Google search, he came across the University of Mississippiā€™s Southern Studies program and knew immediately he wanted to attend. ā€œSo I filled out my application in the archeology lab at Auburn and mailed it on my lunch break from the fort the day before it was due,ā€ he said.

He got in and met John T. Edge, the director of the , a division of the school that profiled southern food personalities. York put a bug in Edgeā€™s ear. He wanted to shoot films to go with the organizationā€™s oral histories. In 2003, Edge received enough money from ā€”the son of Ruthā€™s Chris Steak House founder Ruth Fertelā€”to commission a film to honor the organizationā€™s Keeper of the Flame Award. The recipient was , a farmer from Kentucky who preserved heirloom bean and tomato seeds that had passed down through his family for generations. Edge knew Yorkā€™s filmmaking skill was more rattletrap than his car, but asked him to drive to Kentucky anyway. ā€œHe wanted it bad,ā€ Edge said. ā€œWe made decisions based on gut, smarts, and heart.ā€

When York returned to Oxford with only crappy footage, he was at a crossroads. He could throw together a sub-par short on Best, or he could call the seed saver and ask for another chance. He picked up the phone and expected to be laughed at or rejected. ā€œIn a lot of ways, it couldnā€™t have been a better scenario, because I canā€™t imagine anybody being nicer about that than Best was,ā€ said York. ā€œHe was just like, ā€˜Oh man, if thatā€™s just what you need to do, just come on up and do it.ā€™ā€

More than 70,000 miles, three cars, and more than 30Ģż later, York is still profiling people for the Southern Foodways Alliance. Though most popular films about food profile celebrity chefs or highlight dubious industry practices, Yorkā€™s art is a celebratory activism of lesser-known experts. Heā€™s a one-man, egoless show: pushing his lens into barbecue spits and farmersā€™ mugs, shooting interviews,Ģżand editing his voice out as much as possible. He gets a contact high being next to people who are so passionate about food, and wants viewers to feel the same.

ā€œHopefully, they get to experience it in the way that I experience it,ā€ he said. ā€œWhich is, most of the time, peering in the seat next to the person in the car, being right there in the field so it feels like youā€™re walking along with them, or riding along with them.ā€

We caught up with York by phone during some rare downtime in Oxford, Mississippi.

When did you get interested in food?
I never in my life thought that the defining aspect of my career so far would be making films about food. But once you get out there, you realize that there may be no better way to get people to open up and talk about themselvesā€”what they really like and what their lives are likeā€”than to get them to start talking about food. I mean, people just really open up about that topic.

Why do you think people open up?
Food is indelibly linked to the best memories we have in lifeā€”and the saddest memories. Especially in the South, food is tied to who you are and where you're from because it is kind of the major supporting character in every scene of your life.

IĢżĢżsuddenlyĢżthis year at age 40. So many of his poems have to with these allusions to food, or what people were eating, or what certain tastes were.

Every year for my family reunion we would cook a whole hog together. That will always be part of my memory of my brother. Every time I have barbecue, every time I cook a pig with somebody, every time I light a big stack of hickory on fire, Iā€™ll always think of him.Ģż

Other foods, other tastes, work that way for everyone. Food is an incredibly evocative part of peopleā€™s lives. When they start talking about it, they start talking about everything else at the same time.

What are some of the difficult subjects you wouldnā€™t otherwise feel comfortable talking about?
Race is one of themā€”not just in the South, but everywhere in the U.S. Itā€™s not something that youā€™re going to walk up to somebody and just say, ā€œHey, you know what. Letā€™s talk about race.ā€Ģż

But you talk to about why she cooks, and she starts talking about growing up in Montgomery and how her mom would take her to the meetings at the churches as they were getting ready to plan the bus boycott or the marches, learning to cook from these older ladies who were cooking sandwiches for the marchers from Selma to Montgomery.

They had to cook for these folks, because nobody else was going to give them something to eat because they werenā€™t going to find a place where they were welcome around the roadside. So they had to carry sandwiches out to them.Ģż

Suddenly a ham sandwich becomes a symbol of their love for these people who were doing the incredibly hard work of trying to gain equality for African Americans in Alabama in the sixties.Ģż

How do you find people to talk to?
The Southern Foodways Alliance has about 1300 or 1400 members, but I also just meet people by chance.

I met a guy in Louisiana on the side of the road. I just ended up spending all day at his house because I was a huge fan of his cochon de lait. When I was driving down to Louisiana, the Mississippi river was flooding. I was going down this old rural road, and the river was coming up awful, and all the tributaries were flooded, and there were all of these deer that had been washed out of their stomping grounds. I stopped on the side of the road and just sat on my car and looked at these deer. Here comes this other guy. I had my camera out and he asked me if I was with the news. And I told him I was looking for folks that were doing ā€”cooking these suckling pigs. And he said, ā€œWell, weā€™re cooking one Sunday if you want to come by the house.ā€

So he gave me his phone number, I called him on Saturday, went over there early on Sunday morning, and spent the day with this family. It's all happy accidents.

Whatā€™s the toughest story youā€™ve ever shot?
We did one on Apalachicola where the fella I wanted to talk to just wasnā€™t into being on camera. He said yes. Then I went down there and he was like, I donā€™t know. Every day I went down there and he said, ā€œNo.ā€ And Iā€™d say, ā€œOK, Iā€™ll come back tomorrow and see if you want to do it then.ā€ In the meantime I would go and ask some of the oystermen if I could muck around on their boat with them. I had a day to kill, so Iā€™d just go ride around on the boat with them and document these guys doing what they do. That was one that ended up not being about the guy I went down to interview. It was called . It ended up being about a husband and wife. The guy was an oyster tonger, and his wife was an oyster shucker.

So much of whatā€™s good in finding your footage are these kind of asides that you may not have been looking for at first.Ģż

Other than that, itā€™s been incredibly easy to do because most of the folks I talk to understand that what theyā€™re doing is important and unusual. Generally speaking, they are very happy to have someone come to talk to them about it and tell their story.

Considering all of the ways that people have let you inā€”youā€™ve spent a lot of time with people in pretty intimate circumstancesā€”whatā€™s the strangest thing youā€™ve come across?
Thereā€™s some stuff that people show you, that you have on film, that you donā€™t share. For example, I was in Louisiana, and they have this absurd rite of passage. I was at this guyā€™s place and he was killing a pig. He was getting ready to butcher it and make boudin. So he killed the pig and he was like, ā€œHey, do you want me to show you how we measure the tail?ā€ So he calls his little nephew over and says, ā€œOK, weā€™re going to teach you how to measure the tail.ā€

He gets the kidā€™s hand and he says, ā€œYou gotta hold your hand still just like that and hold your finger out real straight.”

He pulls the tail out next to the kidā€™s finger. The kid is really intent, really into doing this important thing. So he gets the tail pulled out, makes sure the finger is all straight, and then, boom, he pops the kid in the elbow.

The kidā€™s finger goes right up the pigā€™s ass and they all laugh. Itā€™s this hilarious Cajun rite of passage. All of the people that are there have had that joke played on them at one time or another. So itā€™s just hilarious. The kid even thought it was funny. But if I show that on film, that just looks weird. Out of context, itā€™s just knocking a kidā€™s finger up a pigā€™s ass, you know? Maybe weā€™ll hold off on that.Ģż

And do you have a short that you are most proud of?
I almost canā€™t watch it anymore because of the technical screw-ups, but still, has to be the one. We shot it and it wasnā€™t good and then we went back and redid it. If I had left it where it was and tried to make something of it, I donā€™t know that I would have stayed in filmmaking. On that project, I learned to do it right.

The main thing is just making sure that you do justice to the people that you are filming, that you tell a good story, and that if you screw up, youā€™re not too proud to turn around and do it again.

A film by Joe York about the heart and soul of Southern Food.

The post Southern Food, Centerstage appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

Drowned

How do you save someone who's already dead? Rafa Ortiz, Rush Sturges, and Gerd Serrasolses found out.

The Rio TulijĆ” is a remote white-water river that snakes its way through the rainforest of southern Mexico. Often called Agua Azul because of its swimming-pool-blue color, it features a stunning stretch of five waterfalls ranging from 40 to 70 feet tall. This past March, a team of four world-class kayakersā€”Rafa Ortiz, 26, Rush Sturges, 28, Evan ā€œE.G.ā€ Garcia, 27, and Gerd Serrasolses, 24ā€”attempted to descend the falls as part of an expedition they were filming for a documentary. The previous day, they had become the first paddlers to drop all five waterfalls on the nearby RĆ­o Santo Domingo, arguably the steepest navigable section of whitewater on earth. The Agua Azul mission was to be their final day of filming:

RUSH STURGES: We were coming off the biggest descent of our lives and were tired and sore. I had two black eyes and a broken nose. We were really pushing ourselves to get this helicopter footage on the Agua Azul.

E.G.: We had driven six or seven hours in Rafaā€™s van, slept for like five hours, then woken up at about 6 a.m. The plan was to meet the heli in these flat pools about two-thirds of the way down to the big waterfall set.

RAFA ORTIZ: At the pools, I paddled upstream, away from the guys, to get in my zone, and Gerd kept practicing his hand rolls.

GERD SERRASOLSES: As soon as we saw the chopper, we all got fired up.

E.G.: We had scouted the hell out of the falls when we ran them a week earlier, so I knew exactly where I was going.

GERD: We had to pretty much go one after the other. I watched Evan drop over the lip, then Rush. I wasnā€™t too nervous. I had done it before and knew what I had to do. I went over and threw my paddle.

E.G.: I got out of my boat and was standing on a ledge about 25 feet from the base of the falls. I watched Rush come off. Gerd came next on a similar line, but he corked out and missed a few hand rolls.

GERD: I tried to roll up, but I wasnā€™t feeling any grab.

RUSH: E.G. and I were right there with throw bags, but I didnā€™t think it was that bad.

GERD: I tried to roll a few more times, then got pushed up against some rocks. I grabbed them, but my hands slipped and the water pushed me back down somewhere else.

RUSH: Gerdā€™s boat was full of water and spinning like crazy in this vortex of an eddy. Weā€™re not seeing him come up. Fifteen seconds go by. Twenty. Thirty. I was like, Dude, we gotta do something.

GERD: I kept fighting to get to the surface, but I couldnā€™t get there. I remember opening my eyes and saying, Fuck, Iā€™m running out of air.

RUSH: Heā€™s under for about a minute and a half, and weā€™re panicking. I clipped E.G.ā€™s rope into the back of my life jacket and went over to the spot where Gerd disappeared. I stuck my leg in the water and could feel it sucking down super hard, like a siphon. I didnā€™t want to go
in there.

E.G.: I looked downstream and suddenly saw Gerdā€™s yellow vest.

RUSH: He was facedown. It was the absolute worst-case scenario.

E.G.: I jumped into Rushā€™s kayak. No helmet, no skirt. I paddled like a bat out of hell in this heinously flat pool.

RUSH: Gerd was probably 100 yards downstream from us, and the next waterfall was coming up soon.

E.G.: Rafa actually ran the first waterfall while this whole thing was going on.

RAFA: At the bottom I looked around, and thereā€™s no one there. Then I see Gerd floating facedown and E.G. and Rush chasing him.

E.G.: When I pulled him up he was super heavyā€”like some weird Jell-O object. I was screaming and slapping his back, then started in on CPR. Rush and Rafa got there about 20 seconds later.

RAFA: Gerdā€™s eyes were open a little but not showing life, and he was a mixture of white, purple, and blackā€”the color you see in zombie movies.

RUSH: We were taking turns at CPR and slapping him in the face. It was a primal feeling, just the strongest desire to save a friend.

E.G.: I was yelling at him, ā€œCome on, Gerd! Fight!ā€ He was vomiting up some real nasty mucus and blood. Then we got the idea to pull off his life jacket, and we loosened the neck gasket on his drytop.

RAFA: For four minutes, we were doing CPR on a dead body. I donā€™t remember having much hope. But then he took a breath.

RUSH: His eyes literally lit up.

RAFA: Thatā€™s when I jumped up and started looking for the heli.

RUSH: The chopper hovered over the middle of the river. We carried Gerd to it, and Rafa jumped in with him. He was breathing a bit but still convulsing and coughing up water.

E.G.: After the chopper flew away, there was this weird quiet.

GERD: The next thing I remember is trying to wake up. I was hearing all these loud noisesā€”the chopper, screamingā€”but I couldnā€™t react, and I couldnā€™t see anything. Inside, I was screaming to try and regain power. And then I woke up in the hospital in Palenque. ā€”Mark Anders

Stuck

On a fall day in a Utah canyon, 25-year-old Robbie Tesar WAS nearly swallowed by quicksand.

It was late fall 2011, and I was three weeks into a course with the National Outdoor Leadership School in southeastern Utah, hiking with three other students along the Dirty Devil River. Around midday, we came to a point where the canyon wall met the river. A sandbank extended into the water, and I walked out on it with another guy. About 20 feet from shore, I suddenly sank knee deep. The other guy did, too, but only one foot. After 15 minutes of struggling, it was clear we were going to need some leverage. The two students on shore helped us rig a pulley so we could yank ourselves out. After about an hour, the other guy was able to slip out of his boot. He and one of the other two students went for help while the last one stayed with me.

It was about 65 degrees out when I first got stuck, and I was wearing cotton work pants and a long-sleeved wool shirt. When the sun went behind the canyon wall at around 3 p.m., it got cold, and I was wet. I put on a couple of jackets. The runners came back after not finding anyone, and we agreed to activate a personal locator beacon. They passed me warm food and hot water over the pulley. We built a raft using a sleeping pad and sticks so I could rest my upper body without sinking deeper. From my waist down I went mostly numb, though I kept my leg muscles moving.

A helicopter arrived at about 8 p.m. The plan was for me to build a harness with some webbing and tie it to one of the skids, then the chopper would take off while I held on to the skid. But when it started pulling, I didn't move. On the fourth try, I felt my back goĢżpop.ĢżI heard the pilot say over the radio, ā€œIf I try this again, I'm going to rip the kid in half.ā€

The helicopter left to get more help. When the rescuers got back, they passed me a backboard and a shovel, but I couldn't get any leverage to dig. Then ten guys got into rafts on either side of me. I held on to the sides while others dug. I finally broke free around 2 A.m. I was so elated that I tried to step into a raft and face-planted.

At the hospital, after they warmed me up, they wanted to give me a shower. I couldn't stand, so they said I could get help from either a guy named Jed or these two beautiful nurses. I hadn't bathed in 25 days. ā€œI'll take Jed,ā€ I said. ā€œI'm in no state to be showering with women.ā€ ā€”Joe Spring

Overboard

When 50-year-old South African surfer Brett Archibald fell from a chartered 72-foot motor-boat this past spring, during an overnight crossing from Sumatra to the Mentawai Islands, he was some 40 miles from the nearest shore.

April 17ā€”1:30 A.M.
I woke up feeling sick and went to the head and immediately started exploding out both endsā€”it was food poisoning. I went on deck to throw up and saw one of my mates, who was also sick. I went and told the captain, then went back outside. Thatā€™s the last thing I remember until I came to in the ocean and saw the boat about 200 feet from me, sailing away. I must have fallen over the railing. I screamed, but I knew it was futile.

April 17ā€”3 A.M.
I decided I had two choices: live or die. I chose to live. I immediately started focusing on getting my heart rate down, using breathing and meditation. Thankfully, the water was about 82 degrees.Ģż

April 17ā€”2:30 P.M.
I knew the guys would look for me. And that afternoon, as a storm was lashing, the boat came along. It was within 350 feet, but because of the rain my mates couldnā€™t see me. I screamed and swam toward them, but the current dragged me sideways. The boat stopped, and I thought they saw me, but a minute later they sailed away. That was a meltdown moment. I thought, Thatā€™s it, Iā€™m done.

April 17ā€”Sunset
Something hit me on my left side. Fish had been nibbling at the back of my leg, so I was bleeding. Then it hit again, harder. I wanted to see what it was, so I swam under-water and looked right at a blacktip reef shark about my size. I thought, At least it will be quick. Then I realized, Wait, itā€™s a reef shark. If he attacks me, Iā€™ll shove my arm down its mouth and have it drag me into a reef. Then it was gone.

April 18ā€”7 A.M.
A fishing boat sailed straight at me. But it must have reached some coordinate, because it turned sharply and sailed away. Right then I thought, I canā€™t do this anymore. Before the trip, my wife had read me a story about drowning being a beautiful way to die. I tried to suck down some water, but it didnā€™t work. So I went about six feet under and breathed. It was actually quite easy. The water came in through my mouth and out my nose. Then my brain went, What the hell are you doing? and I came up like I had an engine. While I was sputtering at the surface, I saw a cross coming at meā€”a mast. I put my head down and swam while counting to 1,000. When I looked up, I saw four spotters on the roof of the boat. I screamed. They couldnā€™t see me, but they could hear me. They eventually located me with binoculars. Iā€™d never been so happy to see a boat in my entire lifeā€”even if it was full of Aussies! ā€”Ben Marcus

Falling

One bad decision sends northern California skydiver Craig Stapletoon toward a crushing impact

My skydive teammate Katie and I had planned a formation for a jump last March where we would float a giant U.S. flag between our two flying parachutes. I had done about 7,000 jumps and competed in six world meets and probably 14 nationals. Iā€™m also the safety adviser for my local drop zone here in Lodi. Katie looked at me as we were getting on the plane and said, ā€œI donā€™t have a knife. Is that a problem?ā€ I took mine from my chest pouch and handed it to her. In 25 years, I had never needed one. Plus, I had a backup attached to my leg.

We started our trick at 6,000 feet. Katie placed her parachute just below me, so I could put my feet in the lines. I passed one end of the lanyard weā€™d use to hold the flag down to her, and she clipped in. At that point, we were supposed to move away from each other horizontally, but we ended up moving apart vertically, and I got jolted so hard when the lanyard straightened out that I was flung forward and upside down. My right ankle got caught in one of my lines, and my chute inverted, then circled around itself and knotted. The lanyard was around my neck.

At about 4,800 feet, Katie released her end of the lanyard, setting me free, then I pulled the handle to release my main parachute, but only the left side came off. I was spinning so wildly, I couldnā€™t grab the knife from my leg. At 1,800 feet, I fired my reserve parachute while tangled up, but the main parachute just started eating it as soon as it opened.

I was falling at 30 to 35 miles per hour. I looked down and saw vineyards. There were grape plants every four to five feet. Inside each one was an iron spike about six feet tall, and they were all strung together with fencing wire. I visualized the horrible things that were about to happen to me. I said goodbye to my wife and kids and apologized to them. I thought, Just relax as much as you can, roll with the impact, and exhale.

Next thing I know I was lying on the ground. Iā€™d landed between all the wires, in dirt that had just been plowed, so it was like really fine sand. Katie called 911, and the emergency crew came pretty rapidly. They cut my jumpsuit off and looked at me. I didnā€™t have internal bleeding, just a separated left shoulder, and my left side was really sore. The best news I heard was the fire chief canceling the helicopter.

My wife was signing into the security desk at the hospital when I walked out. All she wanted to do was give me a hug, but I was like, ā€œNo hug! I canā€™t take it!ā€ ā€”J.³§.

Shot

Two months into a planned source-to-sea expedition down the Amazon River, 24-year-old adventurer Davey du Plessis was in his kayak when the first shotgun blast hit his back.

I was having my best day tracking wildlife. Iā€™d seen a manatee, a river dolphin, and a couple of new birds. When two guys in their twenties motored past in a pirogue, I didnā€™t pay them much attention. Ten minutes later, something slammed into my back and knocked me into the water. My arms were frozen stiff. I didnā€™t know what was going on. I kicked to the surface but didnā€™t see anyone. Then something hit my face. I used my head to push my kayak to the riverbank. I sat down and got hit againā€”someone was shooting at me from the jungle. I looked down and saw a pool of blood. I thought, This is where you are going to die. I lay down and closed my eyes.

When I opened them moments later, I saw one of the guys in the pirogue motoring toward me. I stood up and put my hands together like I was praying. ā€œPlease leave me alone,ā€ I said, then kicked my kayak toward him. ā€œTake it.ā€ He just stared and headed upriver.

I ran. I got shot again, in the leg, but kept going. After five minutes, I saw two men on the opposite side of the river. I tried to yell, but nothing came outā€”the shots had damaged my neck and lungs. Eventually, they saw me and took me to their village, where everyone gathered around and whispered. I couldnā€™t feel the right side of my face or hear out of my right ear. My thoughts went all over. Then this old lady came up to me with a bucket of water and started cleaning the mud off my legs. That brought me back to the moment.

I asked to be taken downriver to a city called Pucallpa. The villagers made a wooden stretcher, wrapped me in blankets, and hauled me to a boat. A couple of hours later, we reached another village. It was night, and the only light came from torches and candles. The people there said to me,Ģżā€œPobre, pobreā€ā€”poor, poor. I took the blankets off and said, ā€œI have nothing to give you.ā€ After about an hour, I started to throw up blood. They put me in a different boat. Throughout the night, I was passed along like this, from village to village. Late the next morning, I saw port cranes over the top of the canopyā€”Pucallpa. At the hospital, I reached my mom by phone, and she helped me get a flight to Lima.

I had 22 pellets in my body and punctures in my lung and carotid artery. I still canā€™t feel the right side of my jaw. Initially, I thought my survival was a testament to my strength, but lately Iā€™ve realized it was because of the compassionate villagers who passed me down the river like a baton. ā€”J.³§.

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On September 28, aerial stuntman Jeb Corliss plans to jump out a helicopter and pilot his wingsuit through a 30-foot-wide fissure in a nearly 900-foot-tall fin of rock, called Mount , in China. The stunt, which Corliss is dubbing ā€œThe Flying Dagger,ā€ requires that he fly with more precision for a longer period of time than he ever has before. And he says pulling off such sustained control isnā€™t even the scariest part of what heā€™s attempting.

Jeb Corliss at Mount Jianglang

Jeb Corliss standing in the crack at Mount Jianglang

Mount Jianglang

Mount Jianglang

It’s been a rough year for BASE jumpers. So far in 2013 there have been in the sport, the deadliest year on record, according to ., arguably the biggest name in the game, has had his share of close calls. Last year he crashed into South Africaā€™s Table Mountain while flying at more than 100 miles per hour. He from near kidney failure and a torn up left leg, then jumped off the same mountain where he got hurt. He’s also helped organize the worldā€™s first proximity wingsuit race in China, had surgery to fix a torn ACL, and jumped all over Europe. Now he’s organized his most challenging stunt to date. We called him up to hear more about how he plans to take a stab at the ā€œDagger.ā€

OUTSIDE: Where did you get the idea for ā€œThe Flying Daggerā€?
CORLISS: Frank Yang of contacted me in late April or early May and wanted to know if I thought it was possible to fly through this crack in China. Normally, when non-jumpers come to me with something like that, Iā€™m really skeptical. They donā€™t really understand what we do.

They flew me out and took me to three locations that were all very cool, very remote, and very unique. I thought, ā€œOK, these are cool. I could do any one of these.ā€ Then the final spot they took me to was this crack. When I got there I was like, ā€œWow, Iā€™ve never seen anything like this.ā€ I didnā€™t understand how nature could create something like it, with almost perfect 90-degree lines. I walked into the bottom and put my arms out. I had four feet on either side of me.

Itā€™s just not that itā€™s narrow; itā€™s also really long. Itā€™s three football fields long. Itā€™s about 15 feet at the bottom and 60 feet at the top. So youā€™re looking at two people holding hands at the bottom and maybe a bus at the top. It was a very shocking thing to be standing in. My friend Iiro said, ā€œIs this possible?ā€ I said, ā€œYeah, it is possible. This can totally be done.ā€

What will be different about this flight?
A lot of us have done a lot of very precise flights, like Iā€™ve hit the string on balloons, and gone by the arms of , and . But in those jumps I was only super precise for a split secondā€”two seconds max. This time, Iā€™m going to have to be super precise for somewhere between 10 to 30 seconds. The length of time makes it different.

This is also a very committed jump, because once youā€™re in you just canā€™t come out of it. Itā€™s so narrow that you canā€™t deploy inside of it. You have to come out of the crack before you pull your parachute. Itā€™s a very committed flight. Once you enter, you have to complete it. The deeper you go the narrower it gets.

Do you know how you are going to get into, and out of, the jump?
Well, here is the thing. I actually just went to Hungary where we are using to test our ability to render this mountain or canyon in space. So, I am able to jump out of an airplane and three times during each jump. This thing is rendered three dimensionally in front of me. It was interesting training, and I would say I impacted about 50 percent of the time.

Waitā€”you crashed during half of your training runs?
Yeah, but itā€™s . Youā€™re pushing a lot harder in there because itā€™s a unique way of training. It gave me the ability to get a real sense of what Iā€™m doing before I get anywhere near real rock. I think it is going to be the future of how we train for these things.

My biggest concern isnā€™t the flight through the crack. Iā€™m pretty confident I can do it. Iā€™m more concerned with what happens to me when I come out the other end. Itā€™s about 870 feet tall and 900 feet long, but once you come out of it you canā€™t get any more altitude. So when I fly out of this thing, I could be deploying my parachute at pretty low altitude. The problem of pulling at a pretty low altitude is that Iā€™m over a jungle and thereā€™s a fairly small landing area. You want to avoid landing in trees whenever possible, but if you have to land in trees, you have to land in trees. So it could be very exciting.

To put it in perspective, the cave I flew through in 2011 was 400 feet tall, 100 feet wide, and 200 feet deep. So the measurement was quite large compared to ā€œThe Flying Dagger.ā€ I had a big long flight after the cave where I had a 2.5 glide ratio and 45 seconds to deploy the parachute. This stunt is so much narrower, from 100 feet wide to 16 feet wide, and so much longer, from 200 feet to 900 feet long. The fact that I have to fly through a narrow window for such a long period of time, there really hasnā€™t been another flight like it.

Do you have a team of people that help you prepare? How do you figure out the physics of it?
Yeah, I have a whole team of people that help me with everything.Ģż When it comes to the wingsuit flying and the physics? That comes with my many years of experience. There arenā€™t a bunch of people that can help me with that. When it comes to training in a safe way? Yeah, I have a list of people who come up with ideas and make this stuff as safe as it can be done.

Describe the augmented reality training a bit more.
Augmented reality is the opposite of virtual reality. is actual reality with objects three-dimensionally rendered in real space. You donā€™t have goggles. You just have glass that you can see completely through and the images of 3D renderings are projected on that glass. It tricks your mind into believing they are there.

So you were actually jumping out of a plane and had goggles on? And you had the image of the canyon below you?
Yes. I canā€™t tell you exactly how I saw it, but yes. The best way to say itā€¦ was when I jumped out of the airplane at 12,000 feet, 1,000 feet below me was the canyon. As far as my brain was concerned, that canyon existed. As far as my eyes were concerned, I was flying through a mountain. I was flying not just through any mountain. I was flying through the exact mountain Iā€™m going to jump through in China. They went and did a computer rendering of this exact mountain. It was the exact size. The angles were exact. Everything was exact.

So what caused all the simulated crashes?
Well, some of it was due to glitches in the augmented reality. Every once in a while Iā€™d be flying near the mountain and all of a sudden the mountain would move 30 feet. There wasnā€™t much I could do with that. The system and is still in beta. Luckily, in the real word, the mountain is not going to move. Aside from that, it was just me choosing the wrong angle. Iā€™m coming in and I get a little too far back and all of a sudden Iā€™m too shallow and I canā€™t make it all of the way through. I was like, ā€œHuh, thatā€™s interesting.ā€ Obviously I have to come at this thing high enough and be at the right angle to make sure I come out the other end. If Iā€™m too low, then I flatten out and donā€™t have the glide anymore and would just impact halfway through. That was interesting. I was like, ā€œI have to make sure I donā€™t make that mistake.ā€

With wingsuting and proximity flying, whatā€™s the direction you want to go in? More stunts or more races?
Well, I really do enjoy the large stunts. I like to see how far we can pushā€”I donā€™t really want to say the sportā€”but how far we can push ourselves. And this just happens to be one way that I can push myself, to see what Iā€™m capable of. How accurate can I be? How long can I be accurate?

As far as a race is concerned, I see the importance of competition in sports. I understand that is how sports grow. I understand that is how people become professional athletes. I understand that is important for the sport to have a competition. Iā€™m not into that competing, but I understand why other people are and why itā€™s beneficial and helpful for them.

I also see the amount of energy and effort it takes to be competitive, to be .10 seconds faster than the other guy means youā€™ve done a few hundred more jumps than he did that season. I already know Iā€™m not going to win the World Wingsuit League race. Itā€™s the guys that are out there jumping non-stop, everyday, 11 jumps a day. Itā€™s crazyiness what theyā€™re doing. Iā€™m much more interested in the proximity megastunts.

So can you describe for me the feeling you get after a megastunt? Take the jump at Tianmen Cave or what you might feel after youā€™ve done ā€œThe Flying Dragonā€?
I canā€™t tell you what I will feel after this one, because itā€™s always different. And these feelings are a little bit complicated. You have all these dreams. It takes you months, and in some cases years, of practice. When you finally get to the place and succeed in turning one of your dreams into a reality, the feeling is one of pure joy. It makes you feel like you can do anything. Itā€™s very powerful. It gives my life meaning.

This interview was edited from a longer conversation.

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Explorer had already rowed across the Atlantic Ocean , but that was in a race. He and three friends didnā€™t exactly sightsee as they powerstroked across the pond in 72 days. Hanssen wanted to row across again, but with more time to enjoy the sights and share what he saw with others. He and his crew outfitted their rowboat with loads of scientific gear, solar panels, and computer equipment. They put out of Dakar, Senegal, and rowed toward Miami, Florida. Hanssen fulfilled his wish for more time, barely, and for sharing, by an order of magnitude. By the 73rd day of their , they had held video chats with hundreds of school children and measured things like temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and dissolved CO2 for several scientists. Then two rogue waves flipped their 2500-lb. craft and left everyone fighting to survive. Hanssen shares that story, as told to Joe Spring.

The James Robert Hansen

Jordan Hanssen, Adam Kreek, Markus Pukonen, Pat Fleming

We left on January 23 and had a hell of a first 500 miles. We were in a that looked liked it was the baby of a long ship and a V-2 rocket. We took wind on the beam and waves between six and 12 feet, so it was difficult rowing and we got seasick. We had two separate occasions where waves came over the boat and snapped the oars in two. Our wind generator had trouble right off the bat, so we had to conserve the electricity made from our solar panels. Once we got past the Cape Verde Islands, things smoothed out.

We had some cool experiences early on, too. One calm day, I threw off all of my clothes, dove in the water, and swam with humpbacks. Another day, we saw these things that looked like flying fish, but they were six to seven inches and looked like arrows over the water: Flying squid, which landed on the deck. I had never heard of flying squid before, but I had a Jet Boil and some coconut oil. I cooked three for less than 15 seconds. They were soft and delicious.

One night, after we were west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, I was doing push ups and I looked off and said, ā€œHey, thatā€™s a weird cloud. It almost looks like a rainbow.ā€ I looked away and looked back and it just spread across the entire sky, with four shades of gray in it. I was like, ā€œThis is the most profound thing I have ever seen.ā€ Unfortunately the boat was moving all of the time, so itā€™s not like I could keep the camera still to take a photo of the .

Another night a storm went over us and lightning got so close that the VHF antenna started to glow. I turned and saw my friend Markus staring at me with this weird expression. I had a big beard at the time, and I could feel the edges of my beard start to lift up because of the charge.

So, we were 375 miles from Puerto Rico and nearing the Bahamas. We were super exited because the water was going to get a lot more interesting. In some places it would be 30 feet deep. Weā€™d been rowing over two to three miles of water for two months, and we couldnā€™t wait to see the rich biodiversity in the shallow tropical water.

It was calm when I got off my April 6 shift at 2 A.M. I went to sleep and got up about 12 minutes before my 6:00 A.M. rowing shift. The winds and seas had picked up, but we had been surfing in waves twice as big the week before. I had also seen 65-knot sustained winds and gusts of up to 80 in the North Atlantic. This was nowhere near that, maybe 25-knot winds and four- to six-foot swells. We thought about putting in a sea anchor to stabilize the boat and wait things out a bit, but decided against it. Weā€™d seen worse.

The wind was finally blowing us towards Miami so I was pretty excited to get on the oars. I switched out with Adam. Markus switched out with Pat. Markus pulled down his pants and started to use the poop bucket. Adam started to settle himself in the cabin. As I steered the boat, I waited for them to shut the door. Shutting the door is what maintains the boats self-righting capability.

Right when I saw the door closing, these two waves came from a 30 degree off-angle. In my experience, waves come shaped like triangles the vast majority of the time. Occasionally a square wave comes, and if itā€™s square, it affects the boat very differently. A triangle wave lifts the boat and slides under it. As it goes, it pulls the boat forward. A square wave doesnā€™t lift up the stern. It just kind of overwhelms the stern and starts pouring water into the gunnels. I can count on two hands how many square waves Iā€™ve seen in 150 days at sea in this rowboat. And now two were coming one after the other, with only a 30-foot fetch between them.

I turned the stern of the boat toward the first wave. It hit, and it probably dumped between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of water on the deck. The boat sunk down and started listing starboard as it began shedding water. If it had been one wave, we would have been fine, but we were leaning to the side with a second wave coming. So the boat is listed, Patā€™s still reaching out to shut the door, Adamā€™s rolling into Pat, Markus is on the poop bucket, and Iā€™m watching the second wave. It just grabs the boat and corkscrews it right into the water.

Pat was not able to shut the door all of the way. One gallon of water went through the door, then two, four, eight, 16 gallons. All of a sudden the cabin is entirely full of water and Pat and Adam are inside of it and the boat is upside down. Iā€™m floating in the water and I see Markus floating with his pants around his ankles. Adam is about 200 pounds and Pat is about 155, and Adam shoves Pat out of the cabin right away. Maybe 10 to 15 seconds later they popped up and I said, ā€œIs everybody OK?ā€

We were, but the rowboat was upside down and flooded. It could be flipped over, but there was no guarantee. The cabin was full of water.

Before we had left on the trip, we had conducted this training exercise in the water in Anacortes, Washington. We learned the line you pull to inflate the life raft can be 80-feet long. We learned what a life raft sounds like when it opens. Itā€™s disturbing. A life raft outgases for two to three minutes after it inflates. It can sound pretty scary if you havenā€™t heard it before.

We augmented our grab bagā€”those supplies that go with you in the life raftā€”before we left. The guy who sold us our had written a list of the very best stuff you can have in it. I said, ā€œOK, you wrote this a few years ago, what else should you bring?ā€ He said, ā€œIā€™d take a PLB. Iā€™d take another PLB. Iā€™d take another PLB. And Iā€™d take another. If you have those things and a gallon of water youā€™re going to be found. Whatā€™s gonnaā€™ get you safe faster is getting found faster.

There were four life vests secured to the boat via a line. Everybody grabbed one and put it on. The PLBs were attached to the life vests. Pat said, ā€œWell, how many PLBs do we turn on?ā€

ā€œAll four!ā€ I said.

Five minutes after the flip we had the life raft up. We tied the liferaft to the boat. Everyone felt pretty good, so we hung on to the boat and tried to flip it over. The three of us tried of different angles and forces. We almost had it once, but slipped and banged my knee and had to let go. The boat rolled back into the water still upside down. The water was 76-78 degrees, but with no body fat you do get cold after a while. I had lost 25 pounds during the trip. After three hours, everybody was tired and worried about hypothermia when Adam looked at me and said, ā€œYouā€™re purple.ā€

We gathered some supplies from the deck and swam to the life raft. No one was really a churchgoing person, but in this liferaft there was a mini-Bible. Markus pulled it out, and looked around and said, ā€œWell, canā€™t hurt.ā€ And he literally finished reading Genesis when we heard the sound of an HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplane.

They dropped something called a , which drifted with us so they could calculate our track. They dropped some more life rafts. The current pulled the liferafts away from us, even through the wind was blowing towards us. Thatā€™s when I put it together. One of the reasons why those two waves were so steep and square was because the current was running against them.

The plane also dropped a barrel the size of a beer keg into the water. Markus swam over to the barrel and brought it over to the life raft.Ģż There was a list taped on top. It read ā€œone wool blanket, six emergency drinking water packets, six chem lights, and two emergency food packets.ā€ We had all of that stuff. I thought, ā€œHereā€™s this barrel with all this stuff and itā€™s not small and we already have four guys that arenā€™t small in this life raft.ā€ I said, ā€œThis is great, but if we open this up, itā€™s going to be hard to reshut and keep it water tight. What we really need is a VHF radio. Thatā€™s important enough that if it was in here, they would list it.ā€ We decided to wait to open the barrel until we needed the stuff.

When youā€™re on a 29-foot boat, you have to make a series of compromises. We had a VHF radio hardwired inside the cabin. Initially, the rowers went inside the cabin at night and used that radio to contact ships at night. The rowers often woke up the other crew sleeping in the cabin when they used it. Since sleep was important and we had an extra VHF radio inside our grab bag, we took that VHF out and put it in the bow of the ship. We made that decision so that we didnā€™t wake anyone up when we called ships at night, but now it meant we couldnā€™t grab that VHF. We realized we should have had two handhelds: One to keep on deck and one to leave the grab bag.

We tied to the steel barrel to the bow of the boat, because we didnā€™t want it rubbing up against the raft. After a couple of hours the HC-144 traded out with a C-130. They dropped another barrel. This one had ā€œOPEN MEā€ written all over it.

ā€œWell, shit, I guess that one did have a VHF radio in it,ā€ I said. Lo and behold, we pulled out a VHF radio and started talking to the Coast Guard. They established that everybody was alive and okay, because at that point they could only see two of us in the raft. They radioed two ships to see about picking us up, and that call led to the scariest moment of the entire trip.Ģż

The wind picked up to about 35 knots and seas were still about six feet, but it was getting worse than the morning. A 580-foot-long Japanese car carrier, the M/V Heijin, approached. It looked like a skyscraper floating on its side. The deck must have been 90 feet above the water. The only other thing between the ship and our kiddie-pool-sized liferaft were six-foot-high seas.

Over the radio, someone on the Heijin told us to cut loose of our boat. We had originally tied the life raft to the boat so we could be a bigger target for rescuers. As we cut loose and began to float away I took a long look back at our rowboat

It was named James Robert Hansen, . He died of asthma when I was three. The first trip I took it on occurred a few years before. It was a race across the Atlantic during which we raised money for the American Lung Association. That trip was a chance for me to grieve for my father as an adult. So there was a huge emotional connection for me with this object. As we moved away, it just bobbed in these waves, still proud and oddly defiant.

Whoever was steering the Heijin was a total badass. This thing is like a gigantic wall and thereā€™s a 35-knot breeze blowing and itā€™s getting towards dusk. Heā€™s piloting a car carrier that can hold 4,000 cars to not run over something that is the size of a Mini. Its bow thrusters turned the normally dark grey ocean water into this beautiful turbulent blue, which was also scary. Slowly we floated toward the bow. We were close enough to see the layers and layers of heavy marine paint. They were thick and uneven enough that we worried about them puncturing the life raft.

Twenty guys dressed in orange jumpsuits and life vests threw rope after rope down at us, but we missed every single rope. It took them 15 minutes to reposition the ship. It was getting dark. We knew that we only had one more chance. If we didnā€™t grab a ladder or rope, weā€™d have to spend the night alone in the raft next to this mammoth wall. They had the gangplank down. The waves were moving the boat six feet up and downā€”which isnā€™t a big deal when youā€™re the only thing around, but is when youā€™re right next to something with 90 feet of freeboard. The massive propeller was just churning.

On the second pass we caught the pilotā€™s ladder and one of the ropes and started climbing up fast. It had been 13 hours from capsize to rescue. The crew wrapped us in blankets and took us to an empty office. A crewman said, ā€œWhoā€™s in charge?ā€

Markus pointed to me.

They took me up to the bridge, where everyone was wearing uniforms: white button-up shirts, epaulettes, and black pants. I was wearing blue ExOfficio boxer briefs, a grey bandanna around my neck, a sweatband with a skull and crossbones around my forearm, this massive blonde beard, and a shark-tooth necklace. I walked in and they just handed me a VHF radio. The Coast Guard came through the radio and said, ā€œAre you guys OK?ā€

I said, ā€œYeah, thank you for watching over us.ā€

After we got back, we paid for the Heijinā€™s extra fuel. We also went to the Coast Guard stations in Florida, met the rescuers, and thanked them. During one visit, the commanding officers said, ā€œThis is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these guys. After most people are rescued, they just kind of forget about it as fast as possible.ā€ That blew me away. I met them and shook their hands. They saved our lives. Standing in front of all those Coast Guard guys, I just started choking up. And so did they.

EXPERT OPINION
One key hero in this story is the gentleman who encouraged Jordan and his crew to purchase PLBsā€”including backups. It was smart of Jordan to take his advice. There’s reason to believe the outcome here would have been far more tragic without the beacons. The personal locator beacons started a series of notifications that got the Coast Guard rescue crews to the right spot. The lesson: Use technology to your advantage.

On another note, one of the dangers of operating in the south Atlantic is the notion that the warmer water gives you plenty of time in a survival situation. While it’s true the average survival time is greater in warm southern waters than in the frigid winter waters up north, the human body has to fight hard to maintain its temperature. Jordan saw that first-hand as hypothermia set in. Know your environment and prepare for the worst.

Overall, Jordan and his crew appear to have been somewhat prepared, but not necessarily ready. The sea state was worsening, and they should have had their lifejackets on. They had VHF equipment, but couldn’t take it off the ship. Details matter at sea, and it sounds like Jordan knows that better than most now.
ā€”Lt. Joe Klinker,

The post Surviving a Capsized Rowboat in the Open Ocean appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

On July 24, 2010, a flash flood swept 39-year-old Joe Cain and two friends through Utah's Spry Canyon and over a 40-foot cliff. He lived to talk about itā€”barely. Here's his story, as told to JOE SPRING.

IT WAS MY FIRST TIME canyoneering. I was camping in Zion National Park with two friends, Jason Fico and Dave Frankhouser. We planned to do two canyons. The three of us had been doing outdoor stuff for a long time and we had all been rock climbing. Iā€™d been climbing since the mid-90s. Iā€™d been in slot canyons before, scrambling around and hiking up the narrows, and we were all very proficient about setting up rappels on anchors.

The first day, July 24, we decided to do Spry Canyon. Jason had been through that canyon before. Itā€™s a three-hour hike from the trailhead to the top where we dumped in. There were sections that you kind of scrambled through, sections you hiked through, and then a drop off with some anchors where you have to rappel. We anticipated we would be done in four hours.

This was late July, 2010, monsoon season in Utah. We knew that if it rained this time of year it would probably start in mid-to-late afternoon. There was a 20 percent chance of rain that day.

We started our hike around 9:00 A.M., dropping into the canyon around noon. After a few hours, we were about three quarters of the way through the canyon, in a section where there were three or four rappels in a row. The walls were very tight and steep. There was no opportunity to hike out, and we had pulled our rope down so we couldnā€™t climb back up. It started drizzling. We had just passed several places in the canyon where we could have hiked into some trees and waited if it started raining, but now we were in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.

I had rappelled into a particularly narrow section and was the first guy down. I unclipped from the rope, walked a few feet through this narrow slot, looked out over the edge, and saw a roughly 40-foot drop to a rocky floor below. If we got down to that next section, there were several spots where we could hike up to some rocks and be safe. We knew we were approaching the end of the canyon. Our thought was, ā€œLetā€™s just keep moving and try to get out of here.ā€

We werenā€™t dilly-dallying, but it took Jason a few minutes to rappel to the slot floor next to me. When he got down, the water was knee high. The rain picked up. I think it took Dave a little longer, because he was basically rappelling through a waterfall. After four or five minutes, he got down. The water was chest deep and building fast.

We really didnā€™t have a lot of options. The canyon here was three to four feet wide with sheer walls that went up 50 to 75 feet. Just straight up. There was some discussion between us.

ā€œIs there something else we can be doing right now?ā€

ā€œI canā€™t think of anything. Can you?ā€

ā€œShould we try to climb up out of here?ā€

There was no place to climb up anywhere. If I had climbing gear, maybe there might have been some cracks that I could have put a cam in, but I didnā€™t have that gear.

We needed to leave our rope in place so that we could hang on to it and not get swept off the cliff. We wedged in. I put my feet on one wall, and my back against the other. My two buddies did the same thing, facing me. We just looked at each other.

The water got stronger and deeper, full of branches and other debris. Rocks blasted through as the pressure intensified. We thought a big log was going to come through and knock us out. More likely, we thought we just werenā€™t going to be able to hold on any longer and get swept over the edge.

You donā€™t really ever appreciate the strength of water until youā€™re in a situation like this. It felt like cement was rushing past us. It was all we could do to push as hard as possible against the walls to prevent from getting washed over.

There was thunder and lightning and rain coming down and it was echoing off the side of the mountains. At a certain point, it got so loud that we stopped talking. I was sitting there thinking about my two children; my daughter was not yet two. ā€œIf I die right now, she is not even going to remember me,ā€ I thought. ā€œPeople will show her pictures of her dad, but she won't remember.ā€

I had the terrifying sensation of falling. It was like going off a five-story building.

After roughly five minutes, there was a shift. Something, either a big surge of water or debris, knocked all of us out of our positions, sweeping us off the edge. It was like going off a five-story building. I thought, ā€œThis is it. These are the final moments of my life.ā€

I hit the water in a semi-sitting position and then hit rocks, shattering my tailbone. The rocks lacerated my skin, and something sharp punctured my knee. Then I was getting tossed around in this pool by the force of the waterfall above. I thought, ā€œGreat, I survived the fall but now Iā€™m going to drown.ā€

I was running out of air and about to pass out when I got pushed away from the swirling water. I popped up and my feet touched bottom. The water wasnā€™t over my head. I stood up. The water stopped at my armpits. During the time we had been hanging on to that rope, the water must have built up. It broke our fall. I saw some rocks off to the side, grabbed them, and started to pull myself up.

There had been a group in front of us in the canyon all day, and I saw them on the ledge above. They threw a rope down to me and I wrapped it around my wrist. They pulled me up to a higher spot where they had been waiting for the water to pass. I collapsed next to them, bleeding from my wounds. ā€œDonā€™t worry,” one of them said. “Youā€™re way higher than the water. Youā€™re safe. This is a good spot.ā€

I looked around but my two buddies were nowhere. ā€œOh my God,ā€ I thought. ā€œThey hit a rock. They are pinned under a log. My friends are dead.ā€

They must have been swept around a bend and then off the next drop. The guys helping me went to look. After about ten minutes, they came back and said, ā€œWe see your friends. We canā€™t reach them. They are down below. It looks like one is hurt. The other is OK.ā€

ĢżThe guys applied pressure to my tailbone wound, which was bleeding pretty badly. We were almost through the canyon. I think there was one more rappel left after that point and a little bit more of a hike out. I could see the main Zion road. I just wanted to get out.

My adrenaline had dropped and I could tell I was starting to go hypothermic. A bunch of my gear had been washed down the canyon, but I had a mini-emergency kit with a foil blanket. I put it on. I didnā€™t know the extent of my injuries, and a big part of me wanted to get medical attention as quickly as possible. ā€œLetā€™s just try it,ā€ I said. ā€œLetā€™s see if I can do the rappel and get out of here.ā€

I got up and my injury started spraying blood. One of the guys said, ā€œAhhhhh, I donā€™t think this is a good idea. Youā€™ve got to lay back down.ā€

Someone put a flashing headlight strobe on. Rangers out on patrol saw the light, hiked up, and shot a rope gun to where we were. They climbed up and administered first aid. A few hours later, a helicopter came and flew me to the hospital.

My friends had gone off another 60-foot cliff. Dave wasnā€™t that badly injured, and walked out on his own. But Jasonā€™s femur had blasted through his hip bone and he was airlifted out right out after me.

The first couple days in the hospital I could barely roll over because I was in excruciating pain. My whole right butt cheek and right thigh was one giant bruise. The puncture wound in my kneecap took a couple of months to heal. Iā€™m a hundred percent now except for a little pain in the tailbone area, which may never go away. I was really lucky. I didnā€™t have any muscular damage or damage to any ligaments. I didnā€™t have any broken moving parts.

My wife knew after I got out of the hospital that I would keep doing these activities. After I was released, she said, ā€œIf youā€™re going to keep doing this stuff, climbing or whateverā€¦. I know you love it. Iā€™m not going to tell you, ā€˜You canā€™t do it.ā€™ But you need to get a lot more life insurance.ā€ I did.

EXPERT OPINION: Outdoor recreation professor , 48, has been interested in flash floods ever since 1993, when he heard about a deadly Utah that had trapped five teenagers and killed Kugath has now developed an extensive of canyoneering survival stories that details 64 accidents and incidents, posting expert analysis so that others might learn from it. More than half of the accidents reported involved a group of close friends. Men filed 89 percent of the reports, and the most identified accident was a ā€œslip on a rock.ā€ Haste, fatigue, and cold, wet conditions were the biggest contributing factors. Canyoneering novicesā€”people who had navigated less than 25 canyonsā€”filed more than half of the reports.

“Storms often come out of nowhere and put canyoneers in tough situations with few options,” says Kugath. “Joe, Jason, and Dave were in the absolute worst spot in Spry Canyon, but they did the best thing by grabbing on to something and holding on tight. Prior to entering technical sections, you should be sure to have a good read on the weather. Take into account group member skills and speed. If the weather is at all threatening, find cover and a safe spot to wait out the storm. Only push through a technical narrow section if you are confident that your group can do so quickly. You may only have minutes.”

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