Every week I read half a dozenĀ reports on search-and-rescue missions to save lost skiers, errant rock climbers, and the occasional stranded dog. Often these stories are sad tales of adventurers suffering injuries or losing their lives. But every so often, I come across a rescue story that makes me slap my forehead in amazement.

That was my reaction when I read about the fortuitous fate of a man named Julian Hernandez and his 12-year-old son. The two went missing this past Sunday, February 16, while hiking in , which is located just outside Saint George, Utah. The sun went down, temperatures began to plummet, and the two began to fear for their lives. And that’s when fate, or a miracle, or dumb luck stepped in.

While searching for shelter in a darkened ravine, they stumbled across a green backpack just sitting there on a rock ledge. They opened the pack to find a wilderness survival kit that would make Ranger Rick proud: Pop-Tarts, Clif Bars, a jug of water, an emergency tent, and first-aid supplies.

The gear helped the two to stay warm, fed, and hydrated overnight. Eventually rescuers equipped with night vision goggle hoisted them into a helicopter and flew them to safety. They were out in the elements for about 22 hours.

ā€œThe moment we found the backpackā€”it was lovely,ā€ Julian Hernandez told TV . ā€œWe found some food in there so that kept us pretty well. It kept us pretty well into the morning.ā€

Hernandez’ quotes made me laugh. I envisioned a scene from the Netflix survival show Outlast where a half-starved contestant finds a cache of food and survival gear dropped into the wilderness by producers. Lovely, indeed.

I love this story from . A father-son duo got stranded overnight hiking in Southern Utah recently and found a backpack stocked with survival supplies. Turns out a teen had lost it 45 days ago and it’s being credited for saving them.

ā€” Lindsay Aerts (@LindsayOnAir)

Now here’s the forehead-slapping part of the story: the lucky backpack had belonged to another hiker who had been rescued in the same spot more than a month ago.

On January 4, a 15-year-old boy named Levi Dittmanm from nearby Ivins, Utah, went for a hike in Snow Canyon with his green backpack. Like Hernandez, Dittman got lost and stuck in the ravine. He spent the night in the canyon, and at some point during the ordeal he tossed his backpack onto an adjacent ledge, but he was unable to climb up and retrieve it.

Eventually a SAR volunteer located Dittmann and brought to safety, but his survival backpack remained in the canyon. Nobody knew that, 45 days later, this pack would help a lost father and son weather a cold and lonely night.

“Iā€™m really glad that it could help people, because thatā€™s what the pack was intended for,ā€ Dittman .

It turns out Dittmann had spent several months collecting survival supplies and cramming them into his backpack prior to the hike. Losing it was a total bummer, he told media. “I kinda just had to leave it there, which was a bit frustrating because I think at the time it was 200 to 300 bucks worth of stuff,ā€ Levi Dittmann told ABC4. Apparently the SAR team gaveĀ Dittmann back his pack.

Are there survival lessons to be learned from this story? It’s tough to say. I’ve hiked in Snow Canyon State Park a few times, and I’d never thought you could get lost on the well-marked trail system.Ģż But once the sun goes down, even familiar territory can become alien. I don’t believe any seasoned SAR volunteer would recommend tossing backpacks filled with Pop-Tarts into random gullies or canyons.

Perhaps the best conclusion from this one is that the will always help in the wilderness, no matter if they belong to you or someone else.

Of course, no story with this amount of serendipitous coincidence could exist without someone offering a different takeaway. Levi Dittman’s mom, Gretchen Dittmann, is convinced that there was a higher power at play. She called the ordeal a “miracle.”

“You really have to have faith that Godā€™s working. Sometimes heā€™s using a backpack that sat for a month and a half for some guy that needed help in that moment,ā€ she told ABC4.

Her explanation works for me.

The post A ā€œMiracleā€ Lost Backpack Saved Two Hikers in Southern Utah appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

On January 22, 2025, I hiked to the top of the Chief, a 2,303-foot granite monolith in Squamish, British Columbia for what I thought would be a casual BASE jump. Iā€™ve done it over 100 times. Itā€™s one of those jumps where you take off, open, fly to the parking lot, and land. Thereā€™s only one tricky spot: a corner ledge about 30 meters to the left after you jumpā€”thatā€™s the main hazard to worry about. You donā€™t want to make a 90-degree turn into that corner.

After two months of traveling and BASE jumping in Patagonia, these would be my first jumps back in British Columbia. The day that I was leaving Chile, I packed my BASE rig in a rush. It was a messy pack job, and I was distracted on the phone with another jumper.

The wind calmed, but with the cross-breeze blowing I thought I should static lineā€”that’s the type of BASE jump where you tie the line that opens your parachute to an anchor on the rock so the action of jumping opens your chute. A static line is a safe way to jump for a windy day or a low jump.

I remembered that this was the pack job from Patagonia and made up my mind. I suggested my friend and I do a two-way jump, where we both leave the cliff at the same time. Since my parachute would open immediately as I jumped, the two of us wouldnā€™t collide.

We counted down, and, one after the other, we took off. My parachute opened in a 180-degree line twist to the left, and suddenly I was facing the cliff. Because of the twist, any input into the parachute with my control lines was useless.

I don’t know what ultimately went wrong. I assume it was some combination of my hasty pack job and the cross breeze. Maybe I’ll never know.

I reached for my lines but didnā€™t have time to look up because the wall was so close. I tried to fight it, but there was nothing to fight. I smashed into the wall with my whole body. The rest happened in five seconds. I smashed into the wall, trying to fight the parachute to fix my lines because I had some clearing air-wise. The parachute continued collapsing as I slid down the wall. Then the chute caught air again and I smashed into the wall once more. The crashing and sliding went on for a few seconds as I waited for the final impact. In those moments I knew I was ready to die or get really badly hurt. There was nothing below me but hundreds of meters of air.

Then my parachute caught a tree. I was left hangingā€”air below me, air around me, nowhere to grab, nowhere to step. My first thought after the chaos died down and I caught my breath was, What am I hanging onto and how long is this going to take? I was in a panic for the next 20 minutes because I didnā€™t know if my tangled chute was going to hold. I called my boyfriendā€”heā€™s a jumper as wellā€”and said he needed to call 911 and get the search and rescue process going. I didnā€™t know how long I was going to be hanging, I might have gone at any moment.

I heard people above me screaming, and they probably had called for a rescue as well. Within five minutes, I saw cops and firemen below, but they couldnā€™t get to me from above. I waitedā€”dangling on the line.

Iā€™ve been part of rescues like this before with other jumpers and I knew that it was going to take a long time. I tried to assess my body. I had hurt my knee crashing into the wall and it was swelling up. My next problem was suspension traumaā€”extended periods in a harness can restrict your blood flow and cause an injuryā€”because I was fully hanging on one leg. I didnā€™t want to move an inch, because I was scared that if I moved, my parachute could give in and I would fall. I tried to look up at the parachute, but I couldnā€™t see what it was hanging on. I tried to look at the ledge below me, which was about 100 meters down, and I thought that at least I would have a very clean death if I fell.

After half an hour, my leg started going numb. I knew I had to take the weight off it to get blood flowing. After that much time, I felt better about the stability of whatever I was hanging on, so I pulled up on my risers to put the weight on my arms for a few seconds and immediately felt the blood rush into my leg. Some friends came up to rescue me with ropes on their own, but they decided to wait because they didnā€™t want to throw a rope that messed with the parachute and could cause me to fall.

It was the longest four hours of my life.

I was just trying to keep my mind occupied counting to 60 slowly ten times, trying to count minutes. Ten minutes of counting was 30 minutes in real time. Words came into my head, something like With the power in my mind I am pushing forward. I probably repeated that line a thousand times. I have no idea where it came from.

I thought of Tomaž Humar, the great Slovenian alpinist and soloist who had a very bad, very famous rescue on Nanga Parbat that took six days. He was wet, cold, and stuck in a snow cave at 21,000 feet. My situation wasnā€™t even that bad, and he survived with the power of his mind. Thatā€™s all I could think of.

Two hours in, my body started to shut down. I just wanted to conserve the energy I needed. I was running out, and then all of a sudden I heard this voice: James, one of the SAR team members.

ā€œHey Alenka, I know your dad.ā€ He was a few meters away from me. The moment he clipped me in, I felt everything I didnā€™t feel before. I felt cold. I felt my knee really hurting to the point where I was screaming. I just felt everything. I felt safe.

Alenka Mali walked away from her crash with nothing but a bruised knee. She toldĀ ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų that she doesn’t know why she is still alive, but that she believes there must be a reason. ā€”Ed.

The post My BASE Jumping Parachute Didnā€™t Open, But I Survived appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

What happens to your body when you get lost and confused on a mountain in the bitter cold of a winter night? In 2016, The ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Podcast launched with this harrowing story of a lost motorist fighting for his life. Based on Peter Stark’s classic feature, Frozen Alive, it is still considered a high-water mark for experiential audio storytelling.

The post The Cold Hard Facts of Freezing to Death appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

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Tanner Bean stepped over the cliff edge and rappelled down a slope of crumbling rock, as other members of Colorado’s Mesa County Search and Rescue team watched him descend.

After lowering 300 feet, Bean reached a ledge no bigger than a dinner table, jutting from the sheer precipice several hundred feet above the valley floor.

That’s where Bean found Tiny the dog.

“She looked at me like ‘oh my god, oh my god, a human!'” Bean told °æ³Ü³Ł²õ¾±»å±š.Ģż“She started wagging her tail and running back and forth. She just seemed so excited.”

Bean, 40, was ecstatic but also worried by the reaction.

“I was like ‘No no no, please don’t fall off this cliff, not now!” Bean added.

It had taken Bean and his SAR teammates six hours to reach Tiny on this cliff edge in a remote corner of the state, several miles outside of the community of Collbran. The group had set out early on the morning of January 2 after receiving an SOS call from Tiny’s owner, a local hunter. The previous day, Tiny, a 20-pound hunting hound, had been tracking a mountain lion across a series of peaks when she had descended the cliff face and become stranded on the ledge. She couldn’t ascend the loose rock, and trying to navigate the descent would be fatal.

SAR officials said that Tiny was wearing a GPS tracker on her collar, which showed her approximate location within the dizzying terrain. Tiny’s owner could see the stranded dog from below with his eyes.ĢżNight fell, and the owner realized that Tiny would have to spend the evening on the precipice. The following morning, he called rescuers.

Mesa Search and Rescue, which is based out of Grand Junction, oversees a huge swath of Colorado’s western quarter, and its area of operation includes popular hiking and biking trails outside of Fruita, the Colorado National Monument, and a stretch of the Colorado River that’s beloved by river runners. During the spring and summer, the team fields numerous calls from hikers, cyclists, and boaters.

“Most of our calls are lost hikers or swiftwater rescues,” said Nick Ingalls, 30, one of the other rescuers. “But we will get maybe two or three dog calls each year.”

Fifteen SAR members met at a trailhead near Collbran that morning. Due to the tricky terrain, the group split into two groups to see if they could find the best route to the top of the cliff. The hike in took far longer than they anticipated, as the teams had to trudge through knee-deep snow drifts and navigate tight gullies and washes.

“We were hiking over these ridges that felt like they were made of Frosted Flakes,” Bean said. “You’d take a few steps up and then slide back down.”

It was nearly 4 P.M. when Bean and Ingalls finally located the bluffs above Tiny. Several miles away, SAR members set up a spotting lens to watch the operation unfold. After fixing anchors, Bean descended the cliff, found Tiny, attached her to a specialty dog harness, and lifted her to safety.

Ingalls said that Tiny’s enthusiasm quickly wore off once she got to the top of the mountain. The pads of her feet were bloody and scarred, and she seemed exhausted.

“She acted a lot like a human patient who had been out in the elements,” he said. “So happy at first, and then after the adrenaline wears off, she just laid down.”

They gave Tiny water, but nobody in the rescuing party had brought dog food. Ingalls said he had a single bar of cell service and he texted a friend who is a veterinarian to ask whether the food they had in their packs was safe to feed a dog. In the end, they opened a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli and meat sauce and spooned some out for Tiny. She gulped the meal down.

“I’ve never seen a dog happier to eat human food,” Ingalls said.

But the rescue mission wasn’t over yetā€”the team still had to get Tiny back to their vehicles. At first, Tiny walked beside the rescuers, but she quickly sat down with fatigue. So Bean, Ingalls, and the other SAR team members took turns carrying the 20-pound dog as they rappelled down cliffs, climbed through dense brush, and trudged through snow drifts. After several hours, Tiny’s owner met them on the trail with his horses, and they finished the journey on horseback. It took them four hours to return to their vehicles.

It was dark when Bean and Ingalls finally reached their vehicles and completed the rescue. The total time for the mission was 13 hoursā€”a grueling day of long hikes, technical climbing, and route-finding in the backcountry. Rescue missions for stranded humans often take a fraction of the timeā€”and this one had been to save a 20-pound pooch. But neither Ingalls nor Bean complained about the outing when I spoke to them on a video call in late January.

Bean told me he’d “100 percent” go through the ordeal to save Tiny again. Ingalls agreed.

“I think we try to always try to have empathy and to put ourselves in their situation,” Ingalls said. “Whether it’s a human or a dog, they’re having the worst day of their life, and we get a chance to help them.”

The post A Rescue Team in Colorado Spent 13 Hours Saving a Dog Named Tiny appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

My husband, Dave, went skiing down a forestedĀ slope behind our cabin near Collingwood, Ontario. It was a rare perfect dayĀ when he set out with our dog, Phoebe. The deep powder lured them both.

Phoebe loves to ski. Sheā€™s a golden retriever, and a homebody, with traits bred into her for domestic life. Her namesake is a character in Friends, and it suits her. On the slopes, she lunges through the powder on the tails of Daveā€™s skis. When they reach the end, she turns and runs home.

That perfect day, Dave and Phoebe took three turns. On the fourth, the edge of Daveā€™s ski hit a downed log. The impact catapulted him forward. With the trunk of a maple tree coming fast towards him, he remembers thinking, I better move my head.

After that, everything went black.

I could tell this story another way: it could be about all the trees Dave hasnā€™t hit.

The first time we met, I watched him kick-turn down the face of Mount Washington in Oregon. Over the years he’s woundĀ through the trees of the Central Cascades. Weā€™ve skied on glaciers, volcanos, and through glades, and heā€™s come away unscathed. But trouble found Dave the day he went skiing out our back door.

When Dave became conscious, he was about 350 feet down the slope from our cabin. He thought that something was caught by his neck. When he reached to push it out of the way, he realized it was his collarbone.

Though Dave didnā€™t know it at the time, he had slammed chest-first into the tree. While his head was spared, he had 16 broken bones.

His skis were still attached to his boots. He tried to turn around, but he passed out, and woke up having slid further down the slope.

Phoebe, our dog, was panting, nervous, and running in circles around Dave. It was just before 4 P.M.ĢżThe light was flattening; the sun would set in another 30 minutes. He had a blurry thought about his phone, but it was buried deep inside an underlayer in a back pocket. He couldnā€™t reach it.

Itā€™s not ideal to do any backcountry activity on your own, but we had come to the habit when our kids were young. If you didnā€™t make the most of each precious spare moment you had, you would probably miss your chance.

And now Dave was fighting an urge to sit down and close his eyes. It was well below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

He managed to get his skis off. The dog leash was around his shoulder. He pulled the end to cinch his arm against his body. The leash became a sling, which took the pain from his collarbone just out of fainting territory. With ski poles in one hand, he took a step. He wobbled, almost fainted again, then glanced up the hill. Which way was the cabin?

He couldnā€™t see it from that position on the slope. His vision had narrowed to a channel. Direction was hazy. He could only focus on what was right in front of him.

What appeared in that narrow line of vision was Phoebe. Looking into her eyes, Dave could tell she wanted to run home, like she always does.

ā€œGo on,ā€ he said, thinking if Phoebe appeared at the door of the house alone, it might prompt one of us to question why. ā€œGo home,ā€ he said.

Can a dog be a hero? Dog-cognition researcher Alexandra Horowitz, in her , asks if dogs can intentionally rescue people in need. She cites a study that tested the rescue capacity of pet dogs (rather than specially trained rescue dogs). A person was put inside a box. They called out in distress. Then, their dogs were allowed to enter. According to the research, one in three dogs “rescued” their human from the box.

Clive Wynne, the lead researcher on the study, said itā€™s difficult to assess aĀ dogā€™s intent. Did the dog rescue the person for an altruistic reason, or did the assistance come from a place of self-interest? Wynne believes that, byĀ finding a way to end the humanā€™s distress, the dogs felt better, too.

Instead of running home, Phoebe turned, moved a few steps, then waited. Dave put a foot forward, a ski pole, and took one painful step. (Eight of his broken bones would turn out to be ribs.) Phoebe took another step, then waited again. Dave inched forward. He kept his eyes fixed on her hind end and slow-moving tail.

This tail became his only focus. Step by step, Phoebe moved just ahead of Dave. He lost track of time. All he remembers is being aware that they were moving uphillā€”and that keeping the dogā€™s tail in his sightline was like a lifeline. About halfway up the slope, he stopped and had trouble catching his breath. He thought something had happened to his lung. Heā€™d later learn that it was punctured.

They kept moving together. When Phoebeā€™s tail finally stopped, Dave looked up and was surprised to see the house. She had led him to the front door. He called and we came running.

Later, I retraced their tracks up the hill. The paw prints didn’t take the steepest or most direct route. Phoebe led Dave in a steady line, one that he could manage. She stayed with him.

When I saw Dave in the emergency ward, he wore a neck brace. Medical officials wheeled him off to a scan, and eventually theyĀ would locate the 16 broken bones, including some along the wings of his vertebrae. The crash didĀ no permanent damage; he was incredibly lucky. Two years later, Dave is fully healed, though a little more crooked than he used to be.

But then, in the emergency ward, a nurse had just injected him with Fentanyl. He was fairly lucid, if a little loopy when they started to wheel him away, but there was something else he wanted to say.

As I leaned closer, I realized that in Daveā€™s mind, it didnā€™t matter whether Phoebeā€™s intentions were altruistic or not. There was no need to ask the question. What mattered was her presence. She stayed with him and that was what gave him strength.

He whispered into my ear, ā€œPhoebe saved my life.ā€

The post How My Dog Saved My Husband After a Ski Accident appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

Three years ago, I was pursuing a herd of elk down a steep gully into a remote mountain valley in southwest Montana when it began to snow. The storm was unexpected and hyper-local; it often is in the mountains. It was only the middle of September, so I wore thin base layers under soft-shell pants, a thin fleece jacket, and low-top hiking boots. I opted to leave my rain gear and insulation in my truck, six miles away, to travel as fast and light as possible.

As the snow turned heavier and wetter, it soaked through my layers and into my boots, leaving me totally drenched. I really began to worry when I stopped shivering.

Hypothermia is the cause of around 1,500 deaths a year in the United States, according to a published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hypothermia begins to occur when your bodyā€™s core temperature falls below 95 degrees, according to Chris Adams, a flight nurse for the , a nonprofit transport network that takes high-risk patients to hospitals by helicopter, working out of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Adams says he treats hypothermia virtually every time he rescues a trauma victim.

The majority of hypothermia cases happenĀ in where emergency services may be unavailable or slow to respond. And in many colder places, hypothermia is the cause of unintentional death, after vehicle accidents.

Hypothermia is particularly dangerous because its occurrence often involves the unexpected. Just like during my elk hunt.

My ATV was waiting on a trail 1,000 feet above me, at least a 30-minute hike away. My efforts to reach the vehicle partially dried my torso and legs, but my hands and feet were still totally numb by the time I climbed the gully. Riding the ATV back to my truck was a challenge. The numbness in my fingers made it hard to operate the controls, and the urgency to reach safety had to be balanced with the additional windchill created by speed.

By the time I got to my truck and clumsily climbed into the driverā€™s seat, a glance in the rearview mirror revealed blue lips surrounded by my ghastly pale face. I cranked the heat, turned on my seat warmer, and sat in silence for half an hour while the shivers returned and stabbing pain crept into my extremities.

According to Adams, I was probably in a stage of mild severity while hiking up the mountain, then into moderate hypothermia by the time Iā€™d reached the truck. Preparing to survive hypothermia is an essential skill for those of us who recreate outdoors in cold weather.

How Can You Tell If You Have Hypothermia?

Luckily, hypothermia has clear indicators. “Watch for the ‘umblesā€”stumbles, mumbles, fumbles, and grumbles which show changes in motor coordination and levels of consciousness,ā€ reads a white paper on hypothermia published by .

Medical professionals parse the stages of hypothermia by internal body temperature. But since you can’t get an accurate read of your body’s internal temperature with oral thermometers, according to a , you and I are better off looking at symptoms.

According to Adams, symptoms of hypothermia include:

• Feeling cold
• Loss of motor control, including both fine (operating zippers) and gross (the ability to walk)
• Impaired mental abilities impacting speech and consciousness
• The slowing of respiratory and heart rates

A mildly hypothermic person will still be shivering, but begin to lose fine motor control. A telltale sign of moderate hypothermia is when the victim stops shivering, and when walking and standing become difficult. In a severe stage of hypothermia a person mayĀ be unable to stand or walk, and will likely lose consciousness altogether. Beyond that, the body approaches death as its heart rate slows to just a few beats per minute, breathing stops, and eventually the heart fails.

“Uncontrolled shivering, slurred speech, confusion, and reduced coordination can quickly spiral into unconsciousness,” John Barklow tells ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų. After serving as a Navy diver, Barklow trained Navy SEALs in cold weather survival techniques (including self treatment of mild to moderate hypothermia), designed clothing systems intended to reduce the odds of Special Operations Forces experiencing hypothermia, and now works as the lead designer for Bozeman, Montana-based technical clothing brand , while still teaching survival classes and seminars.

How to Prevent Hypothermia

Beyond wearing enough insulation to remain warm in a given temperature, it’s important to consider the materials you’re wearing.

The worst of those is cotton. Because cotton fibers are hollow and carry a negative electrical charge,Ā . Cotton fabrics can hold up to 27 time their own weight in water, then refuse to dry out.

Wool is a lot better. It absorbs only 30 percent of its own weight in water, and the microscopic structure of its fibers can work to break the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen atoms, producing a tiny amount of heat.

Down, even varieties treated with hydrophobic coatings designed to repel water, loses its ability to loft (and keep you warm) when wet.

Best are synthetic fabrics and insulations like polyester and nylon, which only absorb around 0.4 to four percent of their weight in water, respectively. Because synthetic materials dry so much faster as a result, theyā€™re a much safer option in cold, wet conditions, or when you run a risk of submersion. Iā€™ve recently transitioned to an all-synthetic clothing system for backcountry adventures, for that reason.

In what Barklow calls the “,” he submerges participants in freezing-cold water, then instructs those students to add layers of synthetic insulation, drink water, and consume easily-digested calories. Patients huddle inside breathable rain shells designed to keep out the weather and prevent convective heat loss. The warmth generated by their bodies, held in by warm-when-wet synthetic insulation, is able to force water first away from their skin. Moisture gets drawn out through the layers of clothing, enabling their bodies to return to safe temperatures.

ā€œWith a great clothing system thereā€™s no need to carry extra [equipment],ā€ Barklow says.

Adams backs this up. “This is a really good idea, if you have the right clothes,” he states. “Preparation is everything.”

The nurse also says that if you begin to experience hypothermia symptoms, and you’re alone in the backcountry, you should focus on creating body heat. “You can hike up a hill really fast,” he says.

How to Treat Hypothermia

Barklowā€™s method also tracks with survival advice given by the , which prescribes protecting yourself or a patient from the environment, drying them out, and then warming them up using a heat source. With Barklowā€™s method, which requires synthetic clothing layers, you donā€™t need to remove any clothing, or ā€”Ā and you donā€™t need a fire.

Should you lack such a clothing system, the approach becomes a little more complicated. Youā€™ll need shelter, dry insulation, and a heat source. In mild stages of hypothermia, you can use something as simple as a tent, a dry sleeping bag, and another personā€™s body heat, warm water bottle, or chemical heat packs. (Place the latter two items on the neck, arm pits, and groin where large arteries pass close to the skin). As you progress into moderate and severe cases, hypothermia will require more significant sources of heat,Ā like a heated structure or vehicle or a wood stove, and ultimately treatment by medical professionals.

Adams recommends paying close attention to preventing convective heat loss through contact with the cold ground, and suggests chemical heat blankets (like those sold by ) as a heat source. “I lay down a wool blanket, put a heated blanket on top of that, lay the patient down, then layer heated blankets and another wool blanket on top of that,” describes Adams. “Then we just crank the heat in the helicopter until the patient warms back up.”

Adams is careful to caution against shocking a hypothermia victim with too much heat,Ā though, saying you shouldn’t submerge them in a hot bath or shower. “It’s gotta be slow,” he says. “Just focus on getting the ambient temperature nice and high, and rewarming slowly.”

What about CPR? In severe stages of hypothermia, a personā€™s pulse may not be detectable at the wrist due to severely constricted blood vessels, and when checked at the carotid artery may be as slow as just a few beats-per-minute. Adams warns against chest compressions as a result, but says blowing warm air into an unconscious victim’s lungs may help increase their core temperature.

Barklow recommends that you don’t just leave survival skills up to chance. “You need to train in realistic conditions to ensure you and your gear perform as expected,” he says.

Ensuring your layers are a match for the conditions is something you should first try in a safe environment. “You donā€™t want to realize that you and your kit arenā€™t up to the task of saving your life after you swim a glacier-fed rapid while on a remote packraft trip in Alaska,” he says.

Adams offers one final piece of advice: donā€™t give up. Due to the protective effects of cold temperatures, complete recovery can be possible even in severe, prolonged hypothermia cases.

Wes Siler recently returned from a trip to Yellowknife, in northern Canada, where temperatures were as low as -38 degrees Fahrenheit. He was warm, comfortable, and safe throughout. You can ask him more detailed questions about outdoors gear and other topics on .Ģż

The post This Is How to Survive Hypothermia appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

The outdoors have a way of delivering to us our soulmates. Sometimes, thatā€™s a romantic partner, discovered on a mountain-summit meet-cute. Other times, itā€™s the fiercely loyal friends we never knew we needed. Maybe youā€™ve noticed the sameā€”that your best friends are your adventure friends. Thereā€™s a reason for that dynamic. The outdoors draws out the best and the worst in us. It challenges us, heals us, and forces us to be vulnerable in a way few other settings can. Itā€™s that place of raw honesty where true connection thrives.

Of course, even the best outdoor relationships donā€™t happen without a little work, a little grace, and a whole lot of gratitude. But the impact is nearly always for the better. Without the outdoors, many of us would be down a partner, a friend, a crew, a purpose. Over the years, ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶųā€™s writers and editors have fallen in love, gotten married, overcome grief, reconnected with parents, and met lifelong friends, all outdoors. Here, our staffers reflect on the most powerful relationships and lasting connections made outside.

Well-Aged PerspectiveĀ 

ā€œMaking friends as an adult can be challenging. Every lasting friendship I forged in my twenties started at the base of a climbing route. Some of those friends were at my wedding; some have traveled around the country and world with me; some arenā€™t around anymore. The ones who are, I value more every year.ā€ ā€”Backpacker editor in chief

Fierce Female FriendshipsĀ 

ā€œI never had a strong group of lady friends. Then, a few years ago, I fell in with a group of women who scrambled Boulderā€™s Flatirons before work most mornings. Those scrambles have become my lifelineā€”a way for us women to catch up, belly-laugh, and support one another through big life transitions. Iā€™d be a different woman without them.ā€ ā€”ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų interim editor Corey Buhay

Finding Your Person

ā€œI realized my partner was the one for me on a hike up Half Dome last year. In moments where we were both in physical and emotional distress, there was still care. Thatā€™s when I realized that as tough as that hike was, I wouldnā€™t have wanted to be there with anyone else.ā€ ā€”Backpacker associate editor

Turning Parents into Friends

ā€œMy parents, in an incredible show of patience, taught me to ski, bike, and navigate the backcountry as a kid. Now, as an adult, I get to open the occasional door for themā€”planning a backpacking trip with my mom or showing my dad my favorite kick-turn tricks on a ski tour. These days, thereā€™s nobody I would rather tap for an adventure.ā€ ā€”ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų senior editor Abigail Barronian

Uplifting EnergyĀ 

ā€œSkiing with the incredible group of women in my life has made me not only a better outdoorswoman, but a more resilient, grounded, and confident person. That shared time outdoors reminds me of the power we gainā€”even beyond the mountains and back at workā€”by lifting each other up and cheering each other on. Because thereā€™s always more than enough room for us all at the top.ā€ ā€ÖĄ°­±õ editor in chief

Forging Family Traditions

ā€œMy husband proposed to me on a backpacking trip to a remote lake in northern New Mexico, and a couple years later we hauled our baby up there. Now, Iā€™m pregnant again and weā€™re already planning a visit to the lake with our newest family member in tow. I love that the outdoors has helped our growing family build a tradition thatā€™s totally unique to us.ā€ ā€”ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų digital director Abigail Wise

Community Connection

ā€œI used to consider rock climbing a personal calling of the almost religious variety. Lately, however, what I value has changed: The hours I spend at the cliffs or boulders have become a way to share time and purpose with my communityā€”and my understanding of ā€˜successā€™ has become less about individual wins and more about connection.ā€ ā€” Climbing digital editor Steve Potter

Rites of Passage

ā€œI have three sons, and as they were growing up, the outdoors was where we marked important milestones. One planned and led a backpacking trip as a . As newly minted teens, they did fundraising mountain climbing trips for , a nonprofit that provides wilderness experiences for disinvested youth. And as they transitioned to young adults, they joined me in Nepal on a combined , where they learned the transformative power of adventure travel at its best.ā€ ā€”ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų content director Dennis Lewon

Nissan North America, Inc., headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, delivers innovative automotive products and services that inspire and move people. As a global leader in electric vehicles and advanced automotive technology, Nissan offers a full lineup of vehicles, highlighted by the new . Driven by a commitment to sustainable mobility and thrilling performance, Nissan aims to transform the way people live and drive. For more information, please visit .

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The Bonds We Build Outdoors

The post An Ode to the Relationships We Owe to the OutdoorsĀ Ā  appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

The big oak tree that stood over the bedroom of Andrew Goldnerā€™s Altadena, California, home always worried him. So when powerful Santa Ana winds battered his house on the night of Monday, January 5, Goldner, a rock climbing coach and video director, dragged his futon into the living room and slept there with his two dogs, just to be safe.

ā€œIā€™ve always been scared of that thing,ā€ Goldner told ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų.

The next day, as winds gusted to as high as 80 miles per hour, a danger of a different nature became apparent. That evening, Goldnerā€™s brother, Jacob, stopped by his house and told him that a wildfire had sparked in nearby Eaton Canyon. Within the hour, Goldner received a call from a friend who lives on Altadenaā€™s eastern side. Flames were leaping into nearby homes, and the friend was making a hurried evacuation. Goldner and his brother jumped into their car and fled just as the blaze spread through their own neighborhood.

ā€œIt was a horrifying escape,ā€ he said. ā€œWe actually turned the first corner, and an entire palm tree came down in front of us and blocked the road. But we made it out, and we drove away.ā€

Goldner, 37, is one of hundreds of thousands of Southern California residents who narrowly escaped the . Whipped by powerful off-shore winds, and fed by bone-dry brush and vegetation, fires enveloped multiple communities in the greater Los Angeles area beginning on Tuesday, January 7. By Monday, January 13, the flames had destroyed or damaged much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and parts of Malibu and Pasadena. Twenty four people as of the publishing date of this story.

Los Angeles is a haven for outdoor athletes, with its hundreds of running trails, climbing gyms, surf breaks, and cycling clubs. Across the city, five blazesā€”the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth, Hurst, and Sunset firesā€”torched favorite trail systems and climbing crags, bike routes, and surf shops. They also devastated the lives of outdoor athletes like Goldner, who teaches climbing at the Stronghold Climbing Gym in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Heights neighborhood. His home is among the estimated 12,000 structures to be destroyed or damaged.

ā€œMy house is gone,ā€ he said. ā€œThe whole block is. The entire thing is just devastated. Thereā€™s not one standing house. All the speculation goes away, and then youā€™re like, itā€™s real now. I called my partner, and she just broke down.ā€

But as the flames spread across neighborhoods and across the cityā€™s canyons and open spaces, communities of outdoor enthusiasts came together to raise funds and offer support to one another. And to try and imagine how life will continue when the time to rebuild comes.

Escaping the Eaton Fire

When hiking guide Amanda Getty, 43, learned that Eaton Canyon had caught fire, she put her daughter and dog into the car and drove towards the canyon to see the blaze. Getty often leads hiking groups up the four-mile route, which leads to a picturesque waterfall. ā€œI feel shameful about it because, in hindsight, it wasnā€™t the wisest thing to do, but I had to see it,ā€ Getty told ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų. ā€œEaton Canyon is an integral reason why we live here.ā€

What Getty saw made the situation feel ā€œvery real.ā€ The gusting winds were stronger than any sheā€™d ever felt. She wondered if she should immediately evacuate with her daughter or wait for officials to weigh in. Her husband, Charles, was away on a trip to Colorado, and after she returned home, she called him.

ā€œA huge part of a tree broke off and landed on the roof,ā€ she said. ā€œI should have left then.ā€

Getty put her daughter to bed and scrolled coverage on social media before eventually falling asleep. Then, at 3:30 A.M. her phone buzzed to life with a text from a neighbor: TIME TO GO. Minutes later, police cars circled the neighborhood blaring their sirens. She woke her daughter and grabbed her dog and sprinted for the car. ā€œThe wind was trying to knock us over as we ran,ā€ she said.

Getty and her husband came back to the neighborhood the next day and found many homes burning. Their home was amazingly still intact. The two spent the day clearing brush from the yard and hosing down their roof to prevent the flames from spreading. ā€œIā€™ve met more people in my front yard than I ever have these past two days,ā€ she said. ā€œI think thatā€™s what you have to do right now: just be the most basic form of human when you see people. Are you OK? Can I help you?ā€

Madi Pearce, a climber and trail runner who lives in Altadena, was also surprised to find her house still intact after the blaze ripped through her neighborhood. Pearce, 23, had evacuated at 11 P.M. on Tuesday night with a bag of clothes and pet bird, Oliver.

When she came back to her neighborhood on Wednesday morning, Pearce saw that her neighborā€™s home was still engulfed in flames. A home two doors down was burning as well. ā€œEverything was on fire,ā€ she said. ā€œNeighbors were grabbing trash cans and filling them with water, spraying hoses, and just doing everything they could because there were no firemen on our street.ā€

Pearce, 23, heard explosions from the burning structures. She saw fire crews a short distance away trying to extinguish flames at the nearby country club, and other crews several blocks away working on a home fire.

A fire truck sped down her street, and Pearce attempted to flag it down to try and extinguish her neighborā€™s home. But the crews sped off. ā€œI donā€™t know if they had some kind of strategy or they were just stretched too thin,ā€ she said. ā€œMaybe our houses were just too far gone. It was all heartbreaking.ā€

But somehow, Pearceā€™s home withstood the blowing embers and flames. Most of the blocks in her neighborhood, she said, are leveled. ā€œChimneys standing in ash,ā€ she said.

Outdoor Communities Lend a Hand

Even as flames blazed through neighborhoods, communities across Los Angeles rallied to raise funds for rebuilding efforts. The donations platform GoFundMe l for wildfire victims, and by January 13 the group had collected $2.3 million. The and also ramped up donation efforts, as did the ā€”a group that provides funding for both fire victims and rescue crews.

Communities of outdoor athletes also became rallying points for these efforts. When Peace Sports and Total Trash Cycling Clubs learned of the fires, organizers canceled a 60-mile group ride through Altadena and Pasadena that had been planned for the weekend. The groups rescheduled the event for February, and made it a fundraiser for fire victims. Escalemos, a SoCal climbing club, launched a for local climbers impacted by the fires.

Bike Oven, a cycling shop in Highland Park, also canceled its organized rides and instead pivoted to outreach and . Management posted on social media that the shop would become a drop-off location and distribution center for supplies for those impacted by the fires.

Shop employees told ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų that the location quickly became inundated with donations. When ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų visited the shop, bottled water, tampons, toilet paper, and socks filled the store and spilled out onto a nearby sidewalk. ā€œWeā€™re just trying to hurry things to people in need,ā€ Will Stevens, a Bike Oven employee, said.

Some outdoor businesses have helped the community simply by opening their doors. At Stronghold Climbing Gym in Echo Park, owners Kate Mullen and Peter Steadman have remained open so that people can use electricity, showers, and bathrooms.

ā€œRight now, our staff needs the time off, but people still need a place to plug their stuff in, and be around their community,ā€ Mullen said. ā€œA guy came in earlier and asked for a towel. He went in, showered, and then left with wet hair.ā€

Cities Reshaped by Fire

It will take months, maybe even years, to truly understand how the wildfires of 2025 will reshape the communities across Southern California. The Eaton Fire blazed much of downtown Altadena and its surrounding neighborhoods; the Pacific Palisades fire leveled multimillion-dollar homes, some of which had stood for generations.

In Malibuā€”where fires devastated the community as recently as 2018ā€”fires burned structures on both sides of the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH).ĢżSurfer and writer Jamie Brisick believes parts of Malibu may remain changed forever.

ā€œMalibu is such a joyous place, but now, driving north on PCH, to see the devastation of all those beachfront homes will totally change the experience,ā€ he said. ā€œThereā€™s almost this sort of glamour of driving north on PCHā€”you pass Nobu, and there might be paparazzi out front, and you pass the Soho House, and thereā€™s glamour there, and then thereā€™s Billionaire Beach, with hundred-million dollar homes, and now to see what it is, all firebombed the way it is, will bring you to Malibu in a different mood. It will be a completely different energy now.ā€

Getty, who calls Eaton Canyon her ā€œsecond home,ā€ told ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų that sheā€™s spent much of the week thinking about the trails and canyons where she leads groups. ā€œGrieving the loss of trails is so insignificant to the loss of someone’s home,ā€ she said.

Still, Getty wonders how long it will take them to return. ā€œI know that nature is resilient, so much more resilient than I am,ā€ she said. ā€œAnd these places are going to come back faster than I am, and much faster than peopleā€™s homes.ā€

Flames destroyed the Eaton Canyon Nature Center, which was built in 1993 after another fire, called the Kinneloa Fire, ravaged the area. On Wednesday, the Nature Centerā€™s superintendent emailed park volunteers ā€œNow is the time to grieve, but this has happened before. We will rebuild.ā€

Returning to Altadena

On Wednesday, January 8, Andrew Goldner checked his phone and saw a text message from a neighbor. The text included a video of the neighborhoodā€™s destruction, including images of Goldnerā€™s burned house.

But Goldner noticed that his garage was still standing. Inside of the garage was the 1966 Triumph Tiger Cub motorcycle that his grandfatherĀ had left him as a memento. ā€œHe didnā€™t really impart a lot of things to other people, but he gave that one to me,ā€ Goldner said.

Goldner texted a few friends about the discovery, and within minutes theyā€™d all replied, including one with bolt cutters and a van. They loaded the van and drove into Altadena to try and save the vintage motorcycle.

They found downed power lines, plus police cars and fire crews. They weaved the van through blockades and plumes of smoke. They passed entire city blocks that were burned to the ground. ā€œThen, the next block would be the flip side, where all of the houses were there except for one,ā€ Goldner said. ā€œEmbers were falling and landing on random houses of their choosing.ā€

Eventually they found . They broke open the garage and rescued the old motorcycle. Other than a new layer of soot and dust, it was exactly as heā€™d left it.

As Goldner walked back from the garage, the big oak tree that had caused him so much concern was still there, barely touched by the flames. The house, however, was gone.

Seattle native Gavin Feek lives in Los Angeles. He contributes to and Stab Magazine, and has been published in ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų, , and The Stranger. Feek loves to rock climb, surf, trail run, and ride his gravel bike. Prior to becoming a writer he ran the Glacier Point Cross-Country ski hut in Yosemite National Park.

The post Climbers, Hikers, and Runners Share Survival Stories from the Los Angeles Wildfires appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

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