In The Wild

Dave Olesen, a pilot, author, and veteran dog musher, came face-to-face with the darker side of Northwest Territories.

A research mission went sour, and Dave's plane ended up in the icy waters. This is a tale that involves a floatplane capsizing, as well as the perfect combination of proactive preparation, luck, and survival instincts. Special guest on this episode, Dave Olesen!

Tham Luang Nang Non, a cave in the Chiang Rai Province of Thailand spanning nearly 6.5 miles in length, and at an elevation of nearly 1,500 feet. On Saturday June 23rd 2018, a group of boys from the Wild Boars soccer club, ages 11-16, set off to go exploring.

It was a warm Saturday in July of 1926 in Upper New York State. Earl Gates, a student of the Forestry Camp of Syracuse University, decided to take advantage of the day off and head out for an afternoon walk in the woods nearby.

There was no distinct trail for Gates to follow - no semblance of a path at all. Not thinking much of it, as he was just out for a nice walk, he just casually blazed his own.

Just imagine being a group of young boys, all between the ages of 16 and 18, embarking on a month-long survival course in the Alaskan wilderness. This is admirable in itself, as Alaska's great outdoors can be very unforgiving.

In the early 1880s, Dan Doty lived in a log cabin that he had reclaimed from the wilderness, not far from the small hamlet of Vermontville in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Dan's wife had died two years prior, and his mother, Mrs. Betty Doty, was keeping house for him and his children.

It was a clear day in the Chugach Mountains near Anchorage Alaska, on April 27, 2003, Nick, age 19, a thrill-seeker, always dreamed of visiting Alaska and jumped at the chance to see it through a mutual friend, without even having met his hiking partners before.

Big Sur. 89 miles of breathtaking coastline located between Carmel Highlands and San Simeon, California. Home to only a small group of the ultra-wealthy, but visited by millions each year to take in its natural beauty. It’s also the highest coastal mountain in the continental U.S. with a peak reaching 5,155 feet...that’s just short of a mile. Now imagine the most peaceful scenic drive that one can fathom, and in the blink of an eye stopping short and tumbling down a cliff right into the rocks and thrown violently into the Pacifc Ocean. This is the kind of scenario that many of us have awoken to in a cold sweat...a horrifying nightmare. But 23-year-old Angela Hernandez experienced just this. This is her story.

One of the five million people each year who made that journey was Amber Van Hecke in March of 2017. A lover of the outdoors, the college student planned on a 3,000-mile solo road trip for spring break with this as the ultimate destination. First, she wanted to see the nearby Havasu Falls, but when she turned onto a road that did not exist due to a Google maps error, things took a turn for the worst.

The party of six had left the Katahdin Stream campsite in Maine around 1 o'clock to make the Hunt Trail climb. The group included Donn Fendler, twelve years old, his father, two brothers Tom and Ryan, and his friends, Henry and Fred.

Flying in a private plane with your bros headed back to California, after a gig in South Carolina with Gavin DeGraw and Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction. It’s what many of us dream of as kids, but for Travis Barker of Blink-182 and Adam Goldstein (better known as DJ AM,) that dream became an unspeakable nightmare.

Aron Ralston is a classic example of someone who did the unthinkable. After slipping into a canyon slit, he amputated his arm from the elbow down in order to escape an 800-pound boulder. He was then rescued after making his way out of the canyon which he called home for nearly a week.

In 2013, another astonishing story took place involving Marco Lavoie. A 44-year-old outdoorsman of Canada facing likely death under the most extreme of conditions. Sometimes nature’s most terrifying moments can only be faced head-on with the fiercest determination and will to survive.

Kaden and Arden Laga thought that they would enjoy a vacation in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness that straddles Montana and Idaho before welcoming their first child into the world. Fate had a different plan for the Iowa couple.

Mount Goddard — an isolated mountain that is home to the largest peak in its immediate region. Located in Kings Canyon National Park, Mount Goddard is 500 feet higher than any of its neighboring peaks. The surrounding area is incredibly wild and alpine — but Gregg Hein, a 33-year-old hiker, knew this. For him, it was just another adventure — an opportunity to connect with the great outdoors, just as he had dozens of times prior to this trip.

It was early Sunday morning on May 26, 2013. The Jascon 4, a tugboat contracted by Chevron Corporation, was out at sea in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 20 miles off the coast of Nigeria. The waters were rough, and as dawn had not broke yet, it was still dark. Carrying a crew of twelve, most of the workers were still in their locked bunks. 

West Virginia is a state widely known for it’s coal mining industry, a job that brings many men and their families financial stability, but it comes with an expense of great danger. There is probably no one more understanding of that danger than Randal McCloy Jr.

It was going to be a quick trip to a place she knew well: Obstruction Point, one of Jack’s favorite places in the whole world. There, as she’d promised, she’d scatter his ashes among the pine trees and summer flowers he loved. 

Little did she know, Sajean Geer’s final tribute to her husband nearly cost her life.

March often brings chilly, rainy weather to Humboldt County, California. When the clouds finally parted one spring day in 2019, sisters Leia and Caroline couldn’t wait to get out of the house and venture onto the trails of Richardson Grove State Park, which sits next to their family’s property. At first, they bugged their mother, Misty, to come out for a hike. Misty had some chores to finish, though, so she told them that they would have to wait. The girls, just 5 and 8 years old, didn’t want to hear that. They needed the fresh air, sunshine, and woods that they loved to explore.

When Misty finished her housework and packed a couple of bags for the hike, she went to find her daughters. She says that she didn’t worry at first because the girls often took short walks in the woods without supervision. They knew their way around, so she expected them to come back within a few minutes.

Unfortunately for the family, that’s not what happened.

Raging rivers, hungry bears, drastic avalanches, roaring seas—no matter how prepared you are, a walk in the woods can go from innocent to disastrous in the blink of an eye.

Join us as we visit the most heroic, gruesome, terrifying, and phenomenal stories of real people who survived the unsurvivable.

Learn what went wrong, what went right, and how you can make it out alive if the worst case ever happens to you. This, is In The Wild.