Category: Blog

From Bad to Worse

It was a memorable day trip into the woods for Calgarian Steve Hyde — his motorhome got stuck, he had a heart attack, a search crew helping out him drove off a cliff, he got a ride in a medical helicopter and the RCMP babysat his kids.

Hyde recently headed to the Crowsnest Pass with his daughters, aged 11 and 12, with plans to dirt bike up a mountain to the scene of a Second World War bomber that crashed there.

Well, the best laid plans …

He took his motorhome up a side road to get near the area of the crash but got stuck.

His first Good Samaritan of the day jumped into action and pulled his motorhome out using their pickup truck.

The girls went ahead on the trail on their bikes while Hyde, 53, followed behind in his motorhome.

He started to feel unwell.

“Probably three or four km up the road, there is a fork in a road and a stream there.” Hyde said

“I laid in the stream to recover, I just thought I overdid it.”

But the cold mountain stream didn’t improve things for Hyde.

“About 15 minutes later, I didn’t get any better. Not one bit. I knew I was in trouble,” he said.

Cue Guardian Angels Part 2, a group of quadders who where heading up the trail.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” he told them.

“They took charge, and there was a nurse there.

“One of the guys took me onto his ATV, and was thrashing over boulders, I was holding onto whatever I could.”

After escaping the brush, the quadders used a satellite phone to call for help.

Read Full Story Here…..

The satellite phone Joe Stutler carries during fire season rang on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and “scared the living bejesus” out of him.

His elite Type 1 Incident Management Team had just come off a fire and the Bend, Ore., resident was elk hunting in the mountains of central Oregon, secure in the assumption that he would have a few days off before being called back to duty. He didn’t know two planes had flown into and brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, another had slammed into the Pentagon and a fourth had crashed in rural Pennsylvania in coordinated terrorist attacks.

The voice on the other end told him his team was on alert, meaning it was in line to be mobilized. Two other teams had already been called up and were on their way east.

Read Full Story Here……

Nov 18th, 2016

Most people opt to make a transatlantic sea voyage on a cruise ship.

Matt Kent, the U.S. Brig Niagara’s fourth mate, plans to sail the Atlantic Ocean in 2017 in a boat measuring just 3 feet, 6 inches by 3 feet, 6 inches. If successful, Kent would set a world record for the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Kent, a native of Portland, Oregon and 33 years old, has spent the past five years designing and building his boat named The Undaunted. Kent, who has been on the Niagara’s crew for eight years, is attempting to raise money for science-based education programs at The Bioreserve, a nonprofit in Glenmont, New York.

See Full Story Here….

Usage of the satellite phone would automatically signal the end of the contestant’s participation in the challenge”

Nov 30th, 2016

Lopez, Washington native Callie “Blue Heron” North, tackled the untamed wild of Patagonia Argentina for History Channel’s survivalist television show “Alone.” The series’ season premiere will air on Thursday, Dec. 8.

“I had this overwhelming intuitive feeling like ‘I’m going to do that,’” said North, who owns Pachamama Apothecary in the Lopez Village.

Now in its third season, the show features participants who enter the wilderness carrying only what they can fit in a backpack (see page 3 for what North had with her). They are alone in harsh, unforgiving terrain with a single mission: to survive as long as they can.

They must hunt, build shelters and fend off predators as they endure extreme isolation and psychological distress while plunging into the unknown. They document the experience themselves. There are no camera crews or producers. It is the ultimate test of human will as contestants hope to win a cash prize of $500,000.

Read full article here….

“We spent all this money on guns, but we didn’t have a VHF, a satellite phone, a flare in the boat. We had our priorities completely wrong”

A boater rescued from Atchafalaya Bay Saturday is now telling his story.

Jonathan Sully and two friends left before the sun came up Saturday morning. They followed the coastline, heading toward a duck blind. But then, the boat’s motor shut off.

Sully said, “Anything that we had was just soaking wet, so it was just weighing the boat down. We threw everything overboard.”

To make matters worse, the boat’s pump died. Sully remembered, “We’re taking turns, and we’re paddling this water out.”

Helicopters flew by, but there was no luck. The wind picked up and the tide got rougher. The boat started to drift further toward the gulf.

The boater said, “We took the orange life vest, and we tied it to a six-foot bow pole. We tied it, and we’re waving it, and we’re waving it. We can’t get anybody to notice us.”

Read Full Story Here…..

South African-born Bertish set his sights on being the first person to cross the Atlantic, unassisted, on a stand-up paddleboard

While you were sitting back on the sofa, nursing a food baby after Christmas dinner, Chris Bertish was paddling across the Atlantic ocean on his stand-up paddleboard (SUP).

South African-born Bertish set his sights on being the first person to cross the Atlantic, unassisted, on a stand-up paddleboard. And he’s making an impressive stab at it.

According to his live tracker, Chris is nearing the halfway mark, with his GPS coordinates showing his location at somewhere to the west of Cabo Verde.

Having spent almost two months at sea with nothing other than his state-of-the-art paddle board and some basic provisions, it’s already an amazing achievement.

Starting out on December 6, 2016, from the northwest coast of Africa in Morocco, Chris began what he hoped would be a 120-day voyage.

That voyage would take him over 4,500 miles across the Atlantic, ending in the Caribbean Leeward Island of Antigua. Every day, Chris is forced to paddle the equivalent of a marathon in order to ensure his provisions don’t run out before he reaches that far-off Caribbean destination.

Check out the full story here…..