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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. It's July the 31st, 2005 in Nunavut, Northern Canada, 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It's a bright, clear evening. The light from the summer sun, still high in the sky, dances on the surface of Princess Mary Lake.
This vast body of water is surrounded in every direction by mile upon mile of exposed rock and windswept scrub, punctuated by the occasional pocket of slanted pines the last hangers are. It's a landscape shaped by the force of arctic winds, hundreds of miles from civilization. It's also the perfect place for a group of young adventurers to explore. 17-year-old Alex Messenger scrambles up a steep scree slope to get a better view. Taking a breath, he glances back at the camp below,
He can make out the figures of his friends and their tents and canoes pulled up on shore. Someone's got a fire going. For the past four weeks, they've paddled their way through the territory's twisting river systems, navigating frothing whitewater rapids, striking further and further into this frozen wilderness. As he reaches the summit, Alex braces himself against another icy blast.
At the top, it just flattened out to these rolling granite domes. There was just a little bit of grass, but it was this very lunar landscape, super stark. And it was the highest point around for, I don't know, 50 miles in all directions. And you could just see everything. Alex goes to take out his camera when something catches his eye, something moving. The first...
instant I recognized that something was awry. It was in just the top periphery of my vision and I just perceived brown, brown fur. Whatever it is, it's motionless now. Poised 30 or 40 foot away on the other side of the ridge, Alex squints. Could it be a moose or caribou? He's not sure he wants to find out. But that option is removed when the animal lurches forward, bounding towards him on four legs.
I was alone, this 17-year-old, 150, 175-pound kid versus a 600-pound apex predator. And we're about to come to blows on the top of this ridge. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories.
These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Alex Messenger, a Minnesotan teenager who journeys into remote East Canada in search of true adventure. He never imagined he'll end up fighting for his life on the sub-Arctic tundra. Alex must do his utmost to stay calm, to remember his training. But in the end, there will be only so much that he can do.
How bad will the attack be? And in the aftermath, how on earth will they get out of here? I felt its teeth go in both sides of my leg and then blacked out. The last thing I was yelling was "no" because this was just not how this was supposed to happen. I wasn't supposed to die this way. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. Mid-July 2005. Three canoes cut through the pristine rivers of Canada's Northwest Territories.
17-year-old Alex is one of five young explorers taking part in the backcountry adventure of a lifetime. It's a six-week, 600-mile voyage navigating one of North America's most remote areas.
There was myself, there was Mike, Auggie, Jean, Darren, and each of us brought into this trip a level of experience in backcountry canoe travel that was pretty solid. I mean, I was excited, I was nervous, I was wondering if I'd made the right decision to go on this trip in the first place.
And also just so thrilled that it was finally happening. You know, it was the culmination of years of going from trip to trip. And it was also the culmination of all the preparation for this specific one. This canoe excursion has been organized by Camp Meningen, a Minnesota branch of the YMCA. The five teens are being led by an expedition veteran, Dan, who will be responsible for getting them home in one piece.
Dan was 10 years my senior. He was our guide, so he was 27 at the time. He was certainly the most experienced of all of us, as you'd expect. We get little bracelets at the end of each trip that we go on, and he had an arm just completely stacked with these bracelets. It's summertime, and the days are long. The group rapidly cover the first few hundred miles, paddling through crystal clear waters and past ancient evergreen forests.
Occasionally they must overcome rolling whitewater rapids. The trip was just off to a great start and we were having a lot of fun and the first couple weeks are honestly almost a blur. By late July, the tree line thins. They leave the great northern forests of spruce, fir and pine, entering the open expanses of sub-arctic tundra. Out here, silence grips the group.
The vast, unending silence of a landscape largely untouched by humans. I feel like when I'm out on a canoe trip or any sort of backcountry trip, I'm kind of doing a sort of reset. Especially when you're under your own power in a canoe or hiking or anything like that, the pace of the world changes. It's hard to really replicate that anywhere but the wilderness.
Soon the group is through the Northwest Territories and is entering Nunavut province. In this permafrost ground, just outside the Arctic Circle, very little grows. On day 21, three weeks into the trip, they arrive at De Bont Lake, the largest body of water in the region. Even in July, it's almost entirely covered in ice.
There's no trees as far as you can see and it's just this amazing open expanse that's hard to visualize anywhere else and it kind of changes your perspective having that much openness and sky. We got to the end of DuBont Lake and it was kind of the halfway point on our trip and it was also the first time we took a rest day and it was on that rest day next to DuBont Canyon that we saw our first grizzly bear.
the group sets up camp on a frozen plateau overlooking a glacial canyon alex and his friend mike gaze down into the ravine of the frenzied frothing river below on the other side of it the tundra stretches all the way to the horizon infinite and empty well not entirely i was just standing with mike and we were chatting and he just interrupted me and stopped and pointed
And I saw that there was this grizzly bear there. And when he pointed, he'd yelled, bear. The grizzly stands on the opposite riverbank, staring right at them. The two teenagers stare back. The animal is huge, maybe four or five hundred pounds. Even at this distance, its thick, mottled fur can't hide the hulking muscle beneath. Despite the natural barrier separating them, it's a terrifying sight. After a moment or two, the bear turns on its heels and bounds away.
Before he'd yelled, it was kind of coming straight towards camp, and it was a very sobering moment. I remember I turned to Dan and I said, I'm glad that I saw that, but that's the only way I would ever want to see a grizzly bear in the wild. It's on the other side of a canyon like that, with a raging river like that, with a bear running away in the opposite direction. Most attacks happen when they're startled, caught by surprise, with no time to retreat.
But the sighting at De Bont Canyon is a timely reminder. The group goes over their precautions. They have bear poppers, cartridges which explode and sound like a gunshot. They also have aerosols that shoot 70 mile per hour jets of super strength pepper spray. Problem is, these work best at point blank range. And when a grizzly can stand up to three meters tall, weigh half a ton and charge at 30 miles per hour, who wants to get that close?
So they also discuss how to avoid a confrontation altogether. The advice is on all of their minds as they continue deeper into the tundra. We were told to back away slowly, to speak calmly to the bear, try to show it that you're not antagonizing it and you're not a threat. Back away slowly, say, hey bear, whoa bear, it's okay bear.
And getting that training and imagining yourself in that situation is so abstract, but it's also terrifying to think about trying to speak to a grizzly bear. This is a paid advertisement from Rocket Money. Do you ever stop to think about how much you're paying in subscriptions each month? It's probably more than you think, but that's where Rocket Money can help.
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Late afternoon on July the 31st, day 29 of the expedition. Alex and his friends paddle across Princess Mary Lake in their three canoes.
They slip between slabs of floating ice, heading for a rocky island right in the middle of the waterway where they plan to make camp. It was just this amazing escarpment that just rose from the shore and was very steep. Finding flat ground that wasn't at the top of the main ridge was pretty challenging, but we found a nice campsite and we set up and we were planning on taking another layover day. After setting up the tents, the boys head off to explore the ridge.
But Alex is exhausted and decides to grab a quick nap before catching them up. I ended up oversleeping and I woke up with a start just all of a sudden kind of gasping like, "Oh man, I'm late and I need to get somewhere." He rushes out of the tent. Then he heads up the hill alone, passing the others on their way back down. Dan describes the amazing views up top. Then I said thanks and continued on my way up this ridge to get to the top and just explore it by myself for a while.
The first...
instant I recognized that something was awry. It was in just the top periphery of my vision and I just perceived brown, brown fur. And my body reacted before my brain did and it was just this tensing, this recognition that there was some animal really close to me. And it was about 30 feet away. At first, Alex believes he's looking at a musk ox, which is a dangerous enough proposition.
A musk oxen is basically like this prehistoric animal straight from the Ice Age that's a cross between a yak and a buffalo. It's this amazing creature, but it's definitely something that we would worry about because they can charge at random and cause a lot of damage. Alex has a split-second decision to make: stand his ground or back away. The animal, whatever it is, faces the same dilemma. In zoology, this is called critical distance.
that animal is going to be forced to decide if it's going to run or if it's going to fight. And the closer that distance is, the more likely it is to fight because it feels like it's going to get caught if it starts running. And so the idea that this was a musk oxen was a really bad situation. Both of us continued to walk towards each other because, you know, everything's just happening so fast and it takes a little while to turn off your feet.
And so we took another step and a half or so, and we both just walked completely into view of one another. I realized that I wasn't looking at a musk oxen. I was looking at a grizzly bear. And this was just so much worse. Alex remembers his training. He prepares to pull the bear spray from its holster, aiming the nozzle at the animal's face. But then he realizes the canisters are back at the tent, as are the explosive cartridges.
I flash back to that training we'd been given. If you stumble upon a bear, don't run. Back away slowly. Speak calmly to the bear. Try to convince it that you're not a threat. Dan's voice played in my head of, "Hey bear, whoa bear, it's okay bear."
And all I wanted to do at that point was to run, to just increase that 30 foot distance between me and the bear and to get out of there. But I knew that that's the one thing that I couldn't do because if I started running then the bear's chase instinct would kick in and it would come after me. The bear and Alex stand stock still, both considering their next move. After a minute or so, Alex starts to back away again. He speaks softly, but his voice is shaking.
Suddenly the bear makes up its own mind. It launches towards him, moving at terrifying speed. But then it skids to a halt about ten feet away. A bluff charge. It drags its long claws across the earth, bares its teeth, and lets out an awful guttural growl. Alex keeps backing away, hands raised. But then the bear charges again, and this time it's no bluff. Alex too, switches gear.
And I faded from hay bear and wool bear to yelling obscenities and help and then trying to, you know, alert my friends just as much as I could because I was alone. I could feel the ground shaking under my feet and its growling mid-stride and just totally on instinct, I had my Pelican case in my hand, which is like this 15 pound brick of camera, hard sided plastic case. Just on instinct, pulled that camera back and swung it underhand.
and it hit the bear square the nose with enough force to turn its head all the way to the side camera went clunking over the bear's shoulder everything seems to move in slow motion as the grizzly's head twists away Alex can see the whites of its eyes the saliva dripping off its yellowing teeth but it keeps coming towards him
and it couldn't see where I was for the last couple steps. And again, just on instinct, I jumped out of the way sideways, and I dodged that first pass bullfighting style as this bear is just this cacophony and incredible power, you know, clambering the ground, and everything's just going so fast. But I jumped out of the way, and it missed me on that first pass. And as soon as it realized it missed me,
it turned around and came at me again. The two of them dart across the ridge, the bear swiping as Alex dodges, just barely keeping out of reach. But the deadly dance can't last forever. The next time it came at me, we were super close and it bit at my leg and I pulled my leg out of the way at the last second and the jaws just snapped shut inches from my leg. But that same moment it reached up with its paw and I remember seeing it just inches from my face, just this open palm.
grizzly bear claws and the wrinkles on its on its palm that image of that paw is just seared in my mind and i just had this awareness of how bad it was that it was about to hit me
I basically was like a fly getting swatted out of the air. The grizzly did not slow down at all when it hit me. My head went whipping to the side and I went flying to the side. As soon as I was down on the ground, its head was at the top of my leg, just below my hip, and it had its jaws around my entire leg. And people ask, you know, did the adrenaline rush take care of the pain? Like, well, no.
I felt its teeth go in both sides of my leg. The last thing I was yelling was "no" because this was just not how this was supposed to happen. I wasn't supposed to die this way and I was just so filled with loss and sorrow and then the lights went out and everything went black.
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When Alex comes to, he's curled up on the ground in the fetal position. The landscape is tilted. His head is spinning. He has no idea how long he's been out. I realized, wow, I'm not dead. I'm still on this island. I'm alive. And I was just filled with elation. I was so excited because I'd been so just despondent that I was about to die. As I'm scanning the horizon, I see that the bear is still there.
And I freeze at that point and I avert my eyes and I look down because the bear is still there and it's running away at a trot but it is watching me the whole time that it goes. The bear swings its head with every thudding step, checking the threat has been neutralized. By lying motionless, Alex minimizes the chance that it'll return to finish the job.
Waiting was so hard right then. You know, all I wanted to do, just like at the beginning, I wanted to just run and I just had to wait. And once it was back over the ridge and I gave it another couple of beats, I started getting ready to go. So I got up and I checked my leg. I just put my hand on it and it was wet. And I thought, oh, no.
"That's blood and if I've got that much blood, I'm going to bleed out really soon." And I looked at my hand and it wasn't blood, it was covered in bare saliva all gooey between my fingers. Alex has no idea how bad the injury is. First things first, he just needs to get away. With one last look behind him, he staggers back downhill. I had just this amazing adrenaline dump and I could tell that my leg was damaged. I couldn't tell how badly.
But I knew I needed to get back to the group and was just powering through that energy that I had and hoping that it would last until I got back to them. When Alex stumbles into camp, yelling about a bear, he's met with laughter and disbelief from his friends until they see his torn clothes and the blood pooling around his feet. Dan, a trained first aider, steps forward.
I'm like, I got attacked by a bear and I got hit in the face, not if I'm cut, and I got bit in the thigh and there's blood on my foot for some reason. And I don't know why. Because as I was running, I noticed that my feet, which were in sandals, one of them was just covered in blood and it was not the leg that had been bitten. It took me about a minute to get down. And by the time I got to the bottom, I couldn't move my injured leg anymore. Dan helps Alex to sit and together they assess his injuries.
It seems his thick winter clothing offered some protection, for his torso at least. He's covered in bruises and scrapes, but not the deep slashes that could have been inflicted by those terrible claws. The bite to his right thigh though, just below the hip, that's a different story. It's a major concern, but even that could have been so much worse. One of the canines punctured a quarter inch from my femoral artery, and if it had hit that, I would have bled out in about three minutes.
So that was incredibly, incredibly lucky. Right next to that same puncture wound, I had compression wounds from that same tooth where it pushed into the same depth and did a huge amount of tissue damage, but it wasn't actually an open wound.
I had a number of those pressure injuries from the rest of the teeth kind of wrapping around my thigh. And so there was a lot of muscle damage, skin damage. A couple of the toes were kind of cut clean off right at the tip, not even to the bone. But that was a lot of blood from that. After cleaning and dressing the wounds, Dan reaches for their satellite phone and dials the number for the group HQ in Minnesota.
He needs to report the attack, and Camp Meningen will have to coordinate a response with the Canadian authorities. But after a back and forth with various agencies, Dan is given some grim news: help won't be forthcoming. This part of Nunavut is so remote, there's very little that can be offered by means of aerial support, and at this moment the few helicopters that might be deployed are in use elsewhere. Alex's wound is serious, and it will become only more so.
but he isn't in imminent danger of bleeding to death the best option for the group is to continue as planned to the town of baker lake we were so far out into the wilderness i mean this is a thousand miles north of the u.s canadian border if you look at a satellite image you're going to notice that the roads stop a third of the way up to that and there's absolutely no infrastructure
Until you get to Baker Lake, which is this very small town. It's served by freighters coming in from the ocean, and there's a small airport there. Dan is told to keep monitoring Alex's condition, otherwise they're on their own. It's already past 7 p.m., so they make a plan to leave at first light. Through the night, pairs take it in turns to keep watch. Bare poppers and spray clutched tightly. Dan checks Alex's injuries every hour or so.
Each movement sends spasms of pain through his leg. And when Alex does drift off, his fevered dreams take him right back to the attack. 4:30 AM on August the 1st, a pale pink dawn breaks across the misty lake. That next morning, we did some wound management, which was really challenging, and then tried to get on onto the water as quickly as we could.
And, you know, getting down to the boats itself was a challenge. The guys had to basically buddy carry me down and then set me into the boat because I still couldn't use my injured leg. Baker Lake is still 100 miles away through harsh tundra and ice-covered waterways that would challenge the team under any circumstances. But there's no alternative. They must suck it up. When I found out that, you know, we were going to
be kind of on our own to get out. I was, I don't want to say empowered, but I tried to take everything that was happening with an, okay, this is how we achieve that mindset. They paddle out into the lake and head east. During the afternoon, the mist clears to reveal blue skies and stunning views of the shore. But for Alex, the bushes and rocks morph into grizzlies.
In the months to come, he'll have to deal with PTSD. Right now though, there are even more pressing concerns. There was just this long list of much more present anticipated problems. Compartment syndrome and other like circulatory problems from those crush injuries. Risk of infection from the bite itself. Bears mouths are very dirty, so the risk of infection was definitely there. There's one infection in particular that he's afraid of. A disease which would demand urgent medical attention.
Rabies was another concern. If you don't receive treatment and you are bit by a rabid animal, then you end up getting sick. I mean, that's a death sentence. Anyone bitten is advised to get the shot within a week, 10 days at the absolute most. With 100% fatality rate, you know, those aren't odds you want to gamble with. Once we found out what that time frame was for receiving the rabies vaccine, that was kind of like the clock that started.
Over the next few days, Dan keeps in regular contact with camp headquarters. Alex's parents are updated and doctors are kept abreast of his condition. With Alex dosed up on a steady stream of painkillers, all the team can do is keep paddling. At this rate, we were like, okay, we're definitely going to get to Baker Lake in the time that we need with some despair. It'll be just a couple more days, really. And that all changed when we got to 30 Mile Lake.
It's the evening of August the 3rd. Alex sits on the ground, shivering violently as his friends try to set up camp. A driving wind blasts the lake, threatening to blow their tents away. Before they can finish pecking out, black sheets of freezing rain close in.
We landed and we set up camp and it just was blowing up this huge storm and the water level, it just poured all night and we were at the confluence of several river systems and the water level rose a foot overnight. When morning finally comes, their luck still hasn't improved. We woke up, the water level rose and it took our, one of our canoes that had the rest of our food in it and you know a bunch of our gear
and that floated out into the lake and was lost. With the clock ticking, their progress has been halted. For two whole days they're trapped by the worsening storm, one canoe down with most of their remaining food and supplies missing. And all the while, a burning sensation creeps further and further up Alex's leg.
And during that time that we were stuck in the storm, my injuries, my wounds took kind of a turn for the worse. It started to show signs of infection. And so we started treating that with the antibiotics that we had with us in our med kit. By August the 5th, it's been five days since the attack, and they're still no closer to getting Alex a rabies shot. But just as things look darkest, their luck takes a small upturn.
With supplies running dangerously low, Dan and one of the other boys head out into the rain to see if they can track down the lost canoe. Incredibly, they find the tin that contains their food lying half buried in sand on the far shore. They got that stuff and came back and we continued to treat my leg for this infection and just hope that the weather would clear and we'd finally be able to get out. When the sun rises on August the 6th,
the weather has finally relented. The six adventurers squeeze into the two remaining boats and paddle with renewed urgency. They enter a new river system. With their heads down, they make good progress now. They don't stop to wonder at the herds of caribou crossing the streams. Nor do they linger at the ancient graveyard left by nomadic tribes. Their minds are fixed on Baker Lake. In the afternoon, Dan checks Alex's wound again.
There was some purulent discharge, some pus, and it was like warm to the touch. It was clear that it was not responding positively to the antibiotics. There's discolored skin all around Alex's hip. The compression wounds have now turned to open, festering holes. Thanks to a lack of blood flow, the flesh is dying. The blackened tissue shows signs of gangrene. Left untreated, this could become fatal. Dan calls HQ again.
Talking to medical control, Dan was authorized to do some more aggressive wound debridement, removing some of the dead tissue and things like that. Debridement should stop the spread of infection, but it's incredibly painful. Out come the painkillers, as well as a leather-clad multi-tool, which Alex shoves into his mouth.
We ended up doing a procedure, you know, on trail in a tent with me biting on a piece of leather and him using some scissors to cut out the parts that were mostly dead. It was clear that the tools that we had with us were not effective for this type of infection. If you don't take action to treat that, you certainly risk some really bad things happening like sepsis. At that point,
It was really important for me to get out and to start that treatment as soon as possible. But they're still 50 miles or so from Baker Lake. And to top it off, the satellite phone is down to its last bar of battery. Dan prepares to make what could be their final call. They brace themselves for more bad news. But after a few minutes, Dan's face breaks into a smile. Finally, the authorities are on their way. A chopper is available and has been dispatched.
I always felt like the crisis team back in Minnesota were doing a really good job and that they were informing us as we went as much as was possible. So we talked to camp, gave them our coordinates and all of a sudden there was this helicopter flying in to come pick me up and that was really surreal. Two hours later, a black dot materializes in the distance. Dan sets off a flare.
Soon the tranquility is shattered by the thrum of an engine and the blast of rotor blades. Alex looks up at the pilot, tucked behind the bubble window of the helicopter, who gives him a thumbs up. All of a sudden it landed and this guy came out. I was expecting kind of that Hollywood scene of a bunch of emergency folks with helmets and reflective helmets.
gear and everything. And it was this guy who landed a Bell four-seater, five-seater, and he climbed out just in all Carhartts and walked up to the group and said, one of you was attacked by a bear. And I raised my hand and he kind of looked me up and down. I was like, okay. Not everyone can fit in the bird. The patient needs a company, but the others will have to canoe the rest of the way on their own. I think that's when it hit me that like,
you know, we were saying goodbye. They were going to continue on this trip and we were about to embark on a whole other one. But all of a sudden, you know, we were no longer under our own power. We were headed off to, you know, something that I really had no control over. And so that aspect of it was challenging. The extraction team fly Alex straight to Baker Lake. A full week after the attack, he finally sees a doctor.
The medic refers him on to Winnipeg. It's the nearest location that houses the vital rabies shot. It takes two months and multiple drugs to turn the tide on the infection. But even then, not all of Alex's wounds are healed. The longest process for me in dealing with the aftermath of this was the process of getting back out into the woods and getting comfortable with it, not having just this incredible unease and nervousness when I'm out in the wilderness.
I knew that it was going to be really important, that it was something that I wanted to overcome so that I could get back out and not have it prevent me from having those experiences in the future. I remember the smell and the bear just, it smelled like a dog that had never bathed. Just this really strong, musty smell. And every once in a while I'll get a whiff of it and it just is, you know, one of those things that instantly brings you right back.
It's a pretty singular experience to smell that. In time, back home, Alex will choose to face his fears head on, though in a more manageable setting at a local zoo. In zoo settings, I kind of chose to intentionally go see some not long after my attack happened to just kind of desensitize myself to seeing grizzlies and try to, I guess, come to terms with what had happened.
I found it helpful. So now I can go look at them and be happy they're in their enclosure and I'm outside of it. Today, almost 20 years later, Alex still enjoys hiking and canoeing. He also uses his experience to help others as part of a volunteer backcountry search and rescue unit in Minnesota.
In some ways that kind of feels like it's come full circle and it's just a really good feeling when you're able to help people out and also to perhaps have a little bit of empathy towards what they're going through. He credits his escape from the tundra to the training he and his fellow adventurers received and the way they managed to remain calm in the heat of the moment. The harrowing journey back towards Baker Lake, they broke it down day by day, hour by hour. They dealt with one problem at a time
until they made it out. There's so many things that you have no influence over whatsoever and they may or may not be important in your situation but if you get stuck on them then you're putting energy towards something that you can't change anyway. So there's a lot of power in finding those things that you can impact and you can make a change towards and focusing on that
and putting your energy there. And I think that's what I tried to do. In the next episode, we meet Jonathan Bamber. He's an academic and mountaineer on an expedition in the Himalayas. But near the summit of a virgin peak, a freak accident leaves him grievously injured and stranded. His life is in the hands of his climbing partner, who must descend to seek help. As a scientist, Jonathan can't help but face the grim facts of his situation. But however slim the odds, he also knows that he must cling to hope.
for as long as he can. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Hear Jonathan's story right now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noisa Plus.
