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- [00:00]
Alex Messenger
Wondery subscribers can listen to against the Odds early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [00:10]
Cassie Depechel
A listener Note this episode contains explicit language Alex messenger jolted awake in his tent, gasping for breath with an uneasy feeling like he was late for something. It was the afternoon of July 31, 2005. He was 17 years old, in the middle of a 42 day canoe trip through the remote wilderness of northern Canada.
- [00:42]
Alex Messenger
We were just shy of the Arctic Circle, so we had sun until almost midnight. We had twilight for hours. We had to sleep with eye masks for the light and earplugs for the wind. A lot of times between the wind.
- [00:55]
Cassie Depechel
And the midnight sun, sleep didn't always come easy. So that afternoon, a planned rest day, Alex decided to close his eyes for half an hour, just enough to recharge. While he stayed behind, the rest of the group hiked up a ridge behind their campsite about 100ft up to the highest point on the island. From there they'd be able to see for miles in every direction.
- [01:21]
Alex Messenger
My plan was to lay down for a little bit and when I woke up I was going to head up to the ridge and meet the rest of the group. And so when I woke up I just knew that I had slept longer, that everyone had come down already. So I that's kind of where I was headed. I was just headed to the top of that ridge because that was the plan when I went to sleep.
- [01:39]
Cassie Depechel
His eyes snapped open and with a strange sense of urgency, Alex threw on his clothes and scrambled out of the tent. The others had already come down as he started up the steep rocky ridge. It was a clear bright day. The air was cool and crisp. As he climbed, he let his thoughts wander, reflecting on the trip, wondering how it had changed him, whether he'd see life differently when he got home.
- [02:07]
Alex Messenger
My mind was just kind of wandering as I walked up these rolling domes of this sparse granite landscape. What I didn't know was that there was this 600 pound grizzly bear that was walking up the other side of this ridge and we were headed straight for each other. Foreign.
- [02:34]
Cassie Depechel
I'm Cassie Depechel and this is against the Odds. In their own words. In the summer of 2005, 17 year old Alex messenger set out on a once in a lifetime adventure. 42 days of canoeing through the wild untamed rivers and lakes of northern Canada. He expected. He expected beauty. What he didn't expect was to come face to face with a 600 pound grizzly bear. On this episode Alex shares the story of what happened next and how that split second encounter in the wilderness changed everything. This is mauled by a grizzly.
- [03:27]
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- [03:55]
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- [04:28]
Cassie Depechel
Alex messenger grew up in the suburbs of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. From a young age, he was drawn to nature and adventure. His parents took him and his sister on all kinds of trips, starting with car camping, then moving on to more challenging canoe expeditions. By the time he was a teenager, Alex had signed up for a YMCA adventure program called Camp Mnogen.
- [04:54]
Alex Messenger
Basically, it's not archery, it's not horseback riding. You get there, you meet up with your group who you may or may not know beforehand, and you gear up and pack out and you go on a wilderness trip, whether it's canoeing or backpacking or rock climbing.
- [05:08]
Cassie Depechel
And from that first trip, something shifted in Alex.
- [05:13]
Alex Messenger
It just completely opened my mind to how efficiently we could travel in the backcountry, how well we could eat, how well we could work as a team to put on miles that I never thought were possible.
- [05:25]
Cassie Depechel
Over the next three summers, Alex worked his way up, taking on longer and more demanding canoe expeditions. Then in 2005, when he was 17, Alex was invited on the biggest, most remote trip the camp offered, a 42 day whitewater canoe expedition through the North Northwest Territories of Canada. He'd be traveling with six other guys, nicknamed the Olmstenoord, including his friend Mike and their guide Dan, who was in his late 20s. There was also a girls group, the Femmes du Nord, canoeing the same route. The trip would take place the summer before Alex's senior year of high school. It promised to be the quintessential wilderness journey, an adventure of a lifetime.
- [06:10]
Alex Messenger
We'd be traveling through this amazing remote Northern Canadian wilderness area that was just far and away more distant and more, like, uninhabited than any of the other places that I had traveled previously and a lot harder.
- [06:28]
Cassie Depechel
600 miles, starting in the Northwest Territories and heading into Nunavut. Pedaling down a series of rivers all the way to the tiny hamlet of Baker Lake near the northwest corner of Hudson Bay.
- [06:42]
Alex Messenger
In that whole time, we would be completely unsupported. We'd be dropped off by floatplane, we'd be carrying all the gear that we needed, all the food that we needed, all the emergency supplies. And then, theoretically, the next time we'd see someone was when we paddled into Baker Lake at the end of our route.
- [06:58]
Cassie Depechel
No creature comforts, no safety nets, dehydrated meals, relentless mosquitoes. So why do it?
- [07:07]
Alex Messenger
I've always just felt this sense of, I guess, purpose when I'm out there. I also feel like I just learn so much about myself and about the people that I'm with. They're kind of these crucible experiences where you are put in a situation where you have limited resources and you've got these various parameters you're dealing with and you have to problem solve.
- [07:35]
Cassie Depechel
Alex was well aware of the risks. Before the trip, the group had been briefed on potential danger. They'd carry a satellite phone and a first aid kit, but if anything went wrong, they'd have to rely on themselves and each other.
- [07:50]
Alex Messenger
Some of the bigger things we were thinking about were like whitewater and hypothermia and just kind of general injuries like sprain or a break or something like that. And then also we were thinking about the wildlife in the area. We knew we were going to be in grizzly country. We had gone through training on how to use bear spray, which is basically like a small fire extinguisher that shoots mace about 40ft for 7, 8 seconds. Most of the training is about, like, what do you do at the outset? How do you avoid an encounter in the first place? Setting up our camp properly, where our food is stored separately from our sleeping space. And then we're told if we do have a close encounter with a bear, play the bear spray. If it starts charging, to back away slowly, to not run away, to speak calmly to the bear and try to show it that you're not a threat. But we've been told that grizzlies are very rare to see up there, that you're very lucky if you end up seeing a grizzly bear.
- [08:53]
Cassie Depechel
So with a mix of nervous excitement, on July 2, 2005, Alex and the group loaded all their gear and canoes into a Twin Otter floatplane. Their destination, Holdaya Lake, deep in the remote northern Canadian wilderness. The official start of their expedition. From that point on, there was no turning back.
- [09:15]
Alex Messenger
We got all of our stuff squeezed into this small two engine prop plane. And the whole time we were flying there, all we saw was just unturned land all around us, just wilderness the entire way there. And when we landed, the plane circled a couple times, dropped down and squeaked up to shore. We got all of our stuff out, we put our boats back together, and all of a sudden the plane was gone and it was just the six of us there in the taiga forest completely alone. And that was like a whole different experience for me. I'm used to, you know, getting to the trailhead and, you know, parking the car and walking our gear down to the start. And if you forget something, you can head back to the car and grab, you know, whatever it is. And that, like, very sudden, being alone in the wilderness was like, kind of overwhelming. It was a little nerve wracking just to be that remote that suddenly the first thing that we noticed was the bugs were just atrocious. The black flies and mosquitoes were thick. The taiga's this kind of smaller forest where the trees just get shorter and shorter as you head north. And so we were pretty close to where the tree line would end. And so everything around us was pretty stunted, you know, bushes and mossy ground, but the views were just very expansive. The first few weeks on trail, you know, we were kind of getting into the groove of things, getting to know each other. We were having a lot of fun on the white water. We were trying to fish, but we had a lot of trouble catching anything until a couple weeks in. And then the fishing became absolutely amazing. And as we made our way north, we paddled down Dubois River. The rapids got more exciting as we went. We got more skilled as we went. We were eating amazing food and seeing really cool wildlife. We saw evidence of, like, these old trappers cabins and we'd see, like caribou sheds. And eventually we started seeing musk oxen, basically like a cross between a yak and a bison. They're straight out of the Ice age. They've got these enormous bony plates and then the horns wrap around their head and they have these big spikes. And as we're taking a break after these first three weeks on trail, I was standing there talking with Mike at this huge canyon and we were just chatting and all of a sudden he. He stopped and he Pointed across this canyon and he said, bear. And we all looked up and there was this grizzly bear that was meandering across this tundra. As soon as he yelled, it heard him and it turned around and started running the other direction. And I remember turning to Dan at that point and saying, you know, that's the only way I'd ever want to see a grizzly bear on the other side of a canyon like that. And with it running in the opposite direction. It was a mixture of awe and wonder at seeing this animal that we'd been told, you know, we were very unlikely to see. But it was also this, like, fear or foreboding that there it was. On day 28, we arrived at Princess Mary lake. And at this point, we have been on the trip for almost a month. And with a 42 day trip, we're kind of pretty close to the end. And in a lot of ways, I think as we paddled into that lake, we were thinking about the fact that this journey was nearing its conclusion. And things have been going really well. We'd been really hitting stride with a lot of the technical things like the paddling and such. And we'd crossed paths with the girls group. So that was a really cool opportunity to learn more about their trip and what it was like and share some of our stories. You know, I'd caught the biggest fish of my life, like that day or the day before. And so it was kind of like all these things were coalescing into this just being the quintessential adventure that I had been hoping for, I guess. And I started to feel this sense of loss that it was nearing its end and just kind of recognizing that on the horizon. The next day, July 31st, was our 29th day on trail. And it was going to be another layover day. We were going to stay in camp. We weren't going to travel at all. And like any other day of rest, you just go from meal to meal to meal. You make breakfast, you hang out, you make lunch, you hang out and you make dinner. So it's kind of like this feasting day alongside a rest day. When we woke up, we were going to have cinnamon rolls. We'd done some trading with the girls to get the right ingredients because we were low on a couple things. And they were going to paddle past us on their way out. But as they were paddling by, they suddenly turned and they went right to our camp and they started climbing up this enormous hill at the base of the island. They were waving their arms and yelling and when they got up to us, they started talking about what they'd seen. They'd seen these really big mammals right around the point of the island. They were describing them as, like, this herd. They were brown, they were tall. They had skinny legs. And as we started talking to them and asking questions, you know, they were describing the musk oxen that we'd seen. Absolutely. This was their first time seeing them. So we thanked them for the warning. We were happy that it wasn't bears that were there. And they went back into their canoes and continued on. And we went on to making our breakfast, which, despite all of our anticipation, instead of cinnamon rolls, we'd accidentally traded for allspice. So they were allspice rolls, which was very disappointing. Later in the afternoon, the rest of the guys decided to go explore the island. We were camped on this enormous island on Princess Mary Lake. It was like five miles across. We were kind of halfway up with this huge ridge behind us. So they decided to go up this ridge and see what was up there. I was really tired at the time, and I decided to just stay back at camp and take a nap. So the rest of them went up. I laid down, and I fell fast asleep. And the next instant, I remember I was waking up gasping, just filled with this feeling that I was late for something. I got all my stuff on. It was cool. So I put on a bunch of different layers. I had long underwear on and fleece and threw some chacos on my feet because that was what we usually wore when we were in the boats to try to give our feet a chance to air out. I climbed outside. Most of the guys had already come back, and they were in the bug tent. And I just felt this compulsion to climb up the ridge and get to the top. It took me about 10 minutes to climb this ridge. There's a lot of crumbling ground and grass, and so you kind of zigzag your way over. And at the top is just this lunar landscape of granite and scrub grass and boulders and small rocks. I started just kind of walking in that direction with my head down, just thinking through what I wanted to do while I was up there. I had my summer reading book in my pocket from my coming year of high school, an assignment, and decided I didn't want to read that. I had my camera in a pelican case on my hand. I was thinking I'd just head up there and kind of take in the view. When you're up there, it's the highest point of land around the island's Taller than everything on shore. And you can see lake after lake after lake. And it's just this 360 degree view from up there. So as I'm walking, I'm watching the ground, just kind of daydreaming. And just out of the corner of my eye, the very top periphery my vision, I see this kind of brown form crest the ridge. And somewhere in the, you know, lizard brain of my mind, I recognize that that's not supposed to be there. That's something moving. My body just immediately tensed. I felt my pulse start racing. I felt this surge of energy that just went all the way through my body. And this crest of brown fur kept coming and growing. And at first I thought, oh, oh no, this is one of those musk oxen. It's 30ft in front of me. It's way too close to be running into a big animal by yourself in the wilderness. And as it kept coming and as I kept kind of moving forward because I still had my momentum going, we crested into each other's line of sight and I saw that this wasn't a musk oxen, this was a grizzly bear. It's eyes just locked on mine and we both stopped and we both had this like moment of surprise. And my body's just racing through this adrenaline response and I'm recognizing that this is the worst case scenario. I pictured pulling the bear spray out of its holster. I imagine taking the safety cap off, aiming the canister and pressing the lever and firing. And that 40 foot spray of mace enveloping this bear in front of me. But I didn't have the bear spray with me. It wasn't our practice to carry it on our person every time. Because we assumed we would be surprised by a bear while we were sleeping. We kept it in the tent. When you're up in this country, there's no trees, you can see for miles. And the idea of stumbling upon one was just not part of our scenarios necessarily. So I couldn't use that. And also in playing in my head was the fact that I could not run. There was the one thing I wanted to do in this situation. I wanted to turn around and get away from this grizzly bear. But I knew that if I did that and started running away, I could run at about 17 miles an hour and the bear could run at about 36, much faster than me. So then I defaulted back. My brain just played out Dan's voice in my head. Going through our training and what you do when you run into a grizzly bear. And he said, hey bear, whoa bear, it's okay bear. So I started to back away slowly, tried to avert my eyes, tried to, you know, not make eye contact with it, basically trying to get rid of any sort of threatening posture, said hey bear, whoa bear, it's okay bear. And I was trying so hard to keep my voice calm and to not let this incredible terror that I was feeling come through in my words. Hey bear, woah bear, it's okay bear. I don't think I was very successful. I'm pretty sure that my voice was shaking a lot and I kept backing away slowly and it didn't turn around and leave. I had to stand my ground while slowly giving it up, slowly telling the bear that I wasn't a threat. And it was processing, it was watching and it launched onto its front paws with a grunt just. And I kept backing away slowly and it did another stationary bluff charge like that a couple of times which just would launch for. I faded from saying hey bear, woah bear. To yelling obscenities as it faded from stationary bluff charge to a full speed charge. When it's 15ft away from me, I'm in this deep stance, my hands are behind my back and I'm just kind of yelling no at this point and yelling help. Trying to get the attention of the guys who were 200 yards away as the crow flies, but they might as well have been on the other side of the lake, the other side of the province. They had no idea anything was happening when it was five or ten feet from me. I can feel the ground shaking under my feet as this 600 pound apex predator is barreling towards me, this 17 year old 150 pound kid. I still had that pelican case in my hand, my camera, I just on instinct just wound back and threw it underhand right at the bear. It plays out in slow motion in my mind. I can see the camera case tumbling towards this bear's face and it hit it square in the nose with enough force to turn its head all the way to the side and the camera case went flying over its shoulder. The bear grunted and for a couple of its steps it couldn't see where I was and I was able to jump out of the way and dodge it bull fighting style, just barely missing me, its claws swiping at me, its jaws snapping at me. And as soon as it realized that it missed me, the bear turned around and came at me again. And I've never seen anything change direction as quickly as that bear did. It's this huge mass but all of a sudden, it was coming at me again. And I was able to jump out of the way again. And so each time it came at me, we got closer and closer. And I'm yelling no and help. And just trying, Trying to survive in this moment where this bear is swiping at me and biting at me. It was getting me with its claws on my arm and my back. And each time it came, it would snap at me with its jaws. It's so incredibly terrifying. My brain is decoding things faster than I can think. Everything is playing out in these milliseconds of reaction. This terrible, terrible dance that I'm having with this grizzly bear. It smells like a dog that's never bathed. It's just this rot and dirt and fur and it's growling and swiping. The claws are moving so fast, they're burning the fleece that's on my back instead of cutting through. And so after a few times of successfully dodging it, the next time it came at me, it bit at my leg. And I had to pull my leg out of the way. At the last second, it's snapped shut, just inches away from it. And then at that same moment, it reached up with its paw. And I remember seeing this grizzly bear's paw when it was inches from my face. It's just this image that is seared in my brain. It's this wide palm with lines on it just like a human's. And these fingers and these enormous claws and in this huge halo of fur. And I remember thinking, oh, no. This is what the grizzly bear uses to take down caribou and muskox. It's this. This blow that we had talked about at some point. That just the power of a grizzly bear being kind of exemplified as they swat at an animal and take it down with that one hit. And when it hit me, it was like the bear was swatting a bug out of the air. My head whipped to the side and I went flying to the side. And I'm still in midair. Haven't hit the ground yet. And it had that same paw up and it threw me down to the ground hard on my tailbone. And it had its head right at my hip as I hit the ground. And it instantly has its teeth around my leg. And it clamps down. And I just feel this excruciating pain, this tearing and pressure. And it is so overwhelming. And I'm screaming. And at this point, I'm just so certain that I'm about to die. And all I can say is no, this isn't how it's supposed to happen. This isn't how this is supposed to go. At that moment, my body was completely overwhelmed. That pain hit my kill switch and then I blacked out.
- [26:00]
Cassie Depechel
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- [26:20]
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- [27:10]
Cassie Depechel
17 year old Alex messenger was deep in the northern Canadian wilderness on day 29 of a 42 day whitewater canoe expedition. That afternoon he'd hiked alone to the top of a ridge behind their campsite, a short climb to take in the view. Then suddenly, a grizzly bear appeared. It lunged fast. Alex dodged once, then again, but within six seconds the bear was on him, sinking its teeth into his thigh and everything went black. Then slowly, his awareness began to return.
- [27:47]
Alex Messenger
So the next instant I remember, I realize that I'm sensing things. I don't really know what I'm sensing, but I can tell that I'm there. And I start to get these little, little flashes of light and I'm suddenly aware that I'm on top of the ridge. And I'm realizing that I have woken up after this bear attack instead of dying as I thought I was about to. I am alive and I am just filled with elation. I'm so excited that I am not dead. And I track along the horizon and my world's just expanding with each moment and I see that the bear is actually still there. And I freeze. I look away. I avert my eyes. I had been playing dead very effectively when I was unconscious and now I have to do it consciously. I'm looking away trying to convince it that that I am not back in this fight and it's watching me as it's running away, and it's running at a trot back up over the ridge. Its head's turned over its shoulder, and it keeps switching side to side, but it's looking at me. And I'm just hoping and hoping that it doesn't come back. And I wait for it to go back over the ridge, and it disappears. And I wait. I sit there. I'm holding my breath, pretty much just hoping it doesn't hear anything, it doesn't change its mind, knowing that if it comes back, I will not survive another round. And once it's gone over the ridge, and I've waited long enough that I know if it kept going, it wouldn't be able to see me if I stood up. I put my hand on my leg and I realized that it is wet. Like, oh, no, that's a lot of blood. And I peel my hand away and I look at it, and it's not blood. It's covered in bare saliva, all gooey between my fingers, which was very encouraging. The blood hadn't gotten through all my layers yet. So watching that part of the ridge where the bear disappeared, I get up and I grab my book that had fallen out of my pocket, because for some reason, I felt like I needed to grab that. I grab my pelican case and I start running back to camp as quickly as I can. I have my sandals on, and my adrenaline is on the red line. It is masking all of my injuries. But I can tell that something is very wrong with my leg. It hurts. It's not working right. And I'm limping terribly, trying to be silent so that the bear can't hear me. And I just know that what I need to do is I need to get to the group. I need to get to the point where I'm not alone anymore. Because alone, if it comes back, I will die. And if I get back to the group, I'll have a chance. And so I'm going as quick as I can, just hoping that I'm going in the right direction. And when I get to the ridge, I see the shoreline down below and I see our boats. And then I take that next step and I see the tent and the guys are down there. And I look back over my shoulder to check to see if that bear is still there, if it's come back. And I turn back to the group and I say, bear? And they're like, whatever, Alex. Like, no, bear. A fucking bear. They thought I was joking. I'd only be Been gone a couple minutes. The whole encounter was probably 30 seconds. I was like, I do not care if they believe me or not. I'm getting off this ridge. I'm not going to be up here when this thing comes back. And the entire time I'm running down this ridge, My adrenaline rush is waning, and my ability to move my leg is just decreasing with each step. And by the time I was about 10ft above Dan, I couldn't move my leg anymore, which my leg muscles, and it's holding it with my arms to keep making my way down. The assessment starts as he's approaching me. You know, we're conversing and yelling back and forth. 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. So he knows that I have a functioning airway, at least for now. He was very concerned about where the bear was at that moment, if the threat is still out there. And it was. But as far as we knew, it had been going the opposite direction. And so he carries me down. And then the rest of the guys are there. They have a sleeping pad they lay me down on. And Dan starts doing his full assessment head to toe, and I've got scrapes and bruises all over. I have the tips of the first two toes on my left foot got sliced off from something, who knows what. My face has the start of a bruise. My ear is bleeding from where one of the claws got it from that swipe. I have red lines going down my back and down my arm from those claw swipes. The worst wound was at the top of my right leg from that bite. So one of the canines went in a quarter inch from my femoral artery. If it had hit that, I would have bled out before I got back to camp. I had a wound right next to that that was a compression wound where the tooth actually hadn't punctured, but it had compressed all the tissue and caused a lot of damage. I had those compression wounds wrapping around my thigh from where the teeth pressed in. Once I was back with the group, I was still terrified, but I knew that they could help me if the bear came back and they could help me with my injuries and whatnot needed to happen next. Was really relying on Dan, and so he worked on addressing those wounds, Stopping the bleeding on my leg, which was the biggest bleed. You know, blood was kind of dripping down my Legs and stuff. And as I'm laying on the ground there, I start to like, realize the gravity of what has just happened. The fact that I was just attacked by a grizzly bear and that I thought I was going to die and that I am now alive. And that was overwhelming. Like the idea that I was so close to death and what it would have meant to everyone in my life if that had happened. I started to have these flashes of people I knew. It was like a Rolodex, this old flip card system where each card had a photo, like a school photo of people I knew, first family and then friends. And it started out slow and then it just started to flip faster and faster and faster. And it was all the people who would have been impacted in some way if I hadn't made it. And I started to like, feel faint. And it was just, it was, it was a lot. So once we got all of my wounds patched up, the next thing was to try to get on the satellite phone and call camp and figure out what to do next. We were still over 100 miles from Baker Lake. That's the only town in thousands of miles. And what we found out after connecting with camp and the different resources was that a helicopter, which is like the go to at that point, wasn't available. The next option is basically like sending in pararescue men to like parachute down or chartering these like high risk rescues. And there'd been a crash like just the year before on one of the mountains out west where a rescue team chopper had gone down. And so that was like fresh in various people's minds. But I was stable, my wounds were controlled. I had a long list of anticipated problems that we had to watch out for. But the risk of a high risk rescue wasn't warranted. The camp, very shortly after it happened, connected with my mom and my dad, told them what was going on. They were overwhelmed, as you might expect. But I really respect that they kind of took in the information and deferred to this team of experts that was assembled to handle this situation. It was decided that we would stay in close contact, communicate with medical control, work through all of their things that they needed to have done in terms of like wound management and watching out for the various things that could come up on that problem. List included some things like infection, which, you know, it's a little more obvious, but then also things like blood clots or compartment syndrome. When you have swelling inside a limb that is too much for that space, it cuts off blood flow to the Distal parts of your body. There are other more nuanced things with rabies, for instance, we had to get to definitive medical care so that I could get the post exposure rabies prophylaxis within less than two weeks. We didn't know if the bear had rabies, but rabies was almost 100% fatal at the time if you didn't treat it within that time frame. Also on that list was PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder with it being 2005. We'd been in Iraq for like four years at this point. So there was more research that was starting to come out of that conflict. And I was really fortunate that the doctor was doing medical control in the states, was like aware of that and thinking about that as a potential issue that I could have in the long term from this trauma. And what he had seen in the research was that people are less likely to have incidents of PTSD the longer they stay with the group with which the stress happened. And so that was like one of the factors. It's like there's actually benefit to him staying with the group. And so we began this self rescue back to Baker Lake which was around 100 miles paddling and if everything went well it would be about a three day paddle and we could get there within our time windows. And things did not quite go to plan.
- [38:33]
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- [38:35]
Cassie Depechel
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Alex Messenger
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- [39:05]
Cassie Depechel
Derry is a beautiful place. But things do happen from time to time.
- [39:10]
Alex Messenger
A new HBO original series. Folks are getting funny ideas.
- [39:16]
Cassie Depechel
Keep the people you love close.
- [39:19]
Alex Messenger
Your lives depend on begins here. There's something here. Something bad it. Welcome to Daring streaming Sundays at 9pm exclusively on HBO Max.
- [39:42]
Cassie Depechel
After the attack, Alex messenger was left to badly wounded. Still 100 miles from the nearest town. The only way out now was to paddle. If all went well, they could reach Baker Lake in three days. But time was tight. Alex needed a rabies shot within two weeks to prevent what would almost certainly be a fatal outcome if he'd been infected. And he would have to clean and monitor his wounds, guarding against Infection, swelling, blood clots, and compartment syndrome, which could lead to permanent nerve damage or even amputation. So with his wounds bandaged and the clock ticking, Alex and his group began their self rescue.
- [40:26]
Alex Messenger
So at that point, it's up to us to start paddling our way to Baker Lake. And once we're on the water, I'm actually able to paddle, which is amazing. I'm able to help assist with my own rescue, which was very empowering. My pain level was actually pretty okay if I wasn't moving the spots that were injured. So we were able to treat that with, for the most part, just over the counter, you know, Tylenol and ibuprofen. And we used some of the narcotic pain meds to manage the wound. We had to clean it regularly and vigorously, doing something called irrigation. So we'd fill a syringe with water and then spray it forcefully into the wound to try to clean it out. It was very painful to do that. You know, a lot of times the water was spraying into nerve endings. So that was, that was very unpleasant. But we made our way down river for a couple days. It went really smoothly. And then we got to 30 Mile Lake, which is notorious for trapping campers in wind, and we weren't immune to that. We got to our campsite, a storm was just starting when we arrived, and the water level rose a foot overnight, and we actually lost one of our boats. The water level came up to where it was beached and it went off into the water lake with the rest of our main stores of food. And so that was a real, a real hit to our morale. And we would end up being trapped there for several days while this storm raged on. And while we were stuck on this campsite, I started to show signs of infection too. And so we started treating that with some of the antibiotics that we had. And during a break in the storm, a couple guys were able to, to go out and find our food, which was, which was really helpful. They didn't find the canoe, but we were able to not just rely on fish at that point. And while we were there, the wound was kind of just stuck. We were hoping that the antibiotics would take care of things, but by the time we were finally able to leave, we were paddling across thertomile Lake a couple days later, and it was clear that the infection was not responding. And it started to get worse. When Dan would spray water into one of three holes that were there now in my leg, the skin between them would expand and then water would come out of all three holes. So there was an abscess that had formed. We got on the phone with medical control. They told us to debride the wound and the abscess. Dan's a wilderness first responder, and this type of incident is what you train for and what you never expect or hope to have to respond to. And so we got to the end of the lake, and at this point there's just two canoes. So we're all, we're all in pretty cozy, but we got to the end of the lake, set up the tents, and did some surgery on my wound with a pair of scissors. I bit on a piece of leather while he used some field sterilized scissors to debride that wound and get it opened up. That was very painful, but it was an important thing to do and a critical thing to do. And after that, that's when the switch flipped. And at that point I had to get evacuated. It wasn't safe to continue paddling. Things can accelerate from there in a way that, you know, you can't wait around. At that point, they called in a helicopter, a helicopter was available, and we gave them our GPS coordinates and that helicopter was dispatched. And on its way, I had to pack up all my things and get ready to go and say goodbye to all the guys that, that I'd been traveling with for the past, you know, at this point, 36 days. And Mike agreed to come with me and to end his trip early as well. And all of a sudden there's this helicopter that appears and just takes over the landscape with this roar and this rush of wind and it lands right on the tundra there. And Mike and I throw our things in and all of a sudden we're up above the ground looking through the cockpit at the rest of our guys standing there waving.
- [45:15]
Cassie Depechel
It had been six days since the bear attack, and now finally, Alex was being evacuated by helicopter. It was a short flight to the small medical center in Baker Lake. The care there was limited, but they were able to start him on IV antibiotics.
- [45:33]
Alex Messenger
And I'd end up getting about like five bags of antibiotics before I got flown out the next day. Basically, they didn't have enough equipment. They didn't have the rabies post exposure medicine. So the next morning, Mike and I hopped on a plane to head down to Winnipeg. So my parents came and met me, and Mike went to the ER there and spent about 15 hours getting some of those medications and getting prescriptions to continue after that. And then, you know, after I got back into the States, every day it was like two dressing changes a day and shots and a bunch of antibiotics and things. And over the course of the next month and a half, the wound gradually healed until I was getting up, getting ready to go to one of my days as a senior at high school. And I didn't need to put on any more band aids, started out packing gauze into the wound until it reached the surface. And then finally that last day, took the band aid off and it was all closed up. That was about two months of the wound healing. It took a lot longer to deal with some of the, like, longer term physical challenges. I had a little bit of range of motion and weakness issues with that leg and was able to clear that up about six months to a year later and got my range of motion back. But processing the event, like, emotionally and mentally took a lot longer. I'd have various nightmares where I'd see bears or like, they'd be in the room where I was sleeping. I would dream there was this grizzly bear, like, standing next to the bed on its forest, just breathing. And it's this like silent terror. I knew that it had the potential to, like, keep me from going out into the woods, you know, when we were still on trail. Every boulder was a bear and every shadow was a bear. So I worked on getting out in controlled environments that would allow me to kind of push my comfort zone, my new comfort zone. And so the first iteration of that was going to this backcountry cabin that we used to visit near Ely, Minnesota. It's out in the woods. There are wolves around, there are bears, but it's a cabin. There's a door that you can lock. I'd be there with my family. And so I, I would do these kind of like desensitization steps. And I had, you know, these various security blankets I bring with me. So that first trip I had like a tactical vest and a machete and bear spray and, and all that. And over the years, I was able to, to dial that back to more reasonable things to bring. With me.
- [48:27]
Cassie Depechel
In 2015, 10 years after the attack, Alex went on a trip to Glacier national park, prime grizzly territory. Of course, he and his group took precautions, following every step they could to avoid another encounter.
- [48:42]
Alex Messenger
Each person on our group had their own personal bear spray that they, that they always had on their person, no matter what. Even going to the bathroom. You know, Murphy's law is if you don't bring it to the bathroom, that's where something's going to happen.
- [48:54]
Cassie Depechel
In the decade after the attack, Alex also returned to Camp Monogan to work as a trail guide. And later he joined the St. Louis County Sheriff's Rescue Squad in northern Minnesota, the region's search and rescue unit.
- [49:08]
Alex Messenger
That's felt like a very powerful way for me to take these experiences that I've had and the training that I've had and put them to use helping other people. So getting out into the woods was one sort of process for me. Another process was like telling the story of what had happened. I knew that it was something that I wanted to write a book about, and as I did this, over the course of years, my brain was able to further understand kind of what had happened. At first, I was very upset, and I very quickly switched to, like, a sense of appreciation, because it could have done a lot worse. And it was ultimately just being a bear in the wild. The game warden flew to the island to try to find the bear after my attack. They were going to potentially destroy the bear, and they couldn't find it. And I'm glad that they didn't find it, because I think if they had, especially if they had ended up destroying it, that would have been just really tragic. I think, you know, this was just a bear being a bear. It was defending itself, and it could have killed me in a. It didn't.
- [50:30]
Cassie Depechel
The experience left Alex forever changed, especially in how he sees the world.
- [50:36]
Alex Messenger
I recognize more about, like, my capacity and threshold for challenges and pain and things like that, but it definitely made me much more appreciative of the time I have here and being alive, because for a time, I didn't think that was going to continue.
- [51:01]
Cassie Depechel
After years of writing, In 2019, Alex released his memoir, The 29th Day. It was a powerful step in processing the trauma and moving forward.
- [51:13]
Alex Messenger
The last step of publishing the book was to record the audio for it. And I sat in a room for three days, and I went through this entire experience again, from start to finish, really living through it. And when I finally finished, I felt this kind of weight was gone. So I could finally take this experience and quite literally now put it on a shelf and set it aside and reference it when I wanted to and leave it there when I did. And so that felt like the closure of that chapter of my life. And the day after I finished recording the audio, my wife went into labor with our son. Our firstborn was named Orson, which means bear cub. You know, there's a lot of power and meaning in that. When we were driving home with him from the hospital, we had to stop our car just a few blocks from our house because there was a bear crossing the road.
- [52:17]
Cassie Depechel
A couple of years later, Alex and his wife welcomed a daughter. Today they take their young children on family adventures and Alex looks forward to the day he can introduce them to Camp Monogen. It's now been 20 years since the attack, and every July 31, Alex finds a way to mark the the day that changed his life.
- [52:39]
Alex Messenger
I call it Bear Day, and I mostly try to take intentional time that day to remember. To remember what happened and the horror of it, but then also to think about what I've done since, what I've done in this extra year that I've had to live. If you like against the odds, you.
- [53:12]
Wondery Announcer
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- [53:18]
Alex Messenger
Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey.
- [53:33]
Cassie Depechel
Alex messenger is an author, wilderness guide and photographer based in Duluth, Minnesota. If you'd like to learn more, you can check out his memoir, The 29th Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra. Alex's debut novel, The Ice on the Lake will be published in March 2026. It's a haunting story of survival and redemption set on Lake Superior. I'm your host, Cassie depechel. This episode was written and produced by Rachel Matlow. Original theme music Scott Velasquez and 2K for freeze on sync sound design by Joe Richardson. Series produced by Peter Acuni and Emily Frost. Managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Senior producer is Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny, Lara Beckman and Marshall Louie. For Wondery.
- [54:34]
Nick Cannon
It'S your man, Nick Cannon and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night. I've heard y' all been needing some advice in the love department. So who better to help than yours truly? Nah, I'm serious. Every week I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends and the best experts in the business to answer your most intimate relationship questions. Having problems with your man? We got you catching feelings for your sneaky link. Let's make sure it's the real deal first. Ready to bring toys into the bedroom? Let's talk about it. Consider this a non judgment zone to ask your questions when it comes to sex and modern dating in relationships, friendships, situationships and everything in between. It's gonna be sexy, freaky, messy. And you know what? You'll just have to watch the show. So don't be shy. Join the conversation and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. Want to watch episodes early and ad free? Join Wondery plus right now.