← Real Survival Stories
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- [00:00]
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- [00:33]
Narrator
It's late October 2015 in the state of Wyoming. The Wind River Mountains bask in radiant fall sunshine. Sawtooth granite peaks serrate the sky, which is blue and vast and cloudless. An alpine stream fed by snow thawed in the unseasonably warm weather meanders through wildflower speckled tundra just below the treeline in a dense thicket of dry brush, and deadfall flies buzz around a heap of deliberately placed pine boughs. A dead elk shot by a hunter earlier today lies hidden beneath the branches, its silvery brown fur matted with blood, sharp antlers protruding from the autumn foliage. Clearly, whoever shot this beast intends to come back for it. Which begs the question, where are they? Six miles down the trail, 35 year old Leif Vidin sits slumped in the saddle of his horse, a harnessed rifle slung across his sagging torso. Blood soaks the hard wearing fabric of his trousers and drips over the leather lining of his boots. Beneath his rough blond stubble, his skin is sickly pale. Leif lifts his head. There are still many miles to go. He has to pick up the pace. He tugs weakly at the reins of his horse, Dylan. With a flick of his head, Dillon expels twin jets of steam from his flared nostrils. Then he springs forwards, the muscles rippling in his glossy chestnut haunches. Each impact of the horse's hooves on the hard ground fires another bolt of pain through Leif's abdomen. But he can't slow down. If he does, he might never make it down this mountain alive.
- [02:47]
Leif Vidin
As the time goes by, I'm getting like, weaker. I'm also extremely nauseous, and I'm vomiting a lot and I can't get off. I'm trying to lean over my saddle best I can to throw up, but it is like, so miserable.
- [03:00]
Narrator
He glances woozily at the trail in front of him, wending interminably through the hazy, herringboned foothills, and then a sudden wave of exhaustion blurring his vision. He sways in his saddle and tries to tighten his grip on the reins, but he doesn't have the strength.
- [03:21]
Leif Vidin
I'm like, oh my God. I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna stay conscious. And I just felt bad for my family if I end up dying here. I just felt terrible for them.
- [03:39]
Narrator
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 Leif Vidin, a cowboy and saddler from Wyoming. Leif lives a paired back, outdoorsy life, surviving in a remote location and frequently hunting his own food. In October 2015, he sets out on an elk stalking trip into the Wind River Mountains. After days of pursuit, he gets the opportunity to take his shot. Pulling the trigger, he never expects that he will soon be the one fighting for his life.
- [04:33]
Leif Vidin
I don't know what this is. I've never felt like this. I felt a bizarre physical sickness. I feel really weird internally and I feel this sense of dread. There's definitely a chance I'm not going to make it.
- [04:51]
Narrator
Plagued with mysterious grisly symptoms, Leif will have to dig deep and put his faith in his trusty steed to carry him down the mountain before it is too late. I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Real Survival stories. It's late October 2015 on the outskirts of the small town of Lander, Wyoming. Leif Vidin emerges from his cabin and strolls across the paddock to the barn. The familiar musty smell of horse and hay greets him as he steps inside the dark stable, his cowboy boots crunching softly on the wood chips. Leif's two stock horses, Dylan and Fonzie Pyridam, over the tops of their neighboring stalls. The rangy, bespectacled 35 year old walks over and strokes his ponies affectionately, running his hand across their velvety muzzles. Leif leads Dillon and Fonzie out of the stable and into the trailer attached to the back of his truck. With his horses loaded, he heads back inside the house to say goodbye to his wife Shelly, and to grab the rest of the gear he'll need for several days in the wilderness. A tent, some warm clothes, his hunting knife, rifle and ammunition. By mid morning, Leif is on the road. Up ahead, the snow flecked granite spine of the Wind River Mountains underlines the cobalt blue sky. He doesn't know how long he'll be away from Home hunting trips are often by their very nature open ended. Going into the wilderness is its own kind of homecoming, a return to something Leif's been drawn to since he was a boy.
- [07:16]
Leif Vidin
I bought my first teepee when I was 14 years old with my own money and I had it set up at home and I lived out there all summer from when I was like 14 till after I left home. I mean, I came in the house to eat and do stuff, but my bedroom was in my teepee. So I'd sleep out there all summer until it got too cold. So it's kind of a unique childhood. Just a lot of adventure. We had a lot of free rein.
- [07:47]
Narrator
Leif's love of the great outdoors inspired him to attend college in mountainous Colorado, where he spent his summers working on guest ranches in the hills. It was during one such summer, on one such ranch, that he made a life changing discovery.
- [08:03]
Leif Vidin
So I was cleaning rooms during the week, but then at that guest ranch, I saw that there's these horse wranglers that had horses there and I was like, oh my God, that looks so awesome.
- [08:15]
Narrator
Spellbound after finishing college, he moved to work on a ranch in Wyoming, taking every available opportunity to spend time with the horses.
- [08:24]
Leif Vidin
I ended up living in the mountains, working for ranchers and just tending cattle in the mountains. From May until November, I make all my money chasing cattle, horseback, and then I started taking outside horses. I'm call them outside horses where I started like starting colts, starting horses under saddle, young horses, or sometimes people would bring me older horses that had maybe problems or troubles and I would help try to get those figured out and ride those horses for a while.
- [08:59]
Narrator
There's a deep bond between Leif and the animals he works with. He communicates with them through sound and gesture. These days, when each winter arrives, he leaves the cattle and returns to his humble homestead where he picks up work. Taming fiery young colts into obedient steeds, or making and selling custom leather saddles. He and Shelley live a good life, a throwback in many ways, forging their livelihood from the soil of the American West. Still, certain aspects of the simple life are really rather far from simple. In true pioneer fashion, Leif and Shelley try to limit their meat consumption to animals they kill and butcher themselves. When elk hunting season rolls around in early autumn, Leif mounts his horse, shoulders, his rifle and heads dutifully into Wind river country. It's not sport, it's a necessity, an affordable and sustainable source of food that will keep him and his wife fed through the long, hard winter.
- [10:11]
Leif Vidin
I was never a trophy hunter. I was always what I call a meat hunter where I just wanted to shoot something for meat. Like that was the end of it. I dreaded hunting season. To me, the hunting itself was like going to cut firewood or cutting hay. It's just like something that has to be done to kind of keep living. It was just something I had to go do.
- [10:42]
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- [11:00]
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- [11:13]
Narrator
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- [11:21]
Marvel Studios Advertiser
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- [11:22]
Narrator
You got some place to be on May 2nd.
- [11:24]
Leif Vidin
Avengers are gone no one's coming to.
- [11:26]
Narrator
Save the day their time. I think we could be the people that are coming has come being the hero There is no higher calling. Let's do this. Marvel Studios Thunderbolts only theaters may 2 get tickets now. This theater film is not yet rated. It's early afternoon. After parking his truck at the trailhead, Leif saddles up Dillon and loads the hunting gear and camping supplies onto Fonzie, his pack horse. Now with Fonzie trudging behind, Leif rides Dillon up a steep, rocky inc.
- [12:08]
Leif Vidin
Elk like to be really high in the mountains until the snow. The snow will actually push them down out of the high mountains. In the summer they'll be like up in the peaks like above tree line up in the rocks and it's just really hard to hunt that high up. It's just not as desirable. So oftentimes you kind of wait. I'd like to wait for the first big snowstorm to kind of push the elk down a little bit further out of the highest mountains.
- [12:35]
Narrator
Leif continues up the trail. On either side of the footpath wind, gnarled cottonwoods and stunted pines fall away to reveal a sprawling expanse of mountains. Deep river canyons and squat sandstone buttes with their distinctive wide, flat summits. Though snow fills the crags of the uppermost reaches, the weather is mild for late October with beautiful clear skies overhead.
- [13:05]
Leif Vidin
Towards the end of the season, it had gotten really warm again. Beautiful fall weather. Calm, sunny like. We have the bluest skies in Wyoming. There's still some leaves on the trees, so there's still some color to the aspens.
- [13:27]
Narrator
The Wind river range covers around 7,000 square miles of some of the wildest and remotest wilderness in all of North America. Leif scans the ridge as he trots through the sparse, twisted evergreens. He's currently heading up a gorge, riding purposefully. Though his exact destination is unclear, much of the time the activity of the elk herd is anyone's guess. This means Leif hasn't been able to tell Shelly where he's going or how long he will be.
- [14:06]
Leif Vidin
You just never know exactly what the elk are up to. I don't know how many days I'll be gone. It's really a vague thing. You just don't know how it's going to go until you're kind of in it.
- [14:20]
Narrator
He's certainly in it now. For two full days, Leif journeys deeper and deeper into the mountains. There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from being out here. The unobstructed horizons, the natural splendor, the quiet solitude. He deliberately plans his hunts for late in the season when encounters with other hunters are rare. It is as if the entire mountain is his and his alone.
- [14:56]
Leif Vidin
If I were to see another person hunting, I'm kind of like, hey, what are they doing in my area? What's going on? Like, what's someone doing out here? So you know, like we're kind of spoiled here, having a lot of room to ourselves.
- [15:09]
Narrator
Occasionally, though, something happens that reminds Leif how quickly these mountains can turn against you. A few months back, he was leading a small group of tourists through these very hills when he made a morbid discovery.
- [15:25]
Leif Vidin
I was on just a summertime fun time pack trip and I'd set up camp and then I was hiking up behind the campus and evening wandering around and I saw something domed and white shaped on the ground that caught my eye and I flipped it over and it was a human skull.
- [15:45]
Narrator
Whatever fate befell this poor individual, there's certainly no shortage of ways to die out here. Hunters have to be particularly careful that their activities don't inadvertently draw the attention of the region's apex predator.
- [16:05]
Leif Vidin
Most of the mountains in Wyoming, there's a lot of grizzly bears. And the bears have learned that gunshot means a gut pile, which is easy food. So there's accounts of people that literally they Shoot an elk and bears come. I mean, this is an exaggeration, but come like it's a dinner bell.
- [16:30]
Narrator
Then there are the less foreseeable dangers, like the one beneath your own saddle. When you're as comfortable around horses as Leif is, it can be easy to forget that these are still animals, unpredictable and incredibly powerful. A single kick from a horse's hind legs can generate over 10,000 Newtons of force, comparable to the impact of a high speed car crash. Certain animals are better suited to certain terrains. Horses, for courses, you could say Dylan and Fonzie, for instance, are somewhat untested in this environment. They're strong and great around livestock, but like all creatures, they have their own quirks, their strengths and their weaknesses.
- [17:24]
Leif Vidin
I knew my horses really well. Like I knew exactly their triggers. They were too touchy for the mountains. In the mountains, you want something, what we call bomb proof, where nothing rattles the horse. They're unflappable, super steady, very mellow, very docile. But when you're cowboy, sometimes you want something that's got a little more get up and go a little snappier because you might have to make real quick moves.
- [17:50]
Narrator
It's a case of weighing up various options and working with what's available. Dylan is quick and reactive, potentially useful if things take a dangerous turn. But he also has some natural skittishness which over countless hours, Leif has tried to rid him of.
- [18:11]
Leif Vidin
Dylan, at any rate, he was like a decent cow horse, but he had an edge to him that I never did like. And I worked and worked and worked with him to try to soften that edge, but he just had an edge that I could not soften. I mean, all day, every day I, like, was with my horses, so I had a very good rapport with them, but he wasn't. You wouldn't be a first choice for mountain horse, but it's what I had, so it's who I used.
- [18:45]
Narrator
It's the evening of Leif's second day in the mountains. He set up camp in a wildflower meadow beneath a cirque of snow dusted summits. While his horses graze by tumbling Creek, Leif stokes the crackling fire. Then he picks up his binoculars and steps into the smoky purple dusk. So far, this has been a frustrating hunt. Not a single elk spotted. And so it's more in hope than expectation that he begins scanning the lofty ridgeline, searching the shadowy outcrops for telltale flashes of movement. Which is when he sees them. A herd of about 30 elk huddled together on the exposed ridge, Leif lowers his binoculars. Like bats and fireflies, elks are crepuscular, meaning they're most active in the low light hours of the early morning and late evening, when they like to graze in the high alpine meadows. During the day, they descend from the ridge to bed down among the trees.
- [20:00]
Leif Vidin
My hope was that I would intercept them. I saw where they were the night before, and I'd get up there in the dark, and then I would intercept them as they were coming back down to the timber. Hopefully, I'd run into them between the open and the timber there.
- [20:24]
Narrator
The following morning, Leif gets up before sunrise. With his rifle slung over one shoulder, he stalks off uphill on foot, seeking out a hidden spot among a scattering of large boulders, the perfect position to lie in wait. But just then, as he approaches the vantage point, he hears a sudden commotion from somewhere down below. A cacophony of snapping branches and stampeding hooves. He spins around. In the dawn's light, it looks as if the trees themselves are moving. Then his eyes adjust and he realizes it's the herd that is thundering through the timber, a river of brown fur and pale antlers flowing parallel across the slope.
- [21:13]
Leif Vidin
I end up getting a boulder between me and the elk to hide me because I was kind of exposed and I got down to this boulder, popped up over the boulder, and there's a bull standing a little bit below me.
- [21:26]
Narrator
He presses his eye against the rifle sight. The elk stands a few hundred feet below, idling blithely in a woodland clearing. Leif takes aim, inhales, then pulls the trigger on the half breath. He watches through the crosshairs as the elk's body jerks before toppling over sideways and out of sight. With the loud report still echoing off the mountainside, Leif gets to his feet, harnesses his gun, and begins the long plod down. When he reaches the animal, he does something that he always does after a kill. He bows his head and utters a heartfelt apology.
- [22:15]
Leif Vidin
Definitely looking back on it now, too. I It's. It was for basically to make myself feel better. It had nothing to, you know, Dale, he's dead. Like, there's no apologizing to him. It's definitely to make myself feel better about it.
- [22:31]
Narrator
Leif takes his knife and opens up the stomach cavity. He pulls out the entrails and places them a short distance away for the magpies and crows to peck at, to keep them and any other scavengers away from the precious carrion. This done, he covers the carcass with a shroud of protective pine boughs, then sets off back to camp to fetch the horses. These are the most critical moments of the hunt, when everything could yet be lost.
- [23:04]
Leif Vidin
People like to say it's kind of another silly saying, but meat ain't meat till it's in the pan. Meaning there's a lot that can go wrong from the time you kill something until it's home and it's safe and sound.
- [23:25]
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- [23:50]
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- [23:52]
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- [24:27]
Narrator
It's about 8am Leif is riding down the wooded slope back towards the elk carcass. Fonzie, tethered to Dillon via a lead rope, trots a few yards behind. Dense brush blankets the forest floor knee deep. Piles of dead, fallen wood and rotting stumps. Leif has to plot the easiest route for his horses. No mean feat. Arriving at an impassable tract of undergrowth, he flicks Dillon's reins, commanding him to halt. He scans the vegetation, searching for a way through. Warm sunshine streams between branches, dappling the forest floor.
- [25:15]
Leif Vidin
It was like 50 degrees sunny, really nice weather, and there's still just a couple of flies out. It's kind of late into the year, but there's one or two oddball flies.
- [25:26]
Narrator
A couple of blue bottles buzz around the horses, but Leif doesn't pay them attention. The same can't be said for Dylan, however. Just as Leif is leaning out of his saddle to navigate through the brush, the horse swishes his tail A quick, dismissive swat aimed at the irksome insect. The fly buzzes off. But when Dylan brings his tail back down, the lead rope gets caught underneath it.
- [25:58]
Leif Vidin
There's such a thing that is called a ring tail. And a ringtail is when your saddle horse swishes his tail over the lead rope. In this case, it would be the lead rope of my pack horse. And when a horse gets something up underneath his tail way at the base, they generally do not like that sensation.
- [26:21]
Narrator
In an instant, Dylan's hackles are up. He tosses back his head and flares his nostrils, amber eyes flashing with displeasure. He issues a loud snort of indignation.
- [26:34]
Leif Vidin
And then he fired with both hind legs extremely hard up over his head. His head went down between his front legs. His hind feet went straight up in the air and he kicked to get that lead rope out of his tail. And just like that, I came off.
- [26:53]
Narrator
Leif is catapulted into the air. Dillon stands about 5ft tall at the saddle, which means Leif has about twice that to fall. And fall he does, hard on his back, directly onto the jutting stump of a fallen pine tree.
- [27:15]
Leif Vidin
When I landed, I would have been fine other than I landed on a little lodge pole pine about 6 inches in diameter that was barely suspended off the ground. And I landed right on that lodge pole pine right on my kidney. I instantly knew something was wrong. And I mean, I've come off horses multiple times and usually you're like, oh man. Oh gosh. Okay, just give me a second, I'll be all right. And this one was like, oh my God, I'm not all right. It was a weird, very internal pain. Other times you get hurt and it feels more like on the surface in a way. And this was like inside Rose, like, oh, she's. This is like inside of me somewhere. I don't know what this is. I've never felt like this.
- [28:05]
Narrator
Slowly, Leif moves onto his knees and touches his lower back. The fall didn't break the skin. It doesn't seem to have broken a bone. But the eye watering pain radiating from his abdomen tells him he's done some serious damage. Dylan, meanwhile, seems totally back to normal. His demons exorcised, Leif tries to stand, but he is immediately overcome by an intense skin prickling nausea.
- [28:37]
Leif Vidin
For a second, like, okay, maybe I'll be okay. And then I was like, I don't think I'm okay. I was feeling this really weird feeling of like, not sure if I wanted to vomit or diarrhea. And I was like, God, I don't know what. And then I was like, I think I just need to, like, take a leak. Maybe I need to take a leak because, like, my nerves are up. And when I did, it was just solid blood, like pure, fresh, bright red blood. I was like, this is not good.
- [29:07]
Narrator
The ruby red liquid pools around his feet. Where's all this blood coming from? What invisible injury has he sustained? Leif drags his eyes away and scans the dark wood, his pulse thrumming. The romance of his isolation is gone, replaced by a sinister, leering menace. A chill wind rattles through the ragged forest. Now, seeing another hunter would be very welcome, but he's clearly alone. And so Leif reaches into his pack and pulls out his cell phone. One thing is abundantly clear. He needs urgent medical attention. But when he flips open his phone, he discovers that he doesn't have any service, not one bar. He casts an eye up to the ridge above his campsite. Maybe he'll have better luck finding signal in a more elevated spot. Though of course that will mean hiking up there, which would take time. Time he might not have. Maybe he should focus on getting himself down the mountain, not climbing further up it.
- [30:26]
Leif Vidin
I just got to get out of the mountains. That's my number one goal, is get down. The lower I get, the better off I am. But I was like, do I take the time to go up there and try to make a call, or do I just go for it?
- [30:41]
Narrator
Even if he were to hike to the ridge, there's no guarantee he'll get any bars up there. And every minute he spends deliberating is a minute wasted. In the end, Leif decides to roll the dice.
- [30:56]
Leif Vidin
Okay, I think it's worth the risk to try to make a call, because I was like, if I can make a call, that's going to make a big difference in what happens next.
- [31:09]
Narrator
Leif tethers Dylan and Fonzie to a tree. Trekking up to the ridge on horseback doesn't seem like an option. Putting any pressure on his lower abdomen is pure agony. And the jostling motion of the saddle as he navigates the incline would be hellish. He sets off up the hillside on foot and onto the vertiginous scree of the ridge. His pace is achingly slow, each step a trial by fire. All the while, doubt gnaws at him.
- [31:43]
Leif Vidin
Part way up, I'm like, oh, my God. I'm spending a lot of energy and a lot of time trying this, trying to see if there's service. Like, I was like, I'm not sure if this is worth it because I knew time and energy were limited.
- [31:59]
Narrator
Nevertheless, he persists, soldiering on up the steep shingle. Finally, Leif reaches the ridge summit. With shaky hands, he opens his phone and squints at the screen through the sun's dazzling reflection.
- [32:14]
Leif Vidin
There's no bars, but it's. But there's service. Like, it's that weird thing of. Like, it's not no service, but there's no real bars. So I tried to call Shelley. Did it ring? I don't think it even. It just acted like it was. Like it said, like, calling, calling. But it never actually rang. I tried a couple of times and I was like, okay, this isn't gonna work.
- [32:35]
Narrator
No service at all would have been better than this torment. Slamming his phone shut, Leif slides it back into his pocket. Then he turns and looks back down the ridge. The mountains are spread out below in a vast, dizzying expanse, a desert of granite. Dread steals over him. Even without his injuries, it would be tough going. In his current condition, the journey seems impossible. It's hard not to recall the skull he found earlier this summer.
- [33:12]
Leif Vidin
I am that guy. Like, this is gonna be me. The skull is going to be my skull. I just felt bad for my family, for Shelly. If I end up dying here, that just felt terrible for them.
- [33:24]
Narrator
There's only one way forward, and that's down. It's 12 miles back to the trailhead. 12 miles of intricate, winding bridle path incorporating forest, gully and mountain. But at least he's got Dylan and Fonzie. And through all his years of wrangling, he's never needed his horses more than now. The odds are stacked against him, but it's up to Leif to push them as far as he can in his favor.
- [33:55]
Leif Vidin
I felt like there's definitely a chance I'm not going to make it. This thing could go either way. But if I. If I back off the tiniest bit, it is going to go that direction. And if I don't back off, it might go this other direction.
- [34:20]
Narrator
It's three hours later. Leif and his horses pick their way along a rocky mountain trail. He leans back painfully in his saddle, the pointed toes of his cowboy boots resting gingerly on blood spattered stirrups. The reins hang slack, draped loosely around his fingers. The pain of riding horseback is excruciating, but he has neither the strength nor the time to proceed on foot. Pangs of nausea rise from the pit of his stomach to his throat. He spits onto the ground. Blood and bile coagulating in the dust. It's hard to say how far Leif has traveled since climbing down from the ridge, and grim reminders of his precarious condition are never far away.
- [35:15]
Leif Vidin
Constantly, I'm having to pee. My bladder is just filling up, and I'm having the urge to have to pee a lot. And I wasn't going to get off and on my horse. I knew I didn't have the energy or the time to keep getting up and off my horse, so I just literally opened my fly and just would pee. It wasn't pee. It was just solid blood. And now my jeans are all covered in blood. It's all down the side of my saddle. It's full of blood. And I just keep riding. And it's, like, terrifying. Like, you have nothing to do but, like, think about, what if.
- [35:48]
Narrator
This mysterious internal trauma is an ordeal for both body and mind, a test of physical resilience and willpower as one hour trickles into the next. If only there was somebody else up here, a hiker or fellow hunter, somebody who could ride ahead and bring help. But at this time of year, such an encounter is extremely unlikely.
- [36:14]
Leif Vidin
There's no one up there in the mountains. The big rush of elk hunting was over and. And I didn't see anybody. So the chance of running into someone was. This isn't, like a busy trail where there's all sorts of people hiking on it. And so I knew the chance of seeing someone was pretty, pretty slim.
- [36:37]
Narrator
Leif's skin is pewter gray beneath the wide, curved brim of his Stetson. A few strands of hair cling to his sweaty forehead. His health is declining rapidly, and so is his optimism.
- [36:53]
Leif Vidin
As the time goes by, I'm getting weaker. I'm also extremely nauseous and I'm vomiting a lot. It is, like, so miserable. The trail is really rough, super rocky, and each step of the horse is just so. So jarring and painful.
- [37:13]
Narrator
Onwards they go, through rivers and streams, over high mountain passes, and around clear alpine lakes. Staying focused on the task at hand is easier said than done. His body and mind aren't working in tandem. Physically, he's ready to call it quits.
- [37:32]
Leif Vidin
The easier thing would have been to have just fallen off my horse and laid there and. And died. Like that would have, in some ways, physically probably been the easier thing. My mind definitely did not want that to happen. My mind was definitely constantly focused on the single objective of, like, get to the trailhead. That is your only job right now, is to get down at all costs. Where I feel like my body was more like, you literally could just lay down here if you want to. You literally could just stop. I didn't feel there was any external power pulling me through. I just kept feeling like this is on you. Like, whether you live or not, this is totally up to you. All this responsibility is on you. Like there's nothing outside of you that is gonna help you get down.
- [38:30]
Narrator
As the sun drops lower in the sky, Leif's vision begins to blur at the edges. Shadows creep into his peripheries like the darkening vignette of an old photograph. He sways in the saddle, nearly slipping off as Dylan descends a rocky ledge.
- [38:48]
Leif Vidin
Oh my God. I don't know if I'm gonna stay conscious. I think I might just like, black out. I don't know that I can stay conscious any longer. Foreign.
- [39:05]
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- [39:36]
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- [40:51]
Narrator
It'S late afternoon. Leaf has been riding all day, covered in blood and sick. He sways from side to side as Dillon trots lightly down the trail. They can't be far off now. The scenery changes as they reach lower elevation, with evergreens giving way to deciduous forest ablaze with autumn colors. A mild breeze rolls through the valley, shaking the golden branches. But Leif can barely keep his eyes open. His body is shutting down, and he no longer has the strength to fight it. But then, as he rounds a bend in the trail, something appears in the distance. Gradually, the image man materializes, sharpening into focus through a cloud of dust rising from the ground.
- [41:54]
Leif Vidin
I've come around a corner of the trail, and here comes a guy, horseback, coming up the trail. This one lone guy on a horse. At this point, I was fading in and out.
- [42:06]
Narrator
The rider approaches, rapidly closing the gap between them. Leif tries to form words, but all that escapes from his dry, cracked lips is a barely audible croak. The man could simply ride past unaware. Just a nod of the hat and a passing howdy. Then what? Luckily, an unwritten rule of the mountains intervenes at the last moment.
- [42:35]
Leif Vidin
The etiquette in the mountains is the you meet someone, horseback. Whoever has the most horses keeps the trail, and whoever has least horses yields the trail. I had two horses, he had one. So he kind of reined his horse off the trail to let me go by. And as I approached him head on, and we were getting close to talking distance, our horses are about parallel. He's like, how are you doing? And I'm like, I'm not good. I need help.
- [43:08]
Narrator
The man's curiosity turns to concern, But Leaf doesn't have time to answer his questions.
- [43:16]
Leif Vidin
I didn't even stop. I just handed him off my lead rope as I went by him. And they just follow me, just follow me down. And not that he could keep me from falling out of my saddle, but I was like, just stay behind me. And we're going down the trailhead.
- [43:31]
Narrator
With the good samaritan following behind with Fonzie, they set off down the trail with a newfound surge of energy. Leif winces as the pace quickens, the increased movement sending pain thundering through his lower body. Finally, after another three miles of riding, they reach the wooden signpost of the trailhead. Suddenly, there are cars and people and hope. Leif brings Dylan to a halt. He heaves himself down from the saddle and staggers into the parking lot. He needs to find a ride, and right now, he doesn't care who provides it. He stops the first moving vehicle he sees, slamming his bloody hands down on the bonnet and fixing the Driver with a pleading, urgent stare.
- [44:25]
Leif Vidin
I stopped this vehicle. I'm full of blood and vomit. And I start to open the door like I'm getting in this thing, like there's, there's no way they're leaving without me. And they're like, oh my God. And I was like, just give me the emergency room. And they're like, we're, we're from out of town. Where's the hospital?
- [44:44]
Narrator
Through the pain, Leif stammers out some directions. Minutes later, the kindly tourists whose weekend trip to the mountains has taken an unexpected turn screech to a stop outside a local hospital. Leif thanks them effusively before stumbling into the emergency room where he is swiftly taken to the operating theater.
- [45:08]
Leif Vidin
That's when it just, the relief was like, oh my God, I think I'm gonna live at this point. They, I got in there and they, you know, cut all your clothes off and hooked me up to drugs instantly. And then I ended up needing, I think it was three liters of blood.
- [45:32]
Narrator
Once he's stable and sitting up in bed, a doctor tells Leif precisely what happened to him. The impact with the pine stump caused severe trauma to his kidney. It's what explains the nausea, the vomiting and the urinating blood. Still, it could have been far worse.
- [45:52]
Leif Vidin
It turns out I got super lucky because apparently there's kind of a little casing. Someone later told me that there's a casing around your kidney. And in my instance, that casing held and didn't break. But if that casing would have split, I would have definitely bled to death. Just bled out.
- [46:17]
Narrator
Shelley soon arrives at the hospital and is reunited with Leif. He's also visited by a couple of friends who even offer to ride up into the mountains to see if they can recover the elk that he shot. It's unlikely that the carcass will still be there. The magpies will have seen to that. But after all the pain and trouble Leif went to, it seems a shame not to try.
- [46:42]
Leif Vidin
So laying in my hospital bed, this is crazy too. Like I, I drew a map, a hand drawn map and gave it to two friends. They rode up into the mountains and they made a 24 mile round trip, recovered the elk by my hand drawn map, packed up my camp, got my food out of the tree and brought it all back down while I was still in the hospital. So we ended up with the elk after all. And I mean, I did not want that thing to go to waste. Like, oh my God, I did not want that elk to go to waste.
- [47:20]
Narrator
In the years after his accident, Leif introduces a few changes to his forays into the wilderness so that Shelly can keep tabs on his location.
- [47:32]
Leif Vidin
I have a GPS tracker that I carry with me now. Anytime I go really anywhere in the mountains or the desert, I always pack my spot tracker. So she knows she can now see my new location each night. So that's really been, I think, a piece of mind.
- [47:51]
Narrator
Getting himself down the mountain was a display of sheer grit and composure. Plus, his horses, animals he'd long cared for, actually supported him when it most mattered. Though when he reflects on what happened up there in the wind rivers, Leif doesn't attribute his survival to anything other than sheer luck. More than anything, he says he sees himself quite simply as a fortunate man.
- [48:20]
Leif Vidin
I'm not different than anyone. I just acknowledge that I probably just got extremely lucky that I was able to stay lucid and get down. Like I don't think I had some special quality that someone else might not have had. I just think I got extremely fortunate in the way things played out.
- [48:51]
Narrator
Next time on REAL Survival Stories, we meet Chris Howe, MBE in May 1982. Chris is stationed aboard HMS Coventry, a Royal Navy destroyer engaged in the Falklands conflict as a communications specialist. His work takes place behind the scenes, down in the ship's operations room, surrounded by radars and computer screens. But when enemy jets target the Coventry, you will suddenly be thrust into the firing line.
- [49:19]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
Next thing, there's this. A sudden impact and a dull thud followed by a flash, a searing flash and heat.
- [49:27]
Narrator
In a split second, Chris's life will be thrown into the balance as he is engulfed by flames. It'll take extraordinary bravery and sheer luck to make it off alive. That's next time on REAL Survival Stories. Listen right now without waiting a week by subscribing to NoiserPlus.
- [49:49]
Marvel Studios Advertiser
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- [50:20]
Paul McGann
Of dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.
- [50:41]
Leif Vidin
I saw that ship sink.
- [50:42]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
And I saw that ship break in half.
- [50:45]
Paul McGann
Titanic ship of dreams. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.