MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Into the Wilderness

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Today’s podcast will feature 4 stories that will remind you to take caution before your next outdoor adventure. The audio from all four stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#4 -- "Livestream" -- Man climbs Mt. Fuji in the winter (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtDAo7jS8Z4)#3 -- "Into the Wild" -- A major motion picture made about this well-known outdoor adventurer’s story (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHkpDWBmRO8)#2 -- "1 Way Trip" -- How quickly things can go wrong... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RseUuG5Kl8Q)#1 -- "Gates of the Arctic" -- A father & son trip turns upside down (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtEfMtdnjo0)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin Podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature 4 stories that will remind you to take caution before your next outdoor adventure. The audio from all 4 of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called Livestream, and it's about a man who climbs Mount Fuji in the winter. The second story you'll hear is called Into the Wild, and it's one of the most famous outdoor adventure stories ever, and in fact it's actually been made into a major motion picture. The third story you'll hear is called One Way Trip, and it's about how quickly things can go wrong in the wild. And the fourth and final story you'll hear is called One Way Trip, and it's about how quickly things can go wrong in the wild. And the fourth and final story you'll hear is called Gates of the Arctic, and it's about a father-son trip that turns upside down. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please offer the follow button a bag of pistachios,

but only after you have meticulously gone through the whole bag and removed all the ones that can be opened, leaving only the sealed pistachios in the bag. Okay, let's get into our first story called Livestream. If you're shopping while working, eating, or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of the hunt. But are you getting the thrill of the best deals? Rakuten shoppers do. They get the brands they love with the most savings and cash back.

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That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. From Wondery comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness? Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinx Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan, rising up to 3,776 meters. And it's actually a volcano. It's dormant. The last time it erupted was in 1707, but geologists still classify it as active.

Taurus are allowed to climb Mount Fuji, but only between July and September because in the winter months the mountain gets completely treacherous. There's snow and ice and the wind picks up. It's very, very dangerous, so it's off limits. Now, thrill seekers, if they really wanted to, they could climb Mount Fuji in the winter because there isn't a security guard posted up at the bottom of Mount Fuji checking people in and out. It's on you. If you wanna climb it when it's off limits,

well, then you're climbing at your own risk because basically it's a terrible idea. But if you have the right equipment and you have all the right training, it is doable. One thrill seeker, a 47 year old named Tedzu, decided he wanted to hike Mount Fuji in the winter of 2019. He wanted to livestream his entire journey to the summit. Now Tedzu might have been a thrill seeker, but he certainly wasn't a mountain climber.

He did not have the experience, nor did he have any of the equipment necessary for a climb up Mount Fuji in the winter. Wearing only street clothes and carrying nothing more than climbing poles and a smartphone, he turned on his livestream and began hiking up the Shubashiri Trail. Viewers began tuning in as Tedzu happily made his way up this ash-covered trail, and then the ash turned into light snow, and then light snow turned into really heavy snow and ice and wind and then Tedzu began complaining about how cold he was and how he couldn't feel his hands and his viewers are egging him on to keep going, keep pushing through

it and probably because of the pressure he felt from his viewers, he kept going when really this would have been the moment to turn around. When you're realizing that you don't have the right equipment and it's getting really cold and you're probably not even halfway up, that's the time to turn around. But he didn't. He pressed on. As he moved up the mountain, the path he was on continued to narrow and become increasingly more covered in ice, and the guard fence that straddled the side of this path was getting to the place where it comes to a stop, signaling the most dangerous section of the hike, which is the last leg up to the summit.

He gets to that point where the fence comes to an end and now he's on this narrow stretch where the wind is just whipping across and it's all ice and he's trying to walk across the ice with this totally inappropriate footwear. He should have had on at least crampons, the metal spikes that go on the bottom of your shoe to grip ice. He just had tennis shoes on and so he's slipping and sliding as he's walking up this icy trail and then he finally staggers and falls but he catches himself and you can hear him laughing on the live stream joking with his audience how dangerous and slippery it is and his viewers begin to change their tone a

little bit and they're like hey you might want to consider turning around now but Tedzu is totally focused on getting to the top so he stands back up and he continues to kind of shuffle his way towards the summit on this stretch of ice. He finally gets right up below the summit to where on his livestream you can actually see the top of Mount Fuji and you can tell that his footwear at this point is basically not able to handle how slick it is. He's basically constantly stumbling and you can see he notices a little stretch of small rocks that seem to almost make stepping stones up to the summit and he begins walking over very carefully on

the ice to try to use these rocks to get himself up to the top and right as he's trying to step for one of these rocks he loses his balance and on camera he says wait I'm slipping and then he falls and begins rocketing down the side of this mountain. Now when you fall on a steep mountain you have one maybe two chances to self-arrest so for example if you had an ice pick and you were like Ted Zoo and you start falling, you would wanna roll over and dig the head of that ice pick into the ground and basically anchor your knees and elbows and drive everything you can into the snow

to stop yourself from falling. And so if you can't do that in one or two attempts, your momentum will pick up and you'll be going too fast and you won't be able to stop yourself. And then you just gotta hope you survive the fall. Tedetsu did not have an ice pick or any other tool to help himself arrest and he didn't have the training for what to do in a situation like this so he didn't even attempt to roll over and dig his elbows or knees into the ground to try to slow down. So he just goes flying down the mountain, he's on his back, he's not slowing down, and he knows he's doomed.

And he says on camera, well, it can't be helped, before he flies over the edge and falls hundreds of meters down to his death. His viewers who watched this happen alerted authorities who found his body the next day over a thousand meters away from where he had first fallen. Every year, there is a handful of people that attempt to climb Mount Fuji in the winter and they meet the same fate. Our next story is called Into the Wild. wild. On September 6, 1992, two moose hunters that were hunting just outside of the Nali National Park in Alaska were walking up to a well-known

landmark amongst hunters in the area. It was this old school bus that was parked in the middle of nowhere, it was all rusted over and nature had practically overgrown it, and hunters, trappers, and travelers would use this bus as kind of like a center point that you would reference where you were going relative to this particular bus. When they walked up to it, they saw on the outside of the door that there was a note. Attention possible visitors, S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here.

I am all alone. This is not a joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless." Dated August question mark. Five months earlier in April of 1992, Chris McCandless, the one who wrote that note, had hitchhiked from Carthage, South Dakota to Fairbanks, Alaska. Once there, he hitchhiked again with an electrician named Jim Galleon who was making his way out of Fairbanks. Chris introduced himself as Alex and asked Jim if he would take him to Denali National

Park, which was about two hours away to the southwest. On the drive, Jim asked Chris what he was going to be doing at the park, because this is like wild Alaska country, and frankly, Chris did not look like a rugged Alaskan outdoorsman. Chris told Jim that he was going to be living off the land for a few months. Jim would later say that he had serious doubts about Chris's ability to survive in the Alaskan bush. As it was, Chris only had a light backpack, he did have a rifle that he really didn't have warm clothes on, he only had 10 pounds of rice, that was the only thing he brought for food, he didn't have a compass, he didn't have a map, he didn't have a watch. He just seemed totally ill-equipped for what he was

saying he was going to go do. At some point, Jim tried to convince Chris not to go or to at least postpone and he even offered, hey, I'll drive you up to Anchorage and I'll buy you equipment. You need the right equipment for what you're going to be doing. Let's go there first. But Chris was stubborn and so Jim ultimately relented and said, okay, he drove him to the park. Before Chris left, Jim actually gave him a pair of warm boots that he had in his truck. He said, here, you can use these more than I can. And Chris thanked him, took his boots and he was on his way. Although Chris was planning for this extensive hike through Denali National Park all the way to the Bering Sea, Chris would only make it about 20 miles into his journey before stopping at an old rusted

bus just outside of the park. Chris would live in this bus for 16 weeks and according to his diary that first week he was there was particularly rough. He was snowed in, he couldn't catch anything to eat, so he's hungry and cold, but shortly thereafter he developed a routine, he was able to hunt successfully for some small game, he found some plants that were good to eat, and by and large his entries made it seem like he was very happy. However, the last month of diary entries really painted a very different picture. After living in this bus for nearly three months, he indicated in his diary that he was kind of sick and tired of living off the land and he was ready to return back to society. So on July 3rd he packs up his camp and he starts walking back the 20

miles towards where he came into the park in the first place. But when he came into the park three months earlier the river that he was going to need to cross was frozen and now that he's returning in the summer it had thawed and now it's the 75 foot wide raging river that was basically impossible to cross. And so he's trapped on the wrong side of this river. What he didn't know, because he didn't have a compass, he didn't have a map, he didn't know the area well, was there was actually a hand-operated tram that would take you across the river in the summer. It was only a mile away from his camp that was labeled on almost every map. In addition, there was a hunting cabin not far from that tram that's also on just about every

map of this particular area. It had food, it had clothes, it had bedding. He could have stayed in this hunting cabin until conditions were okay again to make the journey back home. But again, he doesn't have a map, so he doesn't know these things exist, so at some point he turns around and goes back to the bus, feeling totally dejected. That night his journal entry just said, reigned in, river looks impossible, lonely, scared. All of Chris's diary entries following his return to the bus after not being able to cross this river got shorter and bleaker and really painted a picture of a guy that was going downhill. The final entry in Chris's diary just says beautiful blueberries and the 19 days after his final entry is when those two moose hunters find this bus and see

the note, the SOS note, pinned to the outside. The hunters go inside the bus and there, laying in a sleeping bag, is the body of Christopher McCandless. Although it's not entirely clear how Christopher actually died, the two most common theories are either starvation or perhaps he ingested a poisonous plant seed. The hunters alerted authorities who came out and they launched an investigation and during this investigation they found Chris's camera. Chris was an avid photographer he had taken loads of pictures over the course of his stay out in the wild and so he took one last dignified picture of himself before curling up in a sleeping bag and passing away. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the Strange,

Dark and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests it's a show about medical mysteries a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years And we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome in this free weekly show We explore bizarre unheard of diseases strange medical mishaps

unexplainable deaths and everything in in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music. Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who'll fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight just like you'd want your own children defended. Whether you're facing a drug charge, caught up on a murder rap, accused of committing war crimes, look no further than Paul Bergrin. All the big guys go to Bergrin because he gets everybody off.

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right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Our next story is called One Way Trip. Bryce Gillies was born in 1989 in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. From a young age, Bryce's parents knew he loved the outdoors, and so they signed him up for the Boy Scouts. And as a Scout, Bryce learned, amongst many things, how to survive in the wilderness. And he would routinely put this training to the test by leaving his house and heading off to the nearby Appalachian Trail and hiking around sometimes up to 20 miles

in a single day. Bryce ultimately became an Eagle Scout, which is the highest rank anybody can obtain inside of the Boy Scouts, a rank that only about 8% of scouts will ever reach. After he graduated from high school in 2007, Bryce decided he wanted to go to school out west, and during a visit to Northern Arizona University, Bryce fell in love with their school because all around their campus were these unbelievable hiking trails that were totally unlike anything he saw growing up on the east coast. Bryce decided this was his dream school so he applied and a couple weeks later he got accepted. He was totally thrilled. During his first couple of years at NAU, Bryce took full advantage of these totally amazing hiking trails within a couple hours of the campus. He also spent some time overseas in West Africa helping to build a medical clinic for people in

need. During the summer break of 2009, so going into his third year at NAU, Bryce was still living out in Arizona in an apartment and he still had a few weeks before classes started and so he decided he would head off to the nearby Grand Canyon to do a little bit of hiking. He had recently read in an outdoor magazine about this lesser known but unbelievable trail that was just for experts in the canyon that he wanted to try. It was called the Deer Creek Thunder River Loop and it brought hikers to this remote location where water gushed out of this huge limestone rock wall, transforming the desert

landscape below into this unbelievable green oasis. The article said, very strong hikers could complete this nearly 28-mile loop in about three days. Since Bryce considered himself a very strong hiker, he decided this was perfect for him. Bryce called his parents and let them know he was going to do this loop and that when he came back in a couple of days, he'd be making a trip to Virginia to visit with them. Then Bryce called some friends in the area to see if they wanted to come with him on

this hike, but no one was available so Bryce decided he would go on his own. So the next day, which was Saturday July 18th, Bryce loaded up his car and he began driving the several hours to the parking lot that was nearest to the trailhead. Bryce parked his car, he got his gear out of the trunk, and then he set off down the trail. Bryce had not obtained a backcountry permit for this hike. This was a requirement for anybody doing an overnight out in the canyon, which Bryce planned on doing. Bryce also didn't file his route with the park rangers. Had he told them where he was going, they would have tried to talk him out of it. The Deer Creek Thunder River Loop had no protection from the sun the entire time, and since it was July, he would be hit with the highest temperatures and the most

direct sunlight. All this on top of the fact that even in the coolest times of the year, this trail is still an extremely difficult trail because of the terrain you have to navigate. In fact, when hikers did file their route with park rangers and they indicated they were going to be doing this expert loop, they would ask them to provide next of kin information in case they died during their hike. It's unclear if Bryce was just very confident in himself and his abilities or if he was being reckless. From his car, Bryce hiked about two miles down some switchbacks into the canyon.

Once he reached the bottom, he would have found himself in this wide open flat area called the Esplanade that kind of looked like the surface of the moon with all these potholes all over it. At this point in Bryce's hike, it would have been dark out so he would have set up his tent somewhere on the rocks and camped out for the night. People that have done this that have camped out on the Esplanade have said it's unbelievably beautiful because most people experience the Grand Canyon from high up on one of the rims looking down into it, but the Esplanade is literally

inside the canyon so you have this unobstructed view in both directions and apparently it's quite beautiful. The next morning, Bryce got up at sunrise, he packed up his campsite, and then he continued on his hike. The first challenge he would come up against that morning was navigating down what's called the Red Wall, which is a fairly steep and treacherous descent that for an experienced hiker it would take about an hour to safely navigate. And then at the bottom of the Red Wall you would

enter into this area called the Surprise Valley. No one really knows why it's named that, but hikers who have been down in this valley, they think it's named after the surprise you feel when you get in there and you realize how much hotter it is. Typically it's about 10 or 20 degrees hotter down inside of this bowl. After Bryce successfully navigated down the Red Wall, he entered into this totally miserable surprise valley, but he would have known he was only about a half mile away from his target destination, the Deer Creek Thunder River, where he planned to jump in and cool off. So eager to do that, Bryce took off, but made a critical mistake. He went the wrong way.

While it's unclear exactly how this happened, experts believe his ears played a trick on him. Hikers are told, as they're approaching this river in the middle of the desert, they should listen out for it, because when you get fairly close, you can hear the sound of rushing water. But hikers have to be careful, because sometimes when the wind is blowing in a certain direction, that sound from the river will echo off the inside of this bowl, and it will appear to come from the opposite direction.

It's believed Bryce was following his map when he heard the sound of this river coming from a different direction and so he abandoned the map and followed the sound. Bryce walked for quite a while in the wrong direction all the way up a hill and most likely the whole time he was hearing the sound of the water and he probably thought once I get over the top of this hill I'll look down the other side and I will see the water. But when he crested the hill he looked down and just saw a barren valley. Had he continued another quarter mile down into the valley and then up the other side, he could have turned around and he would have been able to spot an obvious landmark that would have brought him to the river. But most likely, Bryce was exhausted from the extreme heat and the sunlight and trekking all this way, and so he felt like it was

probably too risky to keep going down into this valley because he had no idea where it went. So in keeping with his wilderness training he got as a Boy Scout, he dropped all of his heavy equipment off the side of the trail in an area he had marked so he could eventually come back and retrieve it. And then he took his water, food, and headlamp turned around and began backtracking. After a little while, Bryce decided to abandon the trail and actually veer off onto a dry creek bed. In the Boy Scouts, they're taught any dry creek bed will eventually connect to water.

And so at this point, Bryce is probably running low on water and figures whether this leads him to the Deer Creek Thunder River or some other water body, he didn't care. He just needed water. So off he went on this dry creek bed, but after a while he saw less and less vegetation, it was just this barren desert in all directions. After a little while longer, Bryce dropped all of his gear on the ground after finishing his water. At this point he would have known that if he doesn't find a water source soon, he won't make it. And so Bryce just continues to trudge along on this dry riverbed, not seeing any indication that he's getting any closer to water, but then he looks up and he sees the land in front

of him appears to slope downward out of view, and then beyond that he sees off in the distance what looks like the southern wall of the Grand Canyon, and below the southern wall is the Colorado River. And so Bryce would have known if he can just go down this decline, he's certain to reach this river and he'll be saved. And so Bryce made his way up to where the ground started going down towards the river, and he began safely descending fairly slowly, and then he reached a very steep section called a spill, which is a dry waterfall, and these vary in height, but they're pretty steep and they're pretty slick. Once Bryce went down one of these things, there'd be no way to get back up again.

So this was a one-way trip. But Bryce was desperate. He knew his only chance was getting down to that Colorado River, which he could now see. And so Bryce scrambled down this first spill, and then he found another one and another one and he kept going down these spills, and they kept getting steeper and more challenging, and the temperature continued to rise as he went down deeper into this canyon. Finally, Bryce reached a spill that was very, very steep. It was nearly vertical, but again, Bryce couldn't go back up the way he came. He had to keep going. So at some point he threw himself off of the spill and he fell down 30 feet,

but he lived. He stood up, he dusted himself off, and he continued walking forward. He walked past these boulders into this clearing, and right in front of him is the Colorado River. It's a half a mile straight down in front of him. But the only way to get to it was navigating another spill, and this spill was 80 feet tall, and it was almost completely vertical. There was no way to survive that kind of fall. And Bryce couldn't just turn around and try to find an alternate route because this was a one-way trip. He could not climb back up the spills he had just come down to get there. And to his left and to his right were these steep canyon walls that kind of bordered the space he was in

that had no handholds on them so he couldn't climb them up or down. Bryce was trapped and he knew it. them so he couldn't climb them up or down. Bryce was trapped and he knew it. The following Tuesday when Bryce was supposed to be home in Virginia visiting his family, he didn't show up. So his family tried calling him but they couldn't get through to him. It seemed like his phone was off and so they called the authorities. A search party was sent out in the Grand Canyon to go look for Bryce and on Saturday July 25th, so this is six days after Bryce has found himself trapped on that ledge overlooking the river, a search party was on the Colorado River and they happened to look up in the direction where Bryce had been and they noticed what looked like a person and so they

got their climbing gear and they made their way up that spill onto this ledge and they found Bryce. He was sitting up against a boulder and he was deceased. He had died from heat stroke and dehydration. In his hand was his Blackberry cell phone. It wouldn't have had any service inside of the canyon, but Bryce used it as a notepad to write a final message to his family and to his friends. In it he writes, life is good whether it is long or short. I was fortunate to do much more than most people and for that I am very thankful." His message also had some humor thrown into it. He said to his

family that he was really thankful he had his Blackberry phone because it would have been a lot harder to etch his final message into a rock. He also said that he didn't know what the afterlife held for him, he just hoped they had water. Then with his phone's battery dying he wrote one final sentence. I feel like going into the wild is a calling we all feel. Some answer it, and some die for it. Then shortly after writing that message, Bryce clutched his phone to his chest, and he passed away. He was just 20 years old. The next and final story of today's episode is called Gates of the Arctic. Growing up in Oklahoma, Blake Stanfield loved going out in the wilderness with his father Neil.

The pair were more like best friends than father and son, and they spent as much time together as they possibly could. But by the time Blake was in his 30s, he had become a medical doctor, and so he was really busy. Then he was married, and he had a young kid, and so he didn't see his father very much. And then in 2003, when Blake was 38, he moved his family to Alaska. And so he really didn't see his father anymore. But shortly after moving, Blake had an idea. He wanted to surprise his dad on his 65th birthday with a rafting trip in Alaska. It was gonna be this great way for the two

to reconnect with each other. When he broke the news to his father, Neil was really touched by it and very excited, but at the same time, he was a little bit apprehensive and he asked his son, you know, are we going in a group is this going to be a guided rafting trip and Blake said oh no that's that's the wrong way to do this we will not have a good time if we go with a group we're doing this alone and so Neil said well isn't that a little bit risky just the two of us out in the middle of Alaska and Blake said don't worry I've picked a river that by Alaskan standards is

considered leisurely so we'll be just fine. Neil was still hesitant about it, but the two of them were very confident outdoorsmen, and so ultimately he just went along with it. So later that year, in early July, Blake and Neil took a float plane out to the gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska. This park is totally beautiful, but it's also very dangerous because it's full of grizzly bears and wolves, and it's also very remote. There's no people anywhere near this park.

It's basically untouched wilderness. Adding to the isolation and danger, Blake and Neil did not have their cell phones or a radio. It was Blake's idea. He said it would be a good idea for us to just totally disconnect and just spend quality time together. And then also Blake had chosen a starting point on this river that was situated basically right in the middle of the park, which meant it was 60 miles away from the nearest human settlement. So after they got dropped off by this float plane and then the captain of that plane took off again, Blake and Neil loaded their stuff into the raft and then they hopped in and

they started cruising down this river. At first, their trip was awesome. The weather was perfect, the landscape was beautiful, the water was totally calm, and Neil, he might have had reservations about the safety of this trip, but quickly he was overcome with just how peaceful it was and how wonderful it was to be with just his son out on the open water. And in fact, Blake had intentionally booked this trip two weeks before the start of the official rafting season in Alaska, which meant really there was nobody else in the water, it was just those two, and they thought, wow, what luck. Except it turns

out there's a very specific reason why the rafting season starts when it does in Alaska. Because that's the earliest the ice melts in the river and it becomes safe to travel on. After two hours of peace and tranquility out on this river, Blake and Neil started to notice these large ice chunks in the water ahead of them. And they were easy enough to get around, but as they kept moving, the current was picking up and these ice chunks got bigger and bigger until they started being these huge sheets all across the edges of the river where there was only a narrow strip of water they could travel through. And at some point, Neil asked Blake if it would be a good idea to just pull the raft over to the side of the river and get out and reassess

the situation and see if we've reached an anomaly in the river where just this section is frozen or if this is going to continue for a lot farther and if so we need to make alternative plans here. But Blake was not having it. He was stubborn, he wanted to keep going and he was convinced he could maneuver the boat around the ice and he said let's just keep going a little bit farther. And so when they went a little bit farther, they reached a point where the current was so strong that they could no longer get out of the river. They had to ride it like a rapid until it stopped. And so as the father and

son are fighting with each other about not having gotten out of the river while they still had a chance, they were not paying attention to what was in front of them. And they came around a corner and there was this huge ice shelf that was right across the whole river that basically blocked the whole path and they turned at the last second. They couldn't do anything either way, but the nose of the raft went directly under the ice shelf and it flipped the raft onto its side, dumping Neil and Blake into frigid Alaskan waters underneath the ice shelf. And Blake would later say that he really believed that this was it.

He didn't know how far this ice shelf was going to go on for. And so he assumed I'm about to drown. But they managed to hit this air pocket inside of this ice shelf. The ice basically formed up at a bow and they both happened to pop up into it and they gripped onto the ice. And they're looking at each other and they have no idea how long this ice shelf continues. But the current is pulling them and they know it's just a matter of time before they get sucked under and go back under the ice.

And so they look at each other and they don't really know what to say, but it's kind of obvious that they think they're about to drown. And then at some point Neil gets sucked under and swept away, and then Blake follows shortly after. And then fortunately they only tumbled along for about 10 or 15 more feet before they popped up again. But much like the boat that could not paddle out of the river because of how strong the current was, Blake and Neil could not get out of the river in time before they hit yet another ice shelf. And the next ice shelf was much longer than the first. And so they knew it was going to happen, they grabbed onto the ice shelf and they're holding on and they're trying to pull

themselves back out but the current's too strong and at on and they're trying to pull themselves back out, but the current's too strong. And at some point they each had to take a big breath and then let go and got pulled directly under the ice. And so the whole time they're pressing their face up against the underside of this ice in hopes they find an air pocket, but they don't. And so the whole time they're just desperately looking for air and they're bumping into the underside

of the ice, they have no idea how long it's gonna go on for. And so after what felt like an eternity, Blake finally gets shot out the backside of this huge ice shelf and he's still in the river, but there's no more ice shelves in front of him. And the current had slowed down a little bit. So he was able to make his way to the edge and get out of the water.

And he turned to face the water and his dad was nowhere to be found. And so Blake turns and he doesn't see his father coming out of the ice. He doesn't know if he's still under if he came out again and so he turns and runs downstream in hopes that he might have come out already and sure enough he found his dad clutching a rock in the middle of this river farther up. His head was badly bleeding but he was alive. And so Blake grabbed a stick and was able to bring his father back into shore. Even though they had survived being pulled under the ice, they now had no equipment, no gear, no food, no water, no anything.

Cause it was pulled under the water and they were soaking wet and becoming hypothermic. And they're in the middle of nowhere with no one nearby to help them. And no one's expecting them for a week and no planes are going to be in the area for two weeks. Fortunately Blake had a lighter in his pocket that worked and so they were able to start a fire and stay warm and they were able to scare away grizzly bears and wolves. Blake finally walked away from their campsite which was up on a mountain

and he went down to this river where he was able to flag down a float plane that was not even scheduled to be in the area. It was just totally random and they saw Blake, they came back, they picked them up and both men were just fine. They did say that even though the trip was a complete disaster and nearly killed both of them, it did reconnect them in a way that few things could and their relationship is good as ever. But they both say they will never go rafting again. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bolland Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts, not just this one, but also Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, and also Mr. Bollin's medical mysteries, bedtime stories, wartime stories, and run fool.

Just search for Bollin Studios on any podcast platform and you'll find all of them. If you want to watch hundreds more strange, dark, and mysterious stories, just head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Bollin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin Podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Hey, it's me, Mr. Ballin. If you're a fan of true crime, paranormal stories, and unsolved mysteries, well, then I'm here to tell you about my debut graphic novel. It's called Mr. Bollen Presents Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, The Graphic Stories. This book, which contains exclusive stories I've never told, is filled with vivid haunting illustrations of crazy true events. And the incredible artwork will transport you into these stories and leave you feeling terrified. So right now, grab a copy of Mr. Ballin Presents Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, the Graphic

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