Man vs. Wild in real life: How this American survived in glacier country with a broken leg
Here’s how one adventurous individual survived in tricky conditions with a serious injury.
Alec Luhn, a 38-year-old American journalist, found himself in a life-or-death struggle during a hiking trip in Norway’s Folgefonna National Park. On July 31, Luhn embarked on a four-day trek but failed to return as planned; this prompted concern from his wife, Veronika, who alerted the authorities.
But it was a lot worse than him just getting lost or delayed: Luhn’s hiking boot had caused him to suffer a scary fall down a steep, icy slope, coming to a halt only after crashing into a rock, resulting in a broken femur, fractured pelvis, and multiple spinal vertebrae injuries.
Unable to move, the journalist faced the grim reality of being stranded in the wilderness.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is really bad. This is the start of the disaster movie,’” Luhn said in an interview with CNN. “This is that moment where everything goes really, really wrong.”
"My left foot was just flopping around with no direction"
His boot had broken on day one, with the hiker using tape to seal the issue. “I didn’t want to go back in. It was just the very start of the hike,” he said. “That was the first bad decision I made.” After walking for hours with a bodged boot, he reached the Buarbreen glacier, where he slipped: “I just remember sliding down the mountain at first, and then spinning down the mountain, rolling down the mountain, and then just pin-balling down the mountain. My left foot was just flopping around with no direction,” he recounted. “I was basically immobilised.”
CNN add that during the fall, “his backpack had ripped open,” with “several belongings — including his cell phone and water canteen — gone."
Armed with just some peanuts and granola bars, the sun blasted Luhn, causing him to suffer from dehydration: “My mouth was so dry, the food just kind of turned to concrete inside it, and I couldn’t swallow it.” Desperate for fluids, he resorted to drinking his own urine: “The next time that I had to pee, I peed in my water pouch. I drank my urine, basically to have a little bit of hydration, and to also get a little bit of food down.”
“I was just waving and just crying out with all my might”
When rain mercifully finally arrived on the third day, he collected every drop, but the situation remained dire: severe storms and near-freezing temperatures showed him the other side of the Earth’s angry power, compounding his suffering.
Finally, after six days of hell, came the sound of rotor blades. On the morning of Wednesday, August 6, conditions were significantly better and the Norwegian Red Cross had managed to assemble a large team of volunteers. “I woke up in the morning. It’s very cold, very wet. There was a slight break in the weather where you can see a little bit of sunshine coming through all the valley, and the helicopter came,” he said. But with the sound and sight of the helicopter came a worry: Luhn had been hallucinating, and he wondered if this ray of hope was his mind playing tricks.
“I was just waving and just crying out with all my might. And finally, the side door of the helicopter opens, and somebody waved back at me,” Luh said, “That’s when I knew that it was up. It was all going to finally be over.”
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After his rescue, Luhn was taken immediately to hospital, where his wife was waiting with the words with which every love story ends: “I said, ‘I love you.’ And she said, she said, ‘I’m gonna rip you a new one, but for now, I love you."
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