Alaskan Adventurer
Full Member
Hello fellow adventurers. I am a 36 year old male, who grew up in Alaska. I have a fairly crazy story to tell.
A little introduction to the kind of person that I am. Growing up in Alaska and playing in the great outdoors has always been a huge part of my life. When i was a couple years old, my wonderful father would strap me on his back and take my sister and I fishing. I absolutely love him for that. The beauty and serenity of the great outdoors has always been a stress relief for me. My other hobbies, which of course involved the outdoors is organic gardening and gold prospecting.
My life in general has been one of a hermit. I have lived in many states, but most of those years were in Alaska. I always had a pretty great job as a carpet installer which allowed me to work all over the US. One day I landed a pretty nice job in Whitehorse, Yukon Canada and decided I wanted to get out of the rat race. I would work during the day and research on my dream destination during the evening. Gold was skyrocketing in value the last few years and it is a passion of mine. I had spent 6 weeks in Belize, and Guatemala Central America and I really loved the tropics. Through out my research, I always came across Ecuador and as a very unexplored region with massive "golden" opportunities. To top it all off, the small village of Vilcabamba is known for its fertile soil and perfect climate. I decided this would be my mini-base to explore out of.
I have always been a huge adventure fan and I feel like I had a past life as an explorer. I always loved ancient history and the Inca culture especially fascinated me. I worked for about 8 months solid, enduring the insane weather of the Yukon territories to save up for my trip to Ecuador. It was a pretty exciting day stepping on the plane to Ecuador.(partly because I was still freezing my butt off in Whitehorse). The only negative I could think of was having to learn another language. I am still working on that!
Entering the third month of my trip, I had the worst day of my life and will most likely be the worst day until death. I had been making some multi-day trips into the jungle outside of the Amazonian town of Tena. Before my final trip, I had completed 2 other trips of 3 days each. I was sampling for gold by crevicing. This particular river is very fast flowing and has eroded the area of the river all the way down to bedrock. Gold is very heavy and will sink down to this layer of rock and it gets trapped inside the large cracks. My job was to clean out the cracks in search of the elusive shiny stuff. After my 3rd trip in, I made a conclusion. This river is very rich in gold! I managed to scrape out 2-3 grams of gold a day. On the evening of the third day on the third trip in, I suffered through some pretty heavy rains. So heavy, that my special Clark's Jungle Hammock that was supposed to be torrential rain proof actually started leaking on me. That entire night was very uncomfortable for both my little puppy and I.(I had been given a cute 5 month old puppy as a gift from a friend). I was up most of the night trying to stay dry and had to get soaked rigging up a second cover over my hammock.
The rain continued all night and the water level was quite high. I decided to call it quits and pack up and head to my room in Tena. In order to get to my area I was working, I had about an hour hike on a decent trail. This area is absolutely beautiful and very pristine. I packed up and headed back up the trail. I finally made it to the entrance of the trail system and noticed just how quiet the surrounding area was. The entrance to the trail system is at the "Piscina" which means pool in Spanish. It is a beautiful natural pool caused by a smaller river entering the larger one. Usually the place can be fairly hopping, but not a soul was around due to the high water level. I pulled out my cell phone and had no signal. I didn't realize there was no phone signal for a couple of kilometers. My phone's battery was dead, and I had felt downright stupid when I discovered I had forgotten to turn it off. I knew there was a village only a few kilometers away, so I started my small journey. About halfway to the village, I saw a couple young adults riding a single silver bike. It had pegs, and one of them was on the pegs. I greeted them and they waved back. I asked them if they could call a taxi for me, not realizing there wasn't a signal in the area. One of them said no signal. I said thanks, and they both rode on ahead of me up a hill. It was about 9:30 am at this point and I saw the same guys looking down at the river ahead of me on top of the small hill. They waved again, and one of them pulled out his cell phone to check again and shook his head no. They rode on ahead again around a curve in the road. This is the point where I started feel nervous. Small alarms were setting off in my head. I noticed on the ground there was a pretty pathetic stick, about the size of your average walking stick. Just having the stick in hand relaxed me a bit. There was a slight curve in the road, blocking my view ahead of me. I again saw the two guys looking down at the river. The one who had a cell phone earlier again had his phone in his hand and nodded yes to me with a bit of excitement. Yes, he was calling a taxi. He had his phone to his ear as if he was calling one and they both approached me. My puppy(Tequila) started freaking out on me and I had never seen him act this way. He was yipping in fright and this is where the nightmare began.
As the two guys got within 5 feet of me, the one without the phone charged me and closed the gap in a split second. He was unloading punches on the right side of my head. I was completely focused on blocking as many punches as I could. I had three things working against me at this point. There were 2 of them, and one of me. I had a 60 pound backpack completely strapped to my back, and lastly I was beyond tired from the crazy night I had. In addition to having punches rocking my right side of my face, the second guy was working on securing my arms. The one unloading punches managed to assist in tieing up my arms and now the second guy started strangling me. I was so focused on trying to avoid as many punches as possible, that it was almost too late before realizing I was being strangled and losing conscious. I knew if I didn't break the strangulation, I was dead. It isn't until a life or death situation like this that you gain the strength of multiple people out of adrenaline. I managed to use every last bit of strength that I had to fling the man strangling me off. I knocked him back a good 5 feet. This is the point where the 2 guys realized they had to put me down or they would risk getting seen. Between the two of them, the managed to drag me over to the edge of the cliff and heaved me off.
As a kid, I used to spend half my life tree climbing. When I was about 7 or 8, i was climbing a great oak tree. I was about 60 feet up, when I slipped and fell all the way down. As I was falling, I managed to slow my fall by grabbing branches, as well as slamming into branches. Believe it or not, I walked away from this with only cuts and bruises and not a single broken bone. This experience I believe is what assisted me in saving my life.
They dragged me to the cliff and threw me over. I had a distance of about 20 feet free fall to a out jutting lip. I slammed into it and started rolling down the very steep cliff. As I fell, a combination of vines, tree branches and shrubs somehow slowed me down a bit. I continued to roll, occasionally slamming into to bushes and trees but unfortunately gravity worked against me. At this point I saw the river getting closer and closer to me. In addition to the river, I also had a very large tree approaching. I knew grabbing that last tree was my only hope and managed to grasp for it. Slam, with my wind completely knocked out of me I stopped the fall a mere 15 feet above the massive class 5 river below. I laid there in disbelief marveling at being alive. I am not a religious person, but I felt like some divine guidance had a part in keeping me alive. The odds of surviving a mega beating AND surviving the fall was nearly impossible to imagine. Enduring this trial, I made a decision to give a little prayer of thanks to whoever was looking out for me. Instantly, I realized my two attackers might still be above me and there is a chance they might be able to see me still alive. I dragged myself up and hugged the side of the cliff as best as I could. After about 5 minutes of catching my breath, I then heard the horrible sound. The frantic yip of my puppy descending. It is a sound I will remember for the rest of my life. After a few seconds the sound ended in one final yelp and never again did I hear my wonderful puppies yip. My two, very evil attackers threw an innocent puppy to his death while still conscience. The realization of that hit me as hard as the actual attack. These guys had no conscience and were absolutely evil. Another couple of minutes passed and I saw my torn shirt get tossed over and join a pile of other bits of clothing and odds and ends.
After about 10 minutes of hell, i decided to carefully explore my area. There was a fairly scattered pile of rubbish laying in the area, from water bottles to torn clothing and boots. Others had died here, most likely getting chucked down and into the river. My survival-oriented mind told me a couple of things. I can scrounge up some odds and ends from this pile of trash to assist in my survival. I knew there was no hope of white water rafters coming down the river from the point I was. The main entry into the river system was still another mile+ at the village I was originally heading to. I thought maybe I could tie some of the torn clothing items together and hang it off the tree in case it could be seen from a distance. I knew it was early, and due to the numerous water bottles I could survive at least a night. This is the point where I had a decision to make. Stay here for the night and wait the murderers out, or go ahead and try to climb out. I couldn't even see upper part of the cliff above me, but had to make up my mind. I knew once the adrenaline was gone, I would be hurting and had only a single eye to work with. Time would be the enemy so my decision was made. I am an experienced climber, from my boyhood tree climbing to some minor rock climbing.
I started out trying to scale to my left, but I came across a large area that was completely open, with absolutely nothing to grab on to. I had no choice but head to my right. There were numerous obstacles in my path, from massive, dense bushes, to again..large open areas. I had to scale up and down over and under the numerous obstacles. Throughout all of this, I was being stung by many dozens of vicious little ants. When you are climbing to shrubs and anything else to save your life, a little ant bite is nothing. To top everything off, all branches and footing was completely slippery from the recent rain. I had quite a few close calls and near death experiences, one being a situation where I slipped, fell another 5 feet and racked myself. If that tree hadn't been there, I would have fallen all the way down into the river to my death. After a good hour of scaling, I started to grow weary and desperate. One point I reached an area that had no branches, shrubs or anything to grab onto. A big open patch of dirt. After a minute of resting and trying to clear my head, I noticed the area was dotted with decent sized trees and i know just how extensive the root systems of trees needed to be for survival. I noticed a root looping out of the ground not too far away and it was this that gave me the idea. The soil was fairly loose in the area, so i used one hand to dig as best i could. It was actually a bit spongy and I was able to dig in fairly deep. I found some solid roots within 6 inches and it was perfect for grabbing onto. I could pull myself up a bit, but then what? It was about 8 feet across to more trees and a continuation of my nightmare out.
I knew I could continue digging for roots, but how would I know where to put my foot? I broke off a few sticks and put them in my pocket. I could use these sticks to mark the roots i dug out to provide some footing, albeit treacherous. Success! By pushing the stick into the hole, I was able to mark the very important locations for my footing. My plan worked quite well, and I reached the area with more plant growth. Keep in mind, I only had a single eye through out this entire climb. I had to look over as best I could using my left eye only. I was scaling to my right. Another useful tactic that worked for me was grabbing the root base of even small bushes, branches etc. I was able to continue pulling myself along on these rather small shrubs and in some cases branches. Never, ever grab the middle, or even worth end of a branch. You have your best chance of survival by grabbing towards the base of the branch. It was a good 90 minutes or even a bit longer that I came across a miracle and my first real hope.
A huge landslide had occurred quite some time ago and left some large trees uprooted. I was able to use these trees like a ladder, climbing upward to victory. I slowly climbed up, rejoicing at the light of the road. A sudden fear entered me, slowing down my celebration a bit. What if my would be murderers were stillaround. I made the decision to crawl into a pile of high brush that would conceal me to get an idea on the dangers of moving forward. I laid in the same spot, unmoving, for a good 15 minutes or so. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and pain was returning at a very quick rate. As I was climbing up, I heard the sound of a motor heading from my right to my left heading to the direction of the touristy pool. I knew wobbling back to the pool and hoping someone was there was my best hope. I had this nagging fear that my would've murderers would be at the village I was originally heading to. So I made up my mind and as quick as possible hobbled to the tourist pool. I was constantly fearful or running into them, or having them sneak up behind me. Eventually I made it to the entrance of the pool and saw the light. A motorcycle was parked outside! I quickened my pace and made it to the picnic area where I saw the most wonderful sight ever! A family was having lunch. They looked at me in shock as I approached, a bleeding mess. I explained my situation as best I could in my broken Spanish and they quickly led me to their bike, and to the rest of my life!
This ends my story. In the end, I ended up with a massive black eye, a very sore chin, massive lacerations to my neck, a sprained leg and about 100+ ant bites, scrapes, and dozens of bruises. Not a single broken bone throughout my body and no permanent injuries. I made a full recovery from this physically, accept for a strange flash in my right eye. It only occurs when it is darker, but it is bearable. For those who have helped me, physically and emotionally, a very grateful thanks.
I have dozens of other stories to tell, though none quite like this one. Let me know what you think!
A little introduction to the kind of person that I am. Growing up in Alaska and playing in the great outdoors has always been a huge part of my life. When i was a couple years old, my wonderful father would strap me on his back and take my sister and I fishing. I absolutely love him for that. The beauty and serenity of the great outdoors has always been a stress relief for me. My other hobbies, which of course involved the outdoors is organic gardening and gold prospecting.
My life in general has been one of a hermit. I have lived in many states, but most of those years were in Alaska. I always had a pretty great job as a carpet installer which allowed me to work all over the US. One day I landed a pretty nice job in Whitehorse, Yukon Canada and decided I wanted to get out of the rat race. I would work during the day and research on my dream destination during the evening. Gold was skyrocketing in value the last few years and it is a passion of mine. I had spent 6 weeks in Belize, and Guatemala Central America and I really loved the tropics. Through out my research, I always came across Ecuador and as a very unexplored region with massive "golden" opportunities. To top it all off, the small village of Vilcabamba is known for its fertile soil and perfect climate. I decided this would be my mini-base to explore out of.
I have always been a huge adventure fan and I feel like I had a past life as an explorer. I always loved ancient history and the Inca culture especially fascinated me. I worked for about 8 months solid, enduring the insane weather of the Yukon territories to save up for my trip to Ecuador. It was a pretty exciting day stepping on the plane to Ecuador.(partly because I was still freezing my butt off in Whitehorse). The only negative I could think of was having to learn another language. I am still working on that!
Entering the third month of my trip, I had the worst day of my life and will most likely be the worst day until death. I had been making some multi-day trips into the jungle outside of the Amazonian town of Tena. Before my final trip, I had completed 2 other trips of 3 days each. I was sampling for gold by crevicing. This particular river is very fast flowing and has eroded the area of the river all the way down to bedrock. Gold is very heavy and will sink down to this layer of rock and it gets trapped inside the large cracks. My job was to clean out the cracks in search of the elusive shiny stuff. After my 3rd trip in, I made a conclusion. This river is very rich in gold! I managed to scrape out 2-3 grams of gold a day. On the evening of the third day on the third trip in, I suffered through some pretty heavy rains. So heavy, that my special Clark's Jungle Hammock that was supposed to be torrential rain proof actually started leaking on me. That entire night was very uncomfortable for both my little puppy and I.(I had been given a cute 5 month old puppy as a gift from a friend). I was up most of the night trying to stay dry and had to get soaked rigging up a second cover over my hammock.
The rain continued all night and the water level was quite high. I decided to call it quits and pack up and head to my room in Tena. In order to get to my area I was working, I had about an hour hike on a decent trail. This area is absolutely beautiful and very pristine. I packed up and headed back up the trail. I finally made it to the entrance of the trail system and noticed just how quiet the surrounding area was. The entrance to the trail system is at the "Piscina" which means pool in Spanish. It is a beautiful natural pool caused by a smaller river entering the larger one. Usually the place can be fairly hopping, but not a soul was around due to the high water level. I pulled out my cell phone and had no signal. I didn't realize there was no phone signal for a couple of kilometers. My phone's battery was dead, and I had felt downright stupid when I discovered I had forgotten to turn it off. I knew there was a village only a few kilometers away, so I started my small journey. About halfway to the village, I saw a couple young adults riding a single silver bike. It had pegs, and one of them was on the pegs. I greeted them and they waved back. I asked them if they could call a taxi for me, not realizing there wasn't a signal in the area. One of them said no signal. I said thanks, and they both rode on ahead of me up a hill. It was about 9:30 am at this point and I saw the same guys looking down at the river ahead of me on top of the small hill. They waved again, and one of them pulled out his cell phone to check again and shook his head no. They rode on ahead again around a curve in the road. This is the point where I started feel nervous. Small alarms were setting off in my head. I noticed on the ground there was a pretty pathetic stick, about the size of your average walking stick. Just having the stick in hand relaxed me a bit. There was a slight curve in the road, blocking my view ahead of me. I again saw the two guys looking down at the river. The one who had a cell phone earlier again had his phone in his hand and nodded yes to me with a bit of excitement. Yes, he was calling a taxi. He had his phone to his ear as if he was calling one and they both approached me. My puppy(Tequila) started freaking out on me and I had never seen him act this way. He was yipping in fright and this is where the nightmare began.
As the two guys got within 5 feet of me, the one without the phone charged me and closed the gap in a split second. He was unloading punches on the right side of my head. I was completely focused on blocking as many punches as I could. I had three things working against me at this point. There were 2 of them, and one of me. I had a 60 pound backpack completely strapped to my back, and lastly I was beyond tired from the crazy night I had. In addition to having punches rocking my right side of my face, the second guy was working on securing my arms. The one unloading punches managed to assist in tieing up my arms and now the second guy started strangling me. I was so focused on trying to avoid as many punches as possible, that it was almost too late before realizing I was being strangled and losing conscious. I knew if I didn't break the strangulation, I was dead. It isn't until a life or death situation like this that you gain the strength of multiple people out of adrenaline. I managed to use every last bit of strength that I had to fling the man strangling me off. I knocked him back a good 5 feet. This is the point where the 2 guys realized they had to put me down or they would risk getting seen. Between the two of them, the managed to drag me over to the edge of the cliff and heaved me off.
As a kid, I used to spend half my life tree climbing. When I was about 7 or 8, i was climbing a great oak tree. I was about 60 feet up, when I slipped and fell all the way down. As I was falling, I managed to slow my fall by grabbing branches, as well as slamming into branches. Believe it or not, I walked away from this with only cuts and bruises and not a single broken bone. This experience I believe is what assisted me in saving my life.
They dragged me to the cliff and threw me over. I had a distance of about 20 feet free fall to a out jutting lip. I slammed into it and started rolling down the very steep cliff. As I fell, a combination of vines, tree branches and shrubs somehow slowed me down a bit. I continued to roll, occasionally slamming into to bushes and trees but unfortunately gravity worked against me. At this point I saw the river getting closer and closer to me. In addition to the river, I also had a very large tree approaching. I knew grabbing that last tree was my only hope and managed to grasp for it. Slam, with my wind completely knocked out of me I stopped the fall a mere 15 feet above the massive class 5 river below. I laid there in disbelief marveling at being alive. I am not a religious person, but I felt like some divine guidance had a part in keeping me alive. The odds of surviving a mega beating AND surviving the fall was nearly impossible to imagine. Enduring this trial, I made a decision to give a little prayer of thanks to whoever was looking out for me. Instantly, I realized my two attackers might still be above me and there is a chance they might be able to see me still alive. I dragged myself up and hugged the side of the cliff as best as I could. After about 5 minutes of catching my breath, I then heard the horrible sound. The frantic yip of my puppy descending. It is a sound I will remember for the rest of my life. After a few seconds the sound ended in one final yelp and never again did I hear my wonderful puppies yip. My two, very evil attackers threw an innocent puppy to his death while still conscience. The realization of that hit me as hard as the actual attack. These guys had no conscience and were absolutely evil. Another couple of minutes passed and I saw my torn shirt get tossed over and join a pile of other bits of clothing and odds and ends.
After about 10 minutes of hell, i decided to carefully explore my area. There was a fairly scattered pile of rubbish laying in the area, from water bottles to torn clothing and boots. Others had died here, most likely getting chucked down and into the river. My survival-oriented mind told me a couple of things. I can scrounge up some odds and ends from this pile of trash to assist in my survival. I knew there was no hope of white water rafters coming down the river from the point I was. The main entry into the river system was still another mile+ at the village I was originally heading to. I thought maybe I could tie some of the torn clothing items together and hang it off the tree in case it could be seen from a distance. I knew it was early, and due to the numerous water bottles I could survive at least a night. This is the point where I had a decision to make. Stay here for the night and wait the murderers out, or go ahead and try to climb out. I couldn't even see upper part of the cliff above me, but had to make up my mind. I knew once the adrenaline was gone, I would be hurting and had only a single eye to work with. Time would be the enemy so my decision was made. I am an experienced climber, from my boyhood tree climbing to some minor rock climbing.
I started out trying to scale to my left, but I came across a large area that was completely open, with absolutely nothing to grab on to. I had no choice but head to my right. There were numerous obstacles in my path, from massive, dense bushes, to again..large open areas. I had to scale up and down over and under the numerous obstacles. Throughout all of this, I was being stung by many dozens of vicious little ants. When you are climbing to shrubs and anything else to save your life, a little ant bite is nothing. To top everything off, all branches and footing was completely slippery from the recent rain. I had quite a few close calls and near death experiences, one being a situation where I slipped, fell another 5 feet and racked myself. If that tree hadn't been there, I would have fallen all the way down into the river to my death. After a good hour of scaling, I started to grow weary and desperate. One point I reached an area that had no branches, shrubs or anything to grab onto. A big open patch of dirt. After a minute of resting and trying to clear my head, I noticed the area was dotted with decent sized trees and i know just how extensive the root systems of trees needed to be for survival. I noticed a root looping out of the ground not too far away and it was this that gave me the idea. The soil was fairly loose in the area, so i used one hand to dig as best i could. It was actually a bit spongy and I was able to dig in fairly deep. I found some solid roots within 6 inches and it was perfect for grabbing onto. I could pull myself up a bit, but then what? It was about 8 feet across to more trees and a continuation of my nightmare out.
I knew I could continue digging for roots, but how would I know where to put my foot? I broke off a few sticks and put them in my pocket. I could use these sticks to mark the roots i dug out to provide some footing, albeit treacherous. Success! By pushing the stick into the hole, I was able to mark the very important locations for my footing. My plan worked quite well, and I reached the area with more plant growth. Keep in mind, I only had a single eye through out this entire climb. I had to look over as best I could using my left eye only. I was scaling to my right. Another useful tactic that worked for me was grabbing the root base of even small bushes, branches etc. I was able to continue pulling myself along on these rather small shrubs and in some cases branches. Never, ever grab the middle, or even worth end of a branch. You have your best chance of survival by grabbing towards the base of the branch. It was a good 90 minutes or even a bit longer that I came across a miracle and my first real hope.
A huge landslide had occurred quite some time ago and left some large trees uprooted. I was able to use these trees like a ladder, climbing upward to victory. I slowly climbed up, rejoicing at the light of the road. A sudden fear entered me, slowing down my celebration a bit. What if my would be murderers were stillaround. I made the decision to crawl into a pile of high brush that would conceal me to get an idea on the dangers of moving forward. I laid in the same spot, unmoving, for a good 15 minutes or so. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and pain was returning at a very quick rate. As I was climbing up, I heard the sound of a motor heading from my right to my left heading to the direction of the touristy pool. I knew wobbling back to the pool and hoping someone was there was my best hope. I had this nagging fear that my would've murderers would be at the village I was originally heading to. So I made up my mind and as quick as possible hobbled to the tourist pool. I was constantly fearful or running into them, or having them sneak up behind me. Eventually I made it to the entrance of the pool and saw the light. A motorcycle was parked outside! I quickened my pace and made it to the picnic area where I saw the most wonderful sight ever! A family was having lunch. They looked at me in shock as I approached, a bleeding mess. I explained my situation as best I could in my broken Spanish and they quickly led me to their bike, and to the rest of my life!
This ends my story. In the end, I ended up with a massive black eye, a very sore chin, massive lacerations to my neck, a sprained leg and about 100+ ant bites, scrapes, and dozens of bruises. Not a single broken bone throughout my body and no permanent injuries. I made a full recovery from this physically, accept for a strange flash in my right eye. It only occurs when it is darker, but it is bearable. For those who have helped me, physically and emotionally, a very grateful thanks.
I have dozens of other stories to tell, though none quite like this one. Let me know what you think!
can i join you ?
