Survivorman | Patagonia | Les Stroud

you can't watch a survival program on tv and head out and imitate it it's not safe it's taken me years to know what i know to have learned what i've learned and i practiced hundreds and hundreds of times with other people before i ever attempted anything alone because i don't end up looking like that [Music] [Music] on december 21 2013 an argentine tourist by the name of loreno emmanuel santos checked in by himself at a hostel in el calafate argentina where he spent the night before heading out the next morning crossed the border to toro de pine national park in chile he left a bag at the hostel which he wanted the staff to hold on to for him and said he'd be back to pick it up after doing the famous oh trekking circuit of tour del pine national park he never came back for the bed [Music] the face of outdoor adventure and world travel has changed since the early days of survivorman when that series launched an entire new media genre survival tv with the explosion of outdoor adventure and with the buffet of bad survival television inspiring people to head out ill-informed people are dying the whole point of survivorman has always been to teach the right way the safe way not to take chances and go over the top and put yourself in peril so i'm here patagonia chile and one of the most stunningly beautiful places on the planet and i'm hiking a relatively easy trail nothing should ever go wrong here yet it does here and around the world in places meant to inspire us to love nature to get out and travel tragedies are continuing it's time to fix some of that on december 22nd lorena santos set off alone from el calafate by bus he had emailed friends and family the day before to let them know he was going to do the o circuit a 120 kilometer 74 mile trail that usually takes eight to nine days in my pack i'm carrying the same items probably almost every hiker on this trail is carrying a sleeping bag therm-a-rest some food even a stove so you'd think this should be nothing more than a camping trip but if that's the case then why do people still perish out in beautiful and even controlled places such as this and it's situations like this that that can give you a bit of a false sense of security there's a lot of trails you start off not such a big deal and you get to certain spots it can become very treacherous even dangerous very very dangerous you got to know this before you set out now you're setting yourself up for failure even with the experience that i have which okay it's pretty decent i suppose you still have to be careful i've been walking for quite a while now with my shirt off and i can feel my body temperature starting to drop i got to pay attention to that notice that yet my back is still sweating so the sweat can convince my mind to keep my shirt off and keep going but it starts to cool down late in the night like this i could have hypothermia set in even on this beautiful sunny evening you have to pay attention to what you're doing or you can as has happened here you can perish [Music] this is a very popular hiking trail so what could go wrong yet still i can't help myself from thinking in terms of survival it's not all that geeky it's just good trekking sounds [Music] look at this it's called taurus and uh these little babies here are edible it's probably last year's crop so they don't they don't look so good but the point here is not so much survival it's it's as you hike even on a known trail it's just keeping your eyes open i've seen clover dandelion yarrow good to get that kind of information and be taught what's available in case you do run into trouble this is an oddball survival experiment for me i'm far from being alone i'm passing other hikers along this very accessible trail so how can anyone die on a busy trail well the trail today uh not really long by most standards not bad four to five hours some up some down mostly flat the problem is every year on even the simplest of trails and some of the most beautiful parks around the world hundreds of people get lost people shouldn't die but they are in places just like this on december 24th lorena walked from the chileno refuge which is further back from where i started all the way to the koiron camping area located on the northeastern corner of the oh circuit a journey of eight hours mirroring his movements is allowing me to understand a little of how he would be feeling [Music] you know this part of the trail what i've done is you're supposed to do it in two sections first day the second day that's what i'm doing but some hikers usually men they want to do the macho thing they push really hard and that is the case with one tragic hiker on this very trail first day did both legs of the journey and everyone does in two days he did in one and the thing is when it comes to emergencies or falling into uh very dangerous situations you what i do is i like to count up the lemons i add the lemons up one of them and do them three lemon you know you're injured that's a limit weather's bad that's a lemon your canoe's got a hole in it that's the third lemon you need to stop and fix the circumstances so as i work to try and maybe csi this particular tragedy on this trail the first lemon for me right off the bat right in the very beginning is pushing really hard and doing in one day what you're supposed to do in two days people who set up these trails in these parks they don't do it ignorantly they know how far the human body can go and how much somebody should be pushed recommendations matter when you ignore them you ignore them at your own peril you know what's interesting is in all the stories that i've read survival research i've done just occurs to me now that i think that when women perish it seems to be because they got lost when men perish because they push too hard they don't stop women tend to be more in tune with their bodies now i'm saying that is a very general statement lots of men are in tune with their bodies too but seems to be as a general rule women pay attention they listen to their bodies they know when they're pushing too hard when they need to break and stop men on the other hand well we're alphas aren't we we're we're hunters we we got to push hard get through to the next section beat the other guy and sometimes that could end in tragedy at our own peril so even now got a good blister on the back of my heel on my right foot and on my left foot i'm still nursing it pulled achilles heel from about nine months ago and it's reminding me of that fact with every step these injuries constitute for me let's call it a half a lemon right now the point being is i got to pay attention you know now that i think of it because i'm out here alone that's got to constitute a half a lemon right there so if not a full lemon so for now let's just say i've got one lemon stacked up against me and i want to pay attention to that this isn't about being over cautious the lemon method is serious business tragedies occur every year simply because of casual attitudes taken toward wilderness adventure trekking out onto the land is all well and fun until something goes wrong the thing about having an accident halfway on the trail here it's pretty sure that people will come along but then what do they do do they turn around and go all the way back up very steep hills here or do they continue on going down to get to help either way you're going to be many many hours waiting potentially on your own for help to arrive the hiker that perished just before john gardner pass didn't even have a tent with him i'm all for sleeping under the stars for sure but you guys still carry some form of shelter small lightweight tent will be easy to carry these days they're incredible how light they can make them and how protective they can be still sleep under the stars just consider it an emergency shelter and it's there when you need it i'm following loreno's trail a moderate six-hour hike to the dixon refuge as a general rule depending on your level of experience what shouldn't happen is that you attempt these types of tracks these trails these journeys alone now i will admit if you've got lots of years of experience then yeah i'm okay with it you know i'm all right with i certainly spend my time alone out here but if you don't going on a solo trip can be a great mistake you can't watch a survival program on tv and head out and imitate it it's not safe it's taken me years to know what i know to have learned what i've learned and i practiced hundreds and hundreds of times with other people before i ever attempted anything alone because i don't end up looking like that loreno santos spent the second last day of his life walking the same trail that i'm on now a moderate six-hour trail at the end of which he would check in and spend the night whether it's extreme outdoor adventure or survival scenario you still have to come on the better odds of the five components of survival the kit you carry the skill you have your physical abilities luck and your will to live without all five in some kind of measure then you may just very well perish i think that's it i think i'm downhill now the thing about going downhill is this it seems like okay we'll be downhill that's no problem on the downhills where most of the accidents occur and people don't slip and twist their ankles going uphill that's rare because you're going slow and methodical you go downhill that's actually when things get dangerous you have to recognize on the downslope is when you've got to be more vigilant or extra vigilant let's say one wrong little tiny twist one little snap of your ankle and you're into survival mode the bigger accidents like falling off a cliff dumping your boat in rapids getting attacked by a wild animal these all do happen but it's the smaller details that are more often than not what lead to a survival situation or perhaps simply more that if you don't take care of the small details along the way when and if something horrific does happen it'll be that much harder to handle i'll tell you a little story about drinking from streams as you go along there's a time when i was adventure racing everyone was sort of told to worry about giardia but you know i knew that area well and with my team we would go through and every time we came to a swamp i would say this is good it's moving fine drink it giardia it's gonna take six seven eight nine days to hit you anyway but then you're home take a pill it's gone but all of the other teams refused they were not drinking when we got to the first station all the other teams as they had come in looked pale they were having the dry heaves they looked sick my whole team looked refreshed and ready to go on to the next day and not one of us got giardia so in a situation when it comes down to dehydration or giardia i'll take the i'll take the jardy any day now the puma here are the largest on the planet and you can reach six feet from nose to butt not including the tail that's a big cat and this is all his home now before i start putting the fear of mountain lions and everybody let's be clear it's a ridiculously rare situation and generally speaking i tend to only go after someone or something that's 90 pounds or less with mountain lions intimidation is the way make yourself seem bigger make yourself seem noisy if there's two or three of you band together go shoulder to shoulder that's little spots like this when you are in heavy predator country especially cat country this is i mean this is perfect pouncing location right this is the stuff you want to watch out for they want to jump down on you get you in the neck sort of thing that's why they don't like people walking alone out here and that's why they forbid you to walk out here at night that's a big cat and i'm walking right through his living room [Music] i'm hiking the beautiful tour del paine trail in patagonia chile i'm trying to understand how anyone could die on a popular and not overly difficult trail this wind can gust at times to literally lift my feet up a bit move me sideways wind has always been my nemesis give me rain heat cold wind is the toughest thing it cuts through everything takes all of the heat that you have your internal combustion and just whisks it away i can be hypothermic in seconds really and this is the kind of thing that starts to throw as i like to say a lemon into the equation so now i got damaged heels i'm hiking alone and i'm facing a very strong wind doing difficult hills i'm already at a lemon and a half two lemons it means i need to take care of every next step that i take halfway up the first hill it's all about pacing you push yourself too hard to pour it with sweat i'm sweating now this kind of wind if i had to stop right here right now even on this sunday i'd be hypothermic in minutes i got gotta slow down watch my cardio and pace it tend to push a little harder when we're with friends maybe that's a little forgivable but when you're on your own you can't you can't push the limit well you can you run the risk of dying out here these mountains and hills they don't care how experienced i am i don't care how charming i might be or intelligent or stupid they just are and it just is out here which is why as a human being to come out and drop myself in these places and all these other hikers that are hiking this trail even today you can't take it lightly you got to come into these hills with respect knowledge and skill [Music] i'm following in the footsteps of loreno santos who tragically lost his life an experienced hiker on a moderate trail it doesn't make sense brief little moment out of the patagonian wind here i'll take advantage of it i'm probably exaggerating a bit when i say you know hypothermia kick in within seconds it can't really if you follow the 110 one rule take the first minute to calm yourself down now that's primarily when you're dealing with sort of immersion like falling through the ice take a minute calm yourself down and then 10 minutes you've got 10 minutes before you start to deal with the immobility of your arms and your body seizing up and then one hour before hypothermia actually starts to set in so the 110 one rule can get you out of a lot of situations or at least it'll calm your mind down so i don't risk hypothermia yet but the thing is if if you keep pushing and sweating and pushing and sweating and in the cold wind you slowly onset it that's actually the worst type of hypothermia of all is that slow onset because it starts to mess with your mind and hypothermia when it messes with your mind is a very dangerous dangerous foe because you will start to think when you're really deep into it that you're actually warm when you're not and so you can see the signs of someone with hypothermia by walking along behind them and a glove is dropped and another glove and a hat is dropped and they start shedding off clothing because it's like oh i'm so hot they're not they're actually slowly shivering to death no one wants to believe it can happen to them it's embarrassing you're letting your travel mates down this should be easy and so we bury our issues we ignore the signs push on sometimes into our own oblivion that's a funny thing i've already started to do the kind of actions that you're sort of not supposed to do what i've done is i started getting rid of stuff that i thought was too heavy the last campground i dropped out some excess food an excess shirt sweater a hat just stuff that you know i don't think i'm gonna need this stuff of course i'm making that decision while i'm walking in the sunshine and that's that's also dangerous i've probably got 15 pounds more than anybody else that comes out here because the reality is i've got camera gear and camera batteries even though i slimmed down quite a bit it still weighs it's still heavy so i suppose carrying all this extra heavy gear should almost count as a lemon or a half a lemon as well but just the same it's fatigue and being cold that often causes you to make decisions that are the wrong decisions to make loreno kept his supplies to a bare minimum a small rain poncho no tent little food these were his decisions to make but it must be remembered that one of the key components of survival is your kit what supplies you have with you you can live or die based on these supplies so i just came up to one of those classic moments my feet are killing me i got blister on one heel achilles tendon on the other heels an issue i was sure or i have to get to the campground was just around the next corner and it came to a sign i said three more kilometers that's demoralizing when you think you're almost there all right oh that's a citrus psoriasis camp is where i'm headed pacing your travel is a survival skill it takes experience to know without constantly checking a map exactly where you are on a trail yet your perspective can change every trip since the weight you carry your current physical condition the topography of the trail and even the weather can all play into just how fast you're moving i have it that's where it came from so far just way way down at the bottom this should be dare i say it a relatively easy hike today which is good because tomorrow is tomorrow's the ball breaker [Music] here in patagonia i'm retracing the steps of a hiker that met with a tragic fate [Music] oh i gotta stick with my traditions and this is one of them it's one of my ways of connecting with the land whenever i go somewhere that's pure glacier water right there well i did do my best this morning to try and tape up my toes and someone loaned me their vaseline to uh coat my heels with you can't let pride get in the way of looking after your body when you're on a long journey all right let's do a morning recap here i'm on the taurus del payne trail i'm going around to do the john gardner pass and by all accounts like any other park like any other trail around the world and although there are some we call them treacherous sections no one should ever really run into trouble on these trails so i want to break down how someone could come on a trail that should be just fine and die when someone offers you some moleskin band-aids or even food don't turn all macho and refuse the help when they give you advice consider it it may save your life this is exactly the kind of force that was destroyed here just a few years ago up to 20 000 hectares were destroyed lightning nope natural occurrence nope hikers the rule here is that you can't use anything other than propane gas but uh there was a group of military men who thought they were above the rule so they tried to push it a little bit hard and uh ended up in between campsites when it got dark i suppose they didn't care probably thought it was a very cool thing to do and then they started to get themselves set up and the way the story goes they lit their fire of liquid gas and the wind picked up started to burn the grass before you knew it 20 000 hectares were burned right through this park [Music] fire has always been key to survival for me it's an element of survival that i look to first if you can gain the knowledge of how to make and of course control and maintain a good fire you can survive well and not cause this [Music] i guess in many ways what i'm trying to do is at least slightly simulate the circumstances of a hiker that perished out on john gardner pass it's impossible to completely do it a park authorities won't let me and b i'm not a young 20 something bent on pushing through at all costs so i have my disadvantages and the things that are holding me down a bit for pushing on through because there's nothing like facing the white wind of john gardner pass i should probably nickname it white death man these feet are bad enough that you know if even just if i had just one person with me and this is the perils of doing something alone i'd had one person with me who said oh man those look really raw listen we can come back another time and and try this we should go home get the feet fixed up i would have said okay but because i'm out here alone there's nobody here to say that and so my my ego and whatever it is sense of something makes me keep going i don't want to turn back i don't want to quit there's nobody here giving me the out and i'm not giving myself the out that's one of the problems of tracking alone and you know what i smell all through this area right here smell dead animal to be more precise it smells like old bone like rotting bone marrow probably a puma kill around here somewhere that's the other truth to these different trails around the world that you can hike and climb and be on or if you ever step off the trail just a little bit you have no idea what you'd find guarantee it'd be a lot more than you think as humans we carve out these little paths through the jungles and across the desert in the forests up into the hills and mountains and uh i've heard people complain well i never see any wildlife it's all around you it's all around you it's close it's always close it just avoids you like the plague and it does so with ease because of where his body was found it's believed that loreno set off from dixon refuge towards los perdos refuge early in the morning and was going to attempt to make the john gardiner pass that same evening what i have to do now basically is keep walking off my blisters until they become calluses if you've ever had to do that you know what i'm talking about walk through the pain and i still got to go up over that mountain the john gardner pass is the most difficult part of the entire o circuit where hikers reach the maximum elevation of 1200 meters above sea level it's a steep rocky moraine considered by many hikers as the most physically demanding part of the trail it's one thing to be going uphill it's quite another to be going uphill right against the wind while carrying a camera all i did was simply pick the wrong hiking boots to wear for this trip and now i'm paying the price man this downhill on the toes is deadly blisters on the toes and then all the weight of your body shoves down into the toe of your boot squishes the toes even harder whoa the next section of the trek is the most difficult it's where loreno santos tragically lost his life thousands of people cross it every year it should never have been a place of death the luck of this great weather is with me on my trek so maybe i can at least take the time to cool down the blisters in the glacial stream oh wow yeah that's direct off the glacier [Music] the official full cert for loreno santos began on january 14th and continued for three weeks around the park until it was called off they were unable to find a single trace of him the hiker that perished just up there he was young and he had to be fit to keep the pace he was keeping he pushed through the first campsite to the second campsite which is you know a very long day i'm going to assume that he did stop here and i think the record showed that he stopped here because he was told not to carry on and he carried on anyway in spite of warnings in terms of the weather it's very misleading though you're in the forest here and so you know even if it was snowing it would seem kind of pleasant here and as it is i saw a couple today very young young fit fast couple went from the other campsite and they're gonna go all the way through passing this this spot and each year i get to collect more statistics [Music] unfortunately [Music] [Music] ow on november 8th 2014 almost a year after his disappearance a guide from turtle payne national park wandered off the trail between los pero's camping site and paso camping site just before the top of the john gardner pass only 600 feet off the main trail he discovered a badly decomposed body lying next to a pile of rocks there was a pack still strapped onto the body and inside the bag was an id card belonging to the argentine tourist loreno santos [Music] all right let's do a little update on the feet i've got my boots sliced open on either side of the big and small toes although the laces are on they're not done up at all so the shoes are virtually undone and it's it's somewhat better the way i look at it what's worth more to me these hiking boots are my feet just hiking shoes i can get a new pair i can't get into pair feet so this trail i'm on right now is the the last trail that campsite i was at was the last bit of civilization that the hiker that perished here would have ever seen unfortunately [Applause] there's a couple of theories on what happened to him and i want to kind of try to break them down and take a look at the reasons why someone who seemingly had a lot of strength at least might have perished in a place like this with other hikers around campsites at either end of trails lots of water and except for the past that i'm headed to a lot of shelter a lot more tree shelter than i was expecting so why why perish in a place like this [Music] the initial autopsy revealed no signs of fractures or other life-threatening wounds pumas are very common here but there were no signs of puma attack either what is known was the weather that day a complete whiteout the white death now what i want to do is let's piece together the day as it starts he would have started off his morning much like i did the campground have some breakfast i'm sure get himself suited up a little bit of camaraderie and then head out now he was told he shouldn't attempt to pass because they're expecting the bad weather i don't know how long it was before the bad weather kicked in did it hit him right here where i am right now or did it happen when he was going up the path was it already started in the morning i don't really know when these tragedies happen sometimes it's hard to put all the details together for example originally i was told that he was found within the tree line but now i've spoken to someone who was here and was part of the search who knows exactly where the body was and it was well past the tree line that changes things that changes things a lot there was one other very revealing aspect to the story that i've since learned and it just changes everything as far as what might have happened to them so there's basically a couple of different passes if you look that pass over there that's not the one it's over here that's the past that we have to go up and over the hiker that was lost was going after this one but he was actually found even further to the left indicating that he just simply veered off trail it's easy even on bare rock to go off trail and wander off where you shouldn't be going and that's exactly what happened to the hiker that perished here now on top of it he had to deal with white wind complete white out of snow couldn't see three feet in front of him luck was not on his side that day for me luck's on my side i've got blue sky i want to get up to where the body was found and try to piece together the events that led to his demise [Music] it's thought that loreno santos died of hypothermia rangers think he wandered off the trail late in the afternoon got lost and it got dark before he was able to get back on track weather reports showed that the night of december 26 was a night of a terrible cold front he knew of a trail that only the sherpas took he was young and strong with a respectable amount of mountain hiking experience so there may have been a challenge in his mind to take this trail i'm on now a trail that tourists are not allowed to go on a personal challenge perhaps to prove everyone back at camp wrong and to push through the dreaded white wind but he set himself up for failure muscles and machismo alone will never defeat a mountain kind of tricky because you start off all limber and fast and you realize this is a serious hill you slow down a bit you carry on nice and slow but at some point yes they're facing the physical exhaustion and that's when you start making big mistakes i'm doing this climbing the sun i can't imagine doing this in a whiteout there was nothing that would keep me going hop this in a whiteout not a chance [Music] i have no way of knowing at this point if there was snow already or if the snow hit during the forested sections or if it didn't hit until right right here because this section is where everything just opens wide up a white out in a place like this is be devastating you wouldn't know where you were and then at some point he was also told back at the campground you shouldn't go today the weather's going to be bad but didn't listen and that's the first issue not recognizing the limitations to the day itself the weather never mind your own strength your own skill set what's the topography and the weather saying to you and when the experts are saying you shouldn't go out there now it's bad news then you shouldn't go out [Music] now the other thing is the information that i'm getting when i try to piece together the details of a tragedy or a survival situation it's all about the details and i was originally told that he was found within the tree line it's not true now that i've spoken with some guys who were part of the search i found out that he was found just up here well out of the tree line but well in the danger zone for the white wind for me i've followed all of the steps i have but pretty much the same equipment that he had i'm probably about 10 pounds heavier though because of my camera gear i'm also 30 years older and i've got some bad blistered feet i'm still dealing with and i'm pushing on bye talk about your stairmaster whew i don't know the more and more i do this climb the more and more i think that the hike of the parish up here came up here deliberately he wouldn't do even as far as i have and not automatically think i must be going the wrong way you have to think that it's impossible to believe you're going the right way when i say deliberately i mean against all the advice to wait a day more like allowing ego and drive keep pushing us onwards going back would be embarrassing admitting defeat could be humiliating to an experienced person in any outdoor activity out here our fate is guided by our own hands mountains got its own way disregarded at your own peril it said that he was found huddled underneath a rock there's still some perplexing pieces to this number one is a massive search party came out and they could not find him he was not found until a year later actually now search party would have spotted something under this rock i'm sure of it i mean i can see the trail from here this is why you got to have a check-in you got to let somebody know when you're going to be back and where if we walk through the steps from the campground up on through the forests seeing the white out pushing forward and either accidentally coming up this way because what happens is this pass and that pass can look very similar but that's the wrong one and that's the right one and the difference between the two give me life or death so i think what i'll do is i'm going to get up and over this past now well my luck is still with me in the daylight still with me [Music] well there it is you see this is why people come out here this is why chances are taken because you can't match that with a video game or a tv show you know in the end i think what happened to this hiker was a simple combination of really bad luck and an accident given his skill set which in terms of mountain climbing and trekking he was he was decently experienced what i don't understand is why in the throes of huddling under a rock and realizing maybe that you know that's it he can't walk why wouldn't he wrap himself up he had a sleeping bag sleeping pad spare clothes stove fuel food that's a question that will never be able to be answered there's too many mysterious deaths happening out on wilderness trails most of them have simple answers it's hard to get to them though when you're out here wilderness reclaims you pretty quickly takes away the clues and leaves you wondering how someone could perish on a well-marked well-known trail hypothermia is likely what ultimately took the hiker's life or was it machismo and overconfidence maybe one leads to the other it's knowing that places like this exists on this great earth of ours [Music] this is the reason why more and more people are heading out head out with knowledge acquired skill set make sure you're physically capable hope for good luck and keep a strong will to live and you can survive anything next year someone will die in the wilderness maybe it'll be someone you know maybe it'll be you it'll happen simply due to a careless attitude towards personal safety there are five components to survival the first four are not difficult to manage how fit you are what gear you carry what skills you possess and the luck of the day without them all you have left is the fifth component the will to live but a mountain's got its own ways and sometimes the will to live alone is not enough you

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 1,256,105

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, adventure travel, nature, wilderness adventure, wilderness, adventure, outdoor enthusiasts, Patagonia, Chile, survival skills, survival, survive, safe survival skills

Id: pmxpfD8r6ks

Length: 48min 12sec (2892 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/corsaiLucascorso]

The real deal Canadian I love this guy!

[u/RockNWood]

Les is about the only authentic survival videographer I can recall. He is suffered some brutal conditions. Alone. No support team to hang with in a hotel at night while filming. And he makes no bones about the perfect survivalist. If he makes a mistake he endures and pushes on. He has my respect.

[u/[deleted]]

I love that he's back to doing Survivorman shows.

[u/kL0ckwOrc]

I like this stuff. But the show Alone is the REAL deal