Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Cowboy in the Wilderness: Real Life Rodeo About this episode Leif Videen lives a pared back, outdoorsy life in the remote reaches of the Mid West. In October 2015, he embarks on an elk stalking trip in the Wind River Mountains. But when he finally pulls the trigger, after days of tracking his quarry, he never expects that he will soon be the one fighting for his life. As a mysterious set of grisly symptoms takes hold, Leif must rely on his loyal steed to carry him to safety - before time runs out…
A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:03 John Hopkins? It's late October 2015, in the state of Wyoming.
1:08 John Hopkins? The wind, river mountains bask in radiant fall sunshine. Sawtooth granite peaks serate the sky, which is blue and vast and cloudless. An alpine stream, fed by snow thawed in the unseasonably warm weather, meanders through wildflower-speckled tundra.
1:32 John Hopkins? Just below the tree line, in a dense thicket of dry brush and deadfall, flies buzz around a heap of deliberately-placed pine boughs. A dead elk, shot by a hunter earlier today, lies hidden beneath the branches. Its silvery-brown fur matted with blood, sharp antlers protruding from the autumn foliage.
1:57 John Hopkins? Clearly, whoever shot this beast intends to come back for it. Which begs the question: Where are they?
2:07 John Hopkins? Six miles down the trail, thirty-five-year-old Leif Vidin sits slumped in the saddle of his horse, a harnessed rifle slung across his sagging torso. Blood soaks the hard-wearing fabric of his trousers and drips over the leather lining of his boots. Beneath his rough, blond stubble, his skin is sickly pale.
2:33 John Hopkins? Leif lifts his head. There are still many miles to go. He has to pick up the pace.
2:42 John Hopkins? He tugs weakly at the reins of his horse, Dylan. With a flick of his head, Dylan expels twin jets of steam from his flared nostrils. Then, he springs forwards, the muscles rippling in his glossy chestnut haunches.
3:01 John Hopkins? Each impact of the horse's hooves on the hard ground fires another bolt of pain through Leif's abdomen. But he can't slow down. If he does, he might never make it down this mountain alive.
3:17 Speaker 03 As the time goes by, I'm getting weaker. I'm also extremely nauseous and I'm vomiting a lot. And I can't get off. I'm trying to lean over my saddle best I can to throw up, but it is so miserable.
3:30 John Hopkins? He glances woozily at the trail in front of him, wending interminably through the hazy, herring-boned foothills.
3:39 John Hopkins? And then, a sudden wave of exhaustion, blurring his vision. He sways in his saddle and tries to tighten his grip on the reins, but he doesn't have the strength.
3:51 Speaker 03 And I'm like, oh my god. I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna stay conscious. And then I just felt bad for my family. If I end up dying here, I just felt terrible for them.
4:09 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Leif Vidin, a cowboy and saddler from Wyoming. Leif lives a pared-back outdoorsy life, surviving in a remote location and frequently hunting his own food. In October 2015, he sets out on an elk-stalking trip into the Wind River Mountains.
4:51 John Hopkins? After days of pursuit, he gets the opportunity to take his shot. Pulling the trigger, he never expects that he will soon be the one fighting for his life.
5:02 Speaker 03 I don't know what this is. I've never felt like this. I felt a bizarre physical sickness. I feel really weird internally, and I feel this sense of dread. There's definitely a chance I'm not gonna make it.
5:21 John Hopkins? Plagued with mysterious, grisly symptoms, Leif will have to dig deep and put his faith in his trusty steed to carry him down the mountain before it is too late. I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Real Survival Stories.
6:06 John Hopkins? It's late October 2015. On the outskirts of the small town of Lander, Wyoming, Leif Vidin emerges from his cabin and strolls across the paddock to the barn.
6:19 John Hopkins? The familiar musty smell of horse and hay greets him as he steps inside the dark stable, his cowboy boots crunching softly on the wood chips. Leaf's two stock horses, Dylan and Fonzie, peer at him over the tops of their neighboring stalls. The rangy, bespectacled 35-year-old walks over and strokes his ponies affectionately, running his hand across their velvety muzzles. Leaf leads Dylan and Fonzie out of the stable and into the trailer attached to the back of his truck. With his horses loaded, he heads back inside the house to say goodbye to his wife Shelley
7:00 John Hopkins? and to grab the rest of the gear he'll need for several days in the wilderness: a tent, some warm clothes, his hunting knife, rifle, and ammunition. By mid-morning, Leaf is on the road. Up ahead, the snow-flecked granite spine of the Wind River Mountains underlines the cobbled blue sky. He doesn't know how long he'll be away from home. Hunting trips are often, by their very nature, open-ended. Going into the wilderness is its own kind of homecoming, a return to something Leaf's been drawn to since he was a boy.
7:46 Speaker 03 I bought my first teepee when I was 14 years old with my own money, and I had it set up at home. And I lived out there all summer, from when I was like 14 till after I left home. And I came in the house to eat and do stuff, but my bedroom was in my teepee, so I'd sleep out there all summer until it got too cold. So it's kind of a unique childhood, just a lot of adventure. We had a lot of free rein.
8:17 John Hopkins? Leaf's love of the great outdoors inspired him to attend college in mountainous Colorado, where he spent his summers working on guest ranches in the hills.
8:27 John Hopkins? It was during one such summer, on one such ranch, that he made a life-changing discovery.
8:33 Speaker 03 So I was cleaning rooms during the week, but then at that guest ranch, I saw that there's these horse wranglers that had horses there. And I was like, "Oh, my God, that looks so awesome."
8:44 John Hopkins? Spellbound, after finishing college, he moved to work on a ranch in Wyoming, taking every available opportunity to spend time with the horses.
8:54 Speaker 03 I ended up living in the mountains, working for ranchers, and just tending cattle in the mountains from May until November. I make all my money chasing cattle horseback. And then I started taking outside horses. I don't call them outside horses. I started like starting colts, starting horses under saddle, young horses. Or sometimes people would bring me older horses that had maybe problems or troubles, and I would help try to get those figured out and ride those horses for a while.
9:29 John Hopkins? There's a deep bond between Leaf and the animals he works with. He communicates with them through sound and gesture.
9:40 John Hopkins? These days, when each winter arrives, he leaves the cattle and returns to his humble homestead, where he picks up work taming fiery young colts into obedient steeds, or making and selling custom leather saddles.
9:55 John Hopkins? He and Shelley live a good life, a throwback in many ways, forging their livelihood from the soil of the American West.
10:05 John Hopkins? Still, certain aspects of the simple life are really rather far from simple. In true pioneer fashion, Leaf and Shelley try to limit their meat consumption to animals they kill and butcher themselves. When elk hunting season rolls around, in early autumn, Leaf mounts his horse, shoulders his rifle, and heads dutifully into Wind River country. It's not sport, it's a necessity, an affordable and sustainable source of food that will keep him and his wife fed through the long, hard winter.
10:41 Speaker 03 I was never a trophy hunter. I was always what I call a meat hunter, where I just wanted to shoot something for meat. Like, that was the end of it. I dreaded hunting season. To me, the hunting itself was like going to cut firewood or cutting hay is just like something that has to be done to kind of keep living. It was just something I had to go do.
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12:16 John Hopkins? It's early afternoon.
12:19 John Hopkins? After parking his truck at the trailhead, Leaf saddles up Dylan and loads the hunting gear and camping supplies onto Fonzie, his packhorse.
12:29 John Hopkins? Now, with Fonzie trudging behind, Leaf rides Dylan up a steep, rocky incline.
12:37 Speaker 03 Elk like to be really high in the mountains until the snow. The snow will actually push them down out of the high mountains. In the summer, they'll be like up in the peaks, like above tree line, up in the rocks. And it's just really hard to hunt that high up. It's just not as desirable. So oftentimes, you kind of wait. I like to wait for the first big snowstorm to kind of push the elk down a little bit further out of the highest mountains.
13:05 John Hopkins? Leaf continues up the trail.
13:09 John Hopkins? On either side of the footpath, wind gnarled cottonwoods and stunted pines fall away to reveal a sprawling expanse of mountains, deep river canyons and squat sandstone buttes with their distinctive wide, flat summits. Though snow fills the crags of the uppermost reaches, the weather is mild for late October with beautiful, clear skies overhead.
13:35 Speaker 03 Towards the end of the season, it had gotten really warm again. Beautiful fall weather, calm, sunny, like we have the bluest skies in Wyoming. There's still some leaves on the trees, so there's still some color to the aspens.
13:57 John Hopkins? The Wind River Range covers around 7,000 square miles of some of the wildest and remotest wilderness in all of North America.
14:07 John Hopkins? Leaf scans the ridge as he trots through the sparse, twisted evergreens.
14:13 John Hopkins? He's currently heading up a gorge, riding purposefully, though his exact destination is unclear. Much of the time, the activity of the elk herd is anyone's guess.
14:26 John Hopkins? This means Leaf hasn't been able to tell Shelley where he's going, or how long he will be.
14:36 Speaker 03 You just never know exactly what the elk are up to. I don't know how many days I'll be gone. It's really a vague thing. You just don't know how it's gonna go until you're kind of in it.
14:49 John Hopkins? He's certainly in it now. For two full days, Leaf journeys deeper and deeper into the mountains.
14:58 John Hopkins? There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from being out here. The unobstructed horizons, the natural splendor, the quiet solitude.
15:10 John Hopkins? He deliberately plans his hunts for late in the season, when encounters with other hunters are rare. It is as if the entire mountain is his and his alone.
15:25 Speaker 03 If I were to see another person hunting, I'm kind of like, hey, what are they doing in my area? What's going on? Like, what's someone doing out here? So, you know, like, we're kind of spoiled here, having a lot of room to ourselves.
15:39 John Hopkins? Occasionally, though, something happens that reminds Leaf how quickly these mountains can turn against you.
15:47 John Hopkins? A few months back, he was leading a small group of tourists through these very hills when he made a morbid discovery.
15:55 Speaker 03 I was on just a summertime, fun time pack trip. And I'd set up a camp, and then I was hiking out behind the camp, just in the evening, wandering around. And I saw something domed and white-shaped on the ground that caught my eye. And I flipped it over and it was a human skull.
16:15 John Hopkins? Whatever fate befell this poor individual, there's certainly no shortage of ways to die out here.
16:24 John Hopkins? Hunters have to be particularly careful that their activities don't inadvertently draw the attention of the region's apex predator.
16:35 Speaker 03 Most of the mountains in Wyoming, there's a lot of grizzly bears. And the bears have learned that gunshot means a gut pile, which is easy food. So, there's accounts of people that literally they shoot an elk and bears come, I mean, this is an exaggeration, but come like it's a dinner bell.
17:00 John Hopkins? Then there are the less foreseeable dangers, like the one beneath your own saddle.
17:06 John Hopkins? When you're as comfortable around horses as Leaf is, it can be easy to forget that these are still animals, unpredictable and incredibly powerful.
17:17 John Hopkins? A single kick from a horse's hind legs can generate over 10,000 Newtons of force, comparable to the impact of a high-speed car crash.
17:31 John Hopkins? Certain animals are better suited to certain terrains, horses for courses, you could say. Dylan and Fonzie, for instance, are somewhat untested in this environment. They're strong and great around livestock, but like all creatures, they have their own quirks, their strengths and their weaknesses.
17:53 Speaker 03 I knew my horses really well, like I knew exactly their triggers. They were too touchy for the mountains, and the mountains, you want something what we call bomb-proof, where nothing rattles the horse. They're unflappable, super steady, very mellow, very docile. But when you're a cowboy, and sometimes you want something that's got a little more get-up-and-go, a little snappier, because you might have to make real quick moves.
18:20 John Hopkins? It's a case of weighing up various options and working with what's available. Dylan is quick and reactive, potentially useful if things take a dangerous turn. But he also has some natural skittishness, which, over countless hours, Leaf has tried to rid him of.
18:41 Speaker 03 Dylan, at any rate, he was like a decent cowhorse, but he had an edge to him that I never did like. And I worked and worked and worked with him to try to soften that edge, but he just had an edge that I could not soften. I mean, all day, every day, I like was with my horses, so I had a very good rapport with them. But he wasn't, he wouldn't be a first choice for a mountain horse, but it's what I had, so it's who I used.
19:15 John Hopkins? It's the evening of Leaf's second day in the mountains.
19:20 John Hopkins? He's set up camp in a wildflower meadow beneath a cirque of snow-dusted summits. While his horses graze by a tumbling creek, Leaf stokes the crackling fire.
19:33 John Hopkins? Then he picks up his binoculars and steps into the smoky, purple dusk.
19:39 John Hopkins? So far, this has been a frustrating hunt: not a single elk spotted. And so it's more in hope than expectation that he begins scanning the lofty ridgeline, searching the shadowy outcrops for telltale flashes of movement.
19:57 John Hopkins? Which is when he sees them.
20:01 John Hopkins? A herd of about thirty elk huddles together on the exposed ridge.
20:08 John Hopkins? Leaf lowers his binoculars.
20:11 John Hopkins? Like bats and fireflies, elks are crepuscular, meaning they're most active in the low light hours of the early morning and late evening, when they like to graze in the high alpine meadows. During the day, they descend from the ridge to bed down among the trees.
20:29 Speaker 03 My hope was that I would intercept them. I saw where they were the night before, and I'd get up there in the dark, and then I would intercept them as they were coming back down to the timber. Hopefully, I'd run into them between the open and the timber there.
20:53 John Hopkins? The following morning, Leaf gets up before sunrise.
20:58 John Hopkins? With his rifle slung over one shoulder, he stalks off uphill on foot, seeking out a hidden spot among a scattering of large boulders, the perfect position to lie in wait.
21:10 John Hopkins? But just then, as he approaches the vantage point, he hears a sudden commotion from somewhere down below. A cacophony of snapping branches and stampeding hooves. He spins around. In the dawn's light, it looks as if the trees themselves are moving. Then, his eyes adjust and he realizes it's the herd that is thundering through the timber, a river of brown fir and pale antlers flowing parallel across the slope.
21:42 Speaker 03 I ended up getting a boulder between me and the elk to hide me because I was kind of exposed. And I got down to this boulder, popped up over the boulder, and there's a bull standing a little bit below me.
21:56 John Hopkins? He presses his eye against the rifle sight. The elk stands a few hundred feet below, idling blithely in a woodland clearing. Leaf takes aim, inhales, then pulls the trigger on the half-breadth.
22:17 John Hopkins? He watches through the crosshairs as the elk's body jerks before toppling over sideways and out of sight.
22:25 John Hopkins? With the loud report still echoing off the mountainside, Leaf gets to his feet, harnesses his gun, and begins the long plod down.
22:36 John Hopkins? When he reaches the animal, he does something that he always does after a kill. He bows his head and utters a heartfelt apology.
22:45 Speaker 03 Definitely, looking back on it now too, it was basically to make myself feel better. It had nothing to, you know, the elk, he's dead, like, there's no apologizing to him. It's definitely to make myself feel better about it.
23:01 John Hopkins? Leaf takes his knife and opens up the stomach cavity. He pulls out the entrails and places them a short distance away for the magpies and crows to peck at, to keep them and any other scavengers away from the precious carrion.
23:18 John Hopkins? This done, he covers the carcass with a shroud of protective pine boughs, then sets off back to camp to fetch the horses.
23:28 John Hopkins? These are the most critical moments of the hunt, when everything could yet be lost.
23:33 Speaker 03 People like to say it's kind of another silly saying, but meat ain't meat till it's in the pan, meaning there's a lot that can go wrong from the time you kill something until it's home and it's safe and sound.
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25:51 John Hopkins? It's about 8 a.m. Leaf is riding down the wooded slope back towards the elk carcass. Fonzie, tethered to Dylan via a lead rope, trots a few yards behind.
26:07 John Hopkins? Dense brush blankets the forest floor. Knee-deep piles of dead fallen wood and rotting stumps. Leaf has to plot the easiest route for his horses. No mean feat.
26:21 John Hopkins? Arriving at an impassable tract of undergrowth, he flicks Dylan's reins, commanding him to halt. He scans the vegetation, searching for a way through.
26:34 John Hopkins? Warm sunshine streams between branches, dappling the forest floor.
26:39 Speaker 03 It was like 50 degrees, sunny, really nice weather, and there's still just a couple of flies out. It's kind of late into the year, but there's one or two oddball flies.
26:50 John Hopkins? A couple of bluebottles buzz around the horses, but Leaf doesn't pay them attention.
26:57 John Hopkins? The same can't be said for Dylan, however.
27:01 John Hopkins? Just as Leaf is leaning out of his saddle to navigate through the brush, the horse swishes his tail. A quick, dismissive swat aimed at the irksome insect. The fly buzzes off, but when Dylan brings his tail back down, the lead rope gets caught underneath it.
27:23 Speaker 03 There's such a thing that is called a ring tail. And a ring tail is when your saddle horse swishes his tail over the lead rope. In this case, it would be the lead rope of my packhorse. And when a horse gets something up underneath his tail way at the base, they generally do not like that sensation.
27:45 John Hopkins? In an instant, Dylan's hackles are up. He tosses back his head and flares his nostrils, amber eyes flashing with displeasure. He issues a loud snort of indignation, and then...
28:00 Speaker 03 He fired with both hind legs extremely hard up over his head. His head went down between his front legs. His hind feet went straight up in the air and he kicked to get that lead rope out of his tail. And, just like that, I came off.
28:17 John Hopkins? Leaf is catapulted into the air. Dylan stands about five feet tall at the saddle, which means Leaf has about twice that to fall.
28:29 John Hopkins? And fall he does, hard on his back, directly onto the jutting stump of a fallen pine tree.
28:39 Speaker 03 When I landed, I would have been fine, other than I landed on a little lodgepole pine about six inches in diameter that was barely suspended off the ground. And I landed right on that lodgepole pine, right on my kidney. I instantly knew something was wrong. And I mean, I've come off horses multiple times. And usually, you're like, "Oh, man, oh, gosh, okay, just give me a second, I'll be all right." And this one was like, "Oh, my God, I'm not all right." It was a weird, very internal pain. Other times, you get hurt and it feels more like on the surface in a way. And this was like, inside.
29:22 Speaker 03 Where I was like, "Oh, jeez, this is like inside of me somewhere. I don't know what this is. I've never felt like this."
29:29 John Hopkins? Slowly, Leaf moves onto his knees and touches his lower back.
29:36 John Hopkins? The fall didn't break the skin. It doesn't seem to have broken a bone. But the eye-watering pain radiating from his abdomen tells him he's done some serious damage.
29:49 John Hopkins? Dylan, meanwhile, seems totally back to normal. His demons exorcised. Leaf tries to stand, but he is immediately overcome by an intense, skin-prickling nausea.
30:01 Speaker 03 For a second, like, okay, maybe I'll be okay. And then I was like, I don't think I'm okay. I was feeling this really weird feeling of like, not sure if I wanted to vomit or diarrhea. And I was like, God, I don't know what. And then I was like, I think I just need to like, take a leak. Maybe I need to take a leak because like, my nerves are up. And when I did, it was just solid blood, like pure, fresh, bright red blood. I was like, this is not good.
30:32 John Hopkins? The ruby-red liquid pools around his feet.
30:36 John Hopkins? Where's all this blood coming from? What invisible injury has he sustained?
30:42 John Hopkins? Leaf drags his eyes away and scans the dark wood, his pulse from him.
30:50 John Hopkins? The romance of his isolation is gone, replaced by a sinister, leering menace. A chill wind rattles through the ragged forest.
31:01 John Hopkins? Now, seeing another hunter would be very welcome, but he's clearly alone.
31:08 John Hopkins? And so Leaf reaches into his pack and pulls out his cellphone. One thing is abundantly clear: he needs urgent medical attention.
31:18 John Hopkins? But when he flips open his phone, he discovers that he doesn't have any service. Not one bar.
31:27 John Hopkins? He casts an eye up to the ridge above his campsite. Maybe he'll have better luck finding a signal in a more elevated spot. Though of course, that will mean hiking up there, which would take time. Time he might not have. Maybe he should focus on getting himself down the mountain, not climbing further up it.
31:50 Speaker 03 I just got to get out of the mountains. That's my number one goal is get down. The lower I get, the better off I am. But I was like, do I take the time to go up there and try to make a call? Or do I just go for it?
32:06 John Hopkins? Even if he were to hike to the ridge, there's no guarantee he'll get any bars up there. And every minute he spends deliberating is a minute wasted. In the end, Leaf decides to roll the dice.
32:20 Speaker 03 Okay, I think it's worth the risk to try to make a call. Because I was like, if I can make a call, that's going to make a big difference in what happens next.
32:33 John Hopkins? Leaf tethers Dylan and Fonzie to a tree. Trekking up to the ridge on horseback doesn't seem like an option. Putting any pressure on his lower abdomen is pure agony. And the jostling motion of the saddle as he navigates the incline would be hellish. He sets off up the hillside on foot and onto the vertiginous scree of the ridge. His pace is achingly slow, each step a trial by fire. All the while, doubt gnaws at him.
33:08 Speaker 03 Heartway up, I'm like, oh my God, I'm spending a lot of energy and a lot of time trying this, trying to see if there's service. Like, I was like, I'm not sure if this is worth it. Because I knew time and energy were limited.
33:24 John Hopkins? Nevertheless, he persists, soldiering on up the steep shingle. Finally, Leaf reaches the ridge summit.
33:32 John Hopkins? With shaky hands, he opens his phone and squints at the screen through the sun's dazzling reflection.
33:38 Speaker 03 There's no bars, but it's, but there's service. Like, it's that weird thing of like, it's not no service, but there's no real bars. So I tried to call Shelley. Did it ring? I don't think it even, it just acted like, it was like, it said like, "Calling, calling", but it never actually rang. I tried a couple of times. And I was like, "Okay, this isn't gonna work."
33:59 John Hopkins? No service at all would have been better than this torment. Slamming his phone shut, Leaf slides it back into his pocket. Then he turns and looks back down the ridge.
34:13 John Hopkins? The mountains are spread out below in a vast, dizzying expanse, a desert of granite. Dread steals over him. Even without his injuries, it would be tough going. In his current condition, the journey seems impossible. It's hard not to recall the skull he found earlier this summer.
34:36 Speaker 03 I am that guy. Like, this is gonna be me. The skull is gonna be my skull. I just felt bad for my family, for Shelley. If I end up dying here, that just felt terrible for them.
34:49 John Hopkins? There's only one way forward, and that's down.
34:54 John Hopkins? It's 12 miles back to the trailhead. 12 miles of intricate, winding, bridle path incorporating forest, gully, and mountain. But at least he's got Dylan and Fonzie. And through all his years of wrangling, he's never needed his horses more than now. The odds are stacked against him, but it's up to Leaf to push them as far as he can in his favor.
35:19 Speaker 03 I felt like there's definitely a chance I'm not gonna make it. This thing could go either way. But if I, if I back off the tiniest bit, it is gonna go that direction. And if I don't back off, it might go this other direction.
35:44 John Hopkins? It's three hours later. Leaf and his horses pick their way along a rocky mountain trail.
35:53 John Hopkins? He leans back painfully in his saddle, the pointed toes of his cowboy boots resting gingerly on blood-spattered stirrups. The reins hang slack, draped loosely around his fingers. The pain of riding horseback is excruciating, but he has neither the strength nor the time to proceed on foot.
36:17 John Hopkins? Pangs of nausea rise from the pit of his stomach to his throat. He spits onto the ground, blood and bile coagulating in the dust.
36:27 John Hopkins? It's hard to say how far Leaf has travelled since climbing down from the ridge, and grim reminders of his precarious condition are never far away.
36:40 Speaker 03 Constantly, I'm having to pee. My bladder is just filling up, and I'm having the urge to have to pee a lot. And I wasn't going to get up and on my horse. I knew I didn't have the energy or the time to keep getting up and off my horse. So I just literally opened my fly and just would pee. It wasn't pee, it was just solid blood. And now my jeans are all covered in blood. It's all down the side of my saddle, it's full of blood, and I just keep riding. And it's like terrifying, like you have nothing to do but like think about what if.
37:13 John Hopkins? This mysterious internal trauma is an ordeal for both body and mind, a test of physical resilience and willpower, as one hour trickles into the next.
37:26 John Hopkins? If only there was somebody else up here, a hiker or fellow hunter, somebody who could ride ahead and bring help. But at this time of year, such an encounter is extremely unlikely.
37:39 Speaker 03 There was no one up there in the mountains. The big rush, elk hunting was over, and I didn't see anybody. So the chance of running into someone was... This isn't like a busy trail where there's all sorts of people hiking on it. And so I knew the chance of seeing someone was pretty, pretty slim.
38:02 John Hopkins? Leaf's skin is pewter gray. Beneath the wide curved brim of his stetson, a few strands of hair cling to his sweaty forehead. His health is declining rapidly. And so is his optimism.
38:17 Speaker 03 As the time goes by, I'm getting weaker. I'm also extremely nauseous and I'm vomiting a lot. It is like so miserable. The trail is really rough, super rocky. And each step of the horse is just so, so jarring and painful.
38:37 John Hopkins? Onwards they go, through rivers and streams, over high mountain passes and around clear alpine lakes. Staying focused on the task at hand is easier said than done. His body and mind aren't working in tandem. Physically, he's ready to call it quits.
38:57 Speaker 03 The easier thing would have been to have, would have been to have just fallen off my horse and, and laid there and, and died. Like that would have, in some ways, physically, probably been the easier thing. My mind definitely did not want that to happen. My mind was definitely, constantly focused on the single objective of like get to the trailhead. That is your only job right now is to get down at all costs. Where I feel like my body was more like, you literally could just lay down here if you want to. You literally could just stop. I didn't feel there was any external power pulling me through. I just kept feeling like, this is on you.
39:40 Speaker 03 Like whether you live or not, this is totally up to you. All this responsibility is on, is on you. Like there's nothing outside of you that is gonna help you get down.
39:54 John Hopkins? As the sun drops lower in the sky, Leaf's vision begins to blur at the edges. Shadows creep into his peripheries, like the darkening vignette of an old photograph.
40:07 John Hopkins? He sways in the saddle, nearly slipping off as Dylan descends a rocky ledge.
40:12 Speaker 03 Oh my God, I don't know if I'm gonna stay conscious. I think I might just like blackout. I don't know that I can stay conscious any longer.
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41:34 John Hopkins? It's late afternoon. Leaf has been riding all day. Covered in blood and sick, he sways from side to side as Dylan trots lightly down the trail. They can't be far off now.
41:51 John Hopkins? The scenery changes as they reach lower elevation. With evergreens giving way to deciduous forest, ablaze with autumn colors. A mild breeze rolls through the valley, shaking the golden branches.
42:07 John Hopkins? But Leaf can barely keep his eyes open.
42:11 John Hopkins? His body is shutting down. And he no longer has the strength to fight it.
42:19 John Hopkins? But then, as he rounds a bend in the trail, something appears in the distance.
42:28 John Hopkins? Gradually, the image materializes, sharpening into focus through a cloud of dust rising from the ground.
42:37 Speaker 03 I've come around a corner in the trail, and here comes a guy horseback coming up the trail. This one lone guy on a horse. At this point, I was fading in and out.
42:49 John Hopkins? The rider approaches, rapidly closing the gap between them. Leaf tries to form words, but all that escapes from his dry, cracked lips is a barely audible croak. The man could simply ride past, unaware. Just a nod of the hat and a passing "howdy." Then what?
43:13 John Hopkins? Luckily, an unwritten rule of the mountains intervenes at the last moment.
43:19 Speaker 03 The etiquette in the mountains is if you meet someone horseback, whoever has the most horses keeps the trail, and whoever has least horses yields the trail. I had two horses, he had one. So he kind of reined his horse off the trail to let me go by. And then I approached him head-on, and we were getting close to talking distance. Our horses are about parallel. He's like, "How you doing?" And I'm like, "I'm not good. I need help."
43:51 John Hopkins? The man's curiosity turns to concern. But Leaf doesn't have time to answer his questions.
43:59 Speaker 03 I didn't even stop. I just handed him off my leader rope as I went by him. And he's like, "Just follow me. Just follow me down." And not that he could keep me from falling out of my saddle, but I was like, "Just stay behind me." And we're going down the trailhead.
44:14 John Hopkins? With the good Samaritan following behind with Fonzie, they set off down the trail with a newfound surge of energy.
44:23 John Hopkins? Leaf winces as the pace quickens, the increased movement sending pain thundering through his lower body.
44:31 John Hopkins? Finally, after another three miles of riding, they reach the wooden signpost of the trailhead.
44:39 John Hopkins? Suddenly, there are cars and people and hope.
44:47 John Hopkins? Leaf brings Dylan to a halt. He heaves himself down from the saddle and staggers into the parking lot. He needs to find a ride, and right now he doesn't care who provides it. He stops the first moving vehicle he sees, slamming his bloody hands down on the bonnet and fixing the driver with a pleading, urgent stare.
45:08 Speaker 03 I stopped this vehicle, I'm full of blood and vomit, and I start to open the door, like, I'm getting in this thing, like, there's, there's no way they're leaving without me. And they're like, oh my god, and I was like, just give me to the emergency room, and they're like, we're, we're from out of town, where's the hospital?
45:27 John Hopkins? Through the pain, Leaf stammers out some directions.
45:32 John Hopkins? Minutes later, the kindly tourists, whose weekend trip to the mountains has taken an unexpected turn, screech to a stop outside a local hospital. Leaf thanks them effusively, before stumbling into the emergency room where he is swiftly taken to the operating theatre.
45:51 Speaker 03 That's when it just, the relief was like, oh my god, I think I'm gonna live at this point, they, I got in there and they, you know, cut all your clothes off and hooked me up to drugs instantly, and then I ended up needing, I think it was three liters of blood.
46:15 John Hopkins? Once he's stable and sitting up in bed, a doctor tells Leaf precisely what happened to him.
46:22 John Hopkins? The impact with the pine stump caused severe trauma to his kidney. It's what explains the nausea, the vomiting, and the urinating blood. Still, it could have been far worse.
46:35 Speaker 03 It turns out I got super lucky because apparently there's kind of a little casing, someone later told me that there's a casing around your kidney, and in my instance, that casing held and didn't break, but if that casing would have split, I would have definitely bled to death, just bled out.
47:00 John Hopkins? Shelley soon arrives at the hospital and is reunited with Leaf. He's also visited by a couple of friends, who even offered to ride up into the mountains to see if they can recover the elk that he shot.
47:14 John Hopkins? It's unlikely that the carcass will still be there. The magpies will have seen to that. But after all the pain and trouble Leaf went to, it seems a shame not to try.
47:25 Speaker 03 So, relaying to my hospital bed, this is crazy too. Like, I drew a map, a hand-drawn map, and gave it to two friends. They rode up into the mountains, and they made a 24-mile round trip, recovered the elk by my hand-drawn map, packed up my camp, got my food out of the tree, and brought it all back down while I was still in the hospital. So we ended up with the elk after all. And I mean, I did not want that thing to go to waste. Like, oh my god, I did not want that elk to go to waste.
48:03 John Hopkins? In the years after his accident, Leaf introduces a few changes to his forays into the wilderness so that Shelley can keep tabs on his location.
48:15 Speaker 03 I have a GPS tracker that I carry with me now. Anytime I go, really anywhere in the mountains or the desert, I always pack my spot tracker. So she knows, she can now see my new location each night. So that's really been, I think, a peace of mind.
48:35 John Hopkins? Getting himself down the mountain was a display of sheer grit and composure.
48:41 John Hopkins? Plus, his horses, animals he'd long cared for, actually supported him when it most mattered.
48:49 John Hopkins? Though, when he reflects on what happened up there in the Wind Rivers, Leaf doesn't attribute his survival to anything other than sheer luck. More than anything, he says, he sees himself quite simply as a fortunate man.
49:03 Speaker 03 I'm not different than anyone. I just acknowledge that I probably just got extremely lucky that I was able to stay lucid and get down. Like, I don't think I had some special quality that someone else might not have had. I just think I got extremely fortunate in the way things played out.
49:34 John Hopkins? Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Chris Howe, MBE. In May 1982, Chris is stationed aboard HMS Coventry, a Royal Navy destroyer engaged in the Falklands conflict. As a communications specialist, his work takes place behind the scenes, down in the ship's operations room, surrounded by radars and computer screens. But when enemy jets target the Coventry, he will suddenly be thrust into the firing line.
50:02 Speaker 05 Next thing, there's this sudden impact and a dull thud, followed by a flash, a searing flash and heat.
50:10 John Hopkins? In a split second, Chris's life will be thrown into the balance as he is engulfed by flames. It'll take extraordinary bravery and sheer luck to make it off alive.
50:25 John Hopkins? That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.
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51:03 Speaker 00 The Lemonati has spent decades keeping lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Their lemon agenda has infiltrated everything, even our music. That hit song named after the color of lemons? Not a coincidence. Big Lemon has been pulling strings in the industry for years. Think about it. But now, 7-Up is fighting back with their new Lime Lemon Soda. Now lime comes first. 7-Up, flip the sip.
Previous Introducing: Titanic: Ship of Dreams - Episode 1 Next Mayday in the Falklands: Surrounded by Fire Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated