Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Man vs Beast: Half-Eaten Alive About this episode In July 2019, Colin Dowler is exploring the rugged natural beauty around the southwest coast of Canada. After a night camping in the forest, he’s cycling home… when an unexpected obstacle appears in the road up ahead. A tense, terrifying, drawn-out encounter ensues. In the blink of an eye, Colin will find himself on the wrong side of an unfair fight against one of the animal kingdom’s most powerful creatures…
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.
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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 July 2019 in southwest Canada, near the coast of British Columbia.
1:09 John Hopkins? An unpaved road cuts a narrow path through the pines. Tall grass grows along the verge and sprouts through cracks in the thinning gravel.
1:20 John Hopkins? At first glance, you'd assume that nobody had come down this way in years. A forgotten logging road, slowly being reclaimed by the forest.
1:29 John Hopkins? But, on closer inspection, it seems somebody has been here. Recently. A walker, by the looks of it. A discarded backpack rests among the weeds and wildflowers. Over there, a hiking pole, slightly bent and badly scratched, lies in the dirt.
1:49 John Hopkins? There, a scrap of torn clothing. And on the overgrown verge, some 50 feet further up the road, a pool of blood turns dark in the afternoon sun.
2:01 John Hopkins? Clearly, something dreadful has happened here.
2:05 John Hopkins? A short distance away, another drop of blood stains the ground.
2:10 John Hopkins? Then another. And another. It forms a trail. Crimson flecks dripped along the road, leading in the direction of the shore.
2:21 John Hopkins? Down, to where 44-year-old Colin Gowler is pedaling for his life.
2:30 Speaker 03 Each little rise they came over, each corner I went around, I'm thinking, man, I've been pedaling for so long. That's got to be where I get to the hill, where I can coast out of here, because I'm not sure how much longer I can do this.
2:44 John Hopkins? Colin's bicycle weaves down the road, his legs struggling to maintain enough momentum to keep him upright. Blood trickles from his thighs and midriff. His face is ashen gray.
2:59 John Hopkins? This road leads to the coast, where help, hopefully, awaits. It has to. Without it, Colin won't survive the hour.
3:09 John Hopkins? As he pedals, he glances over his shoulder, heart thumping. Has the creature followed him?
3:17 John Hopkins? Nothing.
3:19 John Hopkins? He looks forward again, fingers squeezing the handlebars, his teeth gritted, his jaw clenched.
3:26 John Hopkins? But he isn't making enough progress. He's moving too slowly.
3:31 Speaker 03 I look up and I see the five-kilometer sign. This man had only made it halfway to the hill that I needed to get to to coast down. And my spirit sank at that point. I'm going to admit, I'm probably only halfway. If there's no way I'm going to make it.
3:56 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.
4:17 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet Colin Dowler. In July 2019, the father of two is exploring the rugged natural beauty around Mount Doogie Dowler, on the southwest coast of Canada. After a night camping in the forest, Colin is cycling back to the boat landing, heading for home, when an unexpected obstacle appears in the road up ahead. A wild, dangerous animal that nobody wants to run into in these parts. And so, a tense, terrifying, drawn-out encounter commences.
4:51 Speaker 03 It started to seem like it was just a prod, and I blocked it with my bike, and then, you know, another little swat, and I blocked it with my bike. And getting into the fourth or maybe sixth one, they were getting more aggressive. And then he came down, he lunged at me. This was all super slow motion.
5:09 John Hopkins? In the blink of an eye, Colin will find himself on the wrong side of an unfair fight. Thrust into a deadly struggle against one of the animal kingdom's most powerful beasts.
5:19 Speaker 03 The next thing I know, I've been spun 180, and I'm on my back and my shoulders, thinking to myself, oh man, like I am in trouble here. And then I remembered that I had a knife in my pocket.
5:32 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
5:56 John Hopkins? It's Sunday, July the 28th, 2019. A motorboat navigates an intricate maze of inlets and fjords, the shattered mosaic of islands that comprises Canada's coastal southwest.
6:10 John Hopkins? Sitting with his bearded face tilted into the sun, 44-year-old Colin Dowler carefully guides his vessel through the channels. The surface of his wraparound shades reflects a ribbon of snow-capped mountains looming above the shoreline. He breathes in the fresh sea air and smiles, feeling the motion of his boat as it slaps over the gentle chop.
6:36 John Hopkins? Colin is on a route-finding mission. He and his brother have made plans to climb a mountain on the mainland. But due to how wild and unspoiled this region is, he decided it would be a good idea to scope out the area first.
6:49 Speaker 03 This time, my intention was not to climb the mountain, but to see if I could find a reasonable access to the alpine, so that when it was time to climb the mountain, we weren't wasting our time.
7:04 John Hopkins? Colin steers into a sheltered cove. He ties up to a wooden dock, hoists his mountain bike out of the boat, and wheels it along the jetty.
7:14 John Hopkins? When he reaches the top of the beach, he gets on his bike and pedals into the forest, following a gravel road through the pines.
7:22 John Hopkins? After a little while, he reaches a logging camp, a collection of metal-roofed sheds with stacks of lumber piled outside.
7:30 John Hopkins? He gets off his bike and approaches one of the loggers, an older man who turns out to be the camp cook.
7:37 John Hopkins? Colin explains that he's looking for a path up to the mountains, and asks the man if he knows of any viable routes.
7:45 John Hopkins? The cook sizes him up.
7:49 John Hopkins? "It's pretty rough country up there, but if he's determined to go ahead with it, then he'll help him out."
7:55 John Hopkins? The cook hands him some pepper spray, always useful in these parts, and then offers to give him a lift at least some of the way.
8:03 John Hopkins? Colin thanks the old man and loads his bike into the back of his truck.
8:08 Speaker 03 "He drove me about nine kilometers until he couldn't push the truck any further because there was too many trees and too much underbrush in the way. So it was tighter bush than I'd expected. So he got me off, I thanked him. He took a picture of me and laughed. This one's for the milk cartons in case you don't return."
8:32 John Hopkins? Colin grins for the camera, before the old man wishes him well and drives off.
8:39 John Hopkins? The cook's parting joke would likely freak most people out, but Colin laughs it off. After all, he grew up in these parts. This landscape is woven into his DNA.
8:52 John Hopkins? Colin spent his early years on nearby Quadra Island, a sparsely inhabited outcrop, sandwiched between Vancouver Island to the west and the mainland to the east.
9:02 Speaker 03 "I grew up on an island. There was a little more than a thousand full-time residents. We didn't have cable television. Of course, there was no computers. I mean, there was the odd one, I guess, in the late 80s. Certainly no internet. He's my closest friend, as in physically closest friend, was about a kilometer away."
9:23 John Hopkins? Back then, you made your own fun. For young Colin, that meant exploring the local beaches and creeks, dragging his mountain bike all over the little corner of the island.
9:34 John Hopkins? With its long punishing winters and reliance on traditional industries like fishing and logging, this part of British Columbia breeds a tough, resilient sort. Scrappy and hard-wearing, Colin is not likely to back down from a fight, even when the odds aren't in his favour.
9:52 John Hopkins? He attributes this in part to his relatively diminutive stature.
9:57 Speaker 03 I sincerely think that it comes from me being so small and always trying to keep up with the big boys. I mean, I had no place being on the grade 12 rugby team, but I was, so I was 108 pounds, five foot seven, you know, playing rugby. I don't know, I just tried to keep up. It wasn't till I was doing a first-year psych course at UBC that I realised that I had small man's complex, or as I like to refer, littleitis.
10:29 John Hopkins? Defying expectations would become a habit. After finishing high school, Colin went off to university in Vancouver with dreams of one day becoming a physical therapist. But it turned out that academic life wasn't for him.
10:43 Speaker 03 At university, there was a bunch of young people and nobody really seemed to know what they were going to do or where they were going. It seemed like I was working my way towards a desk job, which was about the last thing in life that I wanted.
10:56 John Hopkins? So Colin dropped out of university.
10:59 John Hopkins? But he didn't go home to the island straight away. With some money saved and an uncertain future to ponder, he boarded a train south for Mexico.
11:10 Speaker 03 I actually went travelling, I did a solo backpacking trip. This would be about 1995, and I got on a train down to Guadalajara, Mexico, and then I backpacked and took buses and cabs into Guatemala and Honduras, then flew back to New Orleans and took a bus home. So that's kind of like my soul-searching trip. And on that trip, I decided that I'd become a librarian. That's what I did.
11:38 John Hopkins? Colin eventually settled in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, a town of about forty thousand just over the water from where he grew up. He got married, had kids, and built a good life for himself and his family.
11:51 John Hopkins? Being an electrician kept him on his feet, while still affording him plenty of time to fish, hike, and climb at weekends.
11:58 John Hopkins? But things change. Colin ended up getting a job as maintenance and operations manager for a healthcare authority, a far more desk-bound role. And now, he's feeling the effects.
12:11 Speaker 03 I'd been getting out of shape because now I've been working a desk job for about four years, like I never wanted to do, and I was in my twenties. And I found that I was just in the worst shape of my life, and I was no longer able to go from couch to adventure on the weekends.
12:27 John Hopkins? So, when he got a call one afternoon from his brother, suggesting the two of them go off and summit a local peak, Colin didn't hesitate. Mount Doogie Dowler is located on the mainland, but at nearly seven thousand feet, it's visible from all the islands in the surrounding area.
12:44 John Hopkins? It's distinctively shaped, with a wide, flat summit and steep sides that abruptly flatten out at the base. From a distance, it's easy to see why some people call it "the cowboy's hat." It really does resemble one.
12:58 John Hopkins? But for Colin Dowler, the mountain's official name has special resonance. It's named after his grandfather, Doogie, who used to run a convenience store on Quadra Island with a view over the mountain.
13:12 Speaker 03 When he died in eighty-three, some of the community members thought it would be fitting to name a mountain that was in view of the grocery store after him. And so they went through the process. It was an unnamed mountain. They applied to have it named after him, and so it became.
13:28 John Hopkins? This will not be a straightforward trip. And Colin's wife, Jen, has some serious reservations. But she's always been supportive of her husband's need to quench his thirst for adventure. With its sheer rock walls, climbing Mount Doogie Dowler is difficult enough. But even reaching the base is a challenge. After landing by boat, climbers must push through miles of tangled forest. It's a punishing approach. Which is why Colin came out this weekend, to scout a way through.
14:00 John Hopkins? When he returns with his brother in a few days' time, they'll already have a route mapped out.
14:10 John Hopkins? After the cook drops him off, Colin cycles as far as he can before parking his bike and continuing on foot. He bushwhacks his way through the forest, hacking at the undergrowth with his hiking poles. Eventually, he finds a shallow creek, which he follows upstream.
14:28 John Hopkins? He's getting closer to the base of the mountain, probably just a few kilometers off, when he decides to stop for the night. The sun is going down, and there are things in this forest you don't want to encounter after dark. Colin pitches up in a sheltered clearing. He unrolls his bivvy bag and sparks up his camping stove. As the light dwindles, he reaches for the pepper spray the cook gave him earlier.
14:56 John Hopkins? But it's not there.
14:59 John Hopkins? He roots around in his pack, emptying all the pockets. No luck. The canister must have fallen out at some point along the way. Colin sighs and shakes his head.
15:12 John Hopkins? His eyes shift across to the forest.
15:16 John Hopkins? The shadows between the trees morph into dark shapes, leering and snarling. He looks away. Better get some sleep.
15:31 John Hopkins? The next day, Colin wakes to the sound of birdsong. It's another beautiful morning. His clearing is flooded with bright, warm sunshine.
15:42 John Hopkins? Satisfied he now has a good route to the mountain mapped out, he packs up his things and starts making his way back through the forest, heading to where he left his bike yesterday.
15:52 Speaker 03 I descended back down through the bush. I stopped and looked for my pepper spray where I thought it was most likely to have fallen out of my pocket. Maybe half an hour looking for it. Ultimately decided it was a needle in a haystack, so carried on down the trail.
16:10 John Hopkins? As he walks, Colin deliberately makes a racket. He thwacks tree trunks with his hiking poles and belts out a stream of nonsense.
16:20 John Hopkins? Good practice in these parts.
16:22 Speaker 03 You know, the odd scream and just letting animals know that I'm in the area because when you can't see 20 feet in front of you, you kind of want to warn things that you're coming.
16:33 John Hopkins? Colin pushes his bike through the bush back towards the logging road, near to where the cook dropped him off yesterday.
16:40 Speaker 03 At that point, I kind of felt relieved that, all right, awesome. I've got my bike, you know, maybe a half hour from the boat. It only puts me a few hours from home. This is great. It's my birthday tomorrow, so I'm going to see what I can talk my wife and kids into doing for my birthday, maybe get home, have a couple of beers, and then kidnap the family for a day of fishing.
17:02 John Hopkins? He might be turning 45, but there is a childlike spring in his step as he wheels his bike onto the logging road and hops into the saddle.
17:11 Speaker 03 Cruising down the road at a decent speed, I was on a flat stretch, and I looked up to my right, and I saw the seven-kilometer sign, which means that you're seven kilometers from the end of the road, which ends where my boat is. I looked up the sign, then I looked back down, and 75 or 100 feet in front of me, there was a gulesley bear standing on the road.
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18:42 John Hopkins? It's July 29, 2019, near the coast of British Columbia. Colin Dowler breaks hard, bringing his mountain bike skidding to a halt.
18:54 John Hopkins? There, standing on all fours on the forest-lined path in front of him is a hulking grizzly bear. It must be at least 400 pounds, or roughly 180 kilos. An adolescent male, not fully grown but already big and powerful, with a wide, furry face and a pair of narrow-set eyes fixed firmly on Colin.
19:19 Speaker 03 The bear didn't just run off, which is my experience with black bears. So as the bear's standing there looking at me, I thought, "Oh man, it's not taking off." I could turn and try riding away, might have been taught that's not a good idea, because if you're basically run from a bear, they're gonna close in on you.
19:40 John Hopkins? Best to just stay calm. But as Colin stands there, rooted to the spot, willing the bear to slink off into the trees, the animal doesn't seem at all frightened. It seems curious.
19:54 John Hopkins? Slowly, the grizzly approaches, rolling its shoulders like a prizefighter as it walks. A slow, lollapin gait.
20:04 John Hopkins? Its snout is low to the ground, twitching, inhaling human pheromones.
20:11 John Hopkins? When it comes within 30 feet of him, Colin tries a different approach. He steps off his bike and carefully slides a hiking pole out of his backpack.
20:21 John Hopkins? He bangs it against the handlebars, hoping to scare the animal off.
20:28 Speaker 03 And at that point, he skittered on all four paws and I could hear his claws scratching the dirt and he skittered nervously. And then he paused for a second or two and then slowly started approaching again. At this point, I'm going to suggest that I had lost all confidence and bravado that I thought I had in nature and with wild animals.
20:53 John Hopkins? Now, the bear is close enough for Colin to make out the details. The small amber eyes, the long curled claws scraping against the surface of the road,
21:05 John Hopkins? the string of saliva dangling from its vast lower jaw.
21:10 Speaker 03 I remember thinking, man, I wish I was filming this because nobody's going to believe I was this close to a grizzly. And I honestly thought he was just going to walk right by.
21:19 John Hopkins? The grizzly is now within touching distance. You can smell it. A skunky, putrid odor, like a wet dog, but far more intense. Colin holds his breath as the bear slopes past him.
21:36 Speaker 03 And it lowered his head and if I recall correctly, he sort of flattened his ears too. It reminded me of a shy dog. Like it didn't seem aggressive. It seemed, you know, timid. And he walked, it was almost all the way past me. And then when he was almost past my bike, he did a 180 degree turn.
21:59 John Hopkins? Colin hurriedly repositions his bike between himself and the animal. He can see the heat rising from its shaggy coat, the steam huffing from its open mouth, the wet shine on its pink gums, a flash of yellow teeth. He can fully take in its size, too. The bear seems to take up the entire road. Its thick brown fur gives it a rounded appearance, barrel shaped. Every sinew is primed and tensed, coiled, ready to spring.
22:35 John Hopkins? The grizzly eyes Colin with a primal hostility. It's as if the animal has mistaken the human for a rival.
22:43 John Hopkins? Or maybe it's just hungry. Either way, Colin needs to do something to alter the course of this escalating situation. His heart galloping, he extends his hiking pole and presses the tip firmly against the flat of the bear's head, just above the eyes.
23:02 Speaker 03 Pushed a little bit, right? Didn't want to do anything aggressive because it just wanted to leave me alone and it wanted to be angry. He rolled his head and bit the pole, and we tied a word for maybe a second, and he let go of the pole and started to focus on me again.
23:16 John Hopkins? With trembling hands, Colin unclips his backpack and tosses it onto the ground.
23:23 John Hopkins? Maybe the food in there will distract the bear.
23:27 John Hopkins? But it doesn't.
23:29 John Hopkins? The grizzly only has eyes for Colin.
23:32 Speaker 03 Started broadening at me with his right claw, I guess, and it started to seem like it was just a prod, and I blocked it with my bike, and then, you know, another little swat, and I blocked it with my bike. And getting into the fourth or maybe sixth one, they were getting more aggressive.
23:50 John Hopkins? Colin flinches as another powerful right hook narrowly misses his head. A single, clean impact from one of those bollard-sized forelimbs could crush his skull. He shields himself with his bike, the lightweight metallic frame a pathetic defense against this apex predator.
24:11 John Hopkins? But it's all he's got.
24:13 John Hopkins? He ducks again as the grizzly takes another swat.
24:17 John Hopkins? Now, Colin watches in horror as the bear raises its hackles, the fur on the back of its wide neck standing on end, bristling and shimmering. It's his final warning. There is only one direction this is headed. If he doesn't do something now to repel the grizzly, then he is done for.
24:39 Speaker 03 I took my bike and I threw it out out of desperation, and I remember seeing his arms through the A-frame of my bike, and then he came down, he lunged at me, this was all super slow motion.
24:54 John Hopkins? It happens in a fraction of a second. And yet, everything seems to slow down.
25:00 John Hopkins? Through the frame of his bike, Colin sees the bear propel itself forward, its head twisted slightly to one side, its jaw open, fangs bared.
25:10 John Hopkins? The bike disappears, flung aside like a twig. In the next instant, he is hit by an explosive, bone-shuddering force. And suddenly, he's on his back.
25:23 John Hopkins? His senses are overwhelmed by the violence of it. The grizzly's hard, muscular head rammed into his midriff, the overpowering stench of its hot breath, the soft, warm fur spilling around him.
25:38 John Hopkins? There is a sharp, popping sensation as the bear's teeth puncture his stomach. Then he feels himself being lifted off the ground.
25:49 Speaker 03 So I'm hanging upside down, this bear's jaws, thinking to myself, "Oh, man, I am in trouble here." And my main thoughts were that if he drags me off in the bush, I would go for sure.
26:03 John Hopkins? The bear carries Colin forty feet down the road before dropping him. He lands, face down on the verge. As the animal goes in for another bite, in the chaos, Colin tries to gather his senses. Grizzlies often kill their prey by forcing them into submission, crushing them with the weight of their massive bodies, then biting and mauling until the fight is over before it's begun. Colin's assailant, however, appears to be taking its time, toying with its prey before finishing it off.
26:35 John Hopkins? But he isn't going to go down easily.
26:39 Speaker 03 I thought to myself, "I have to start fighting back here. What am I going to do?" Thought I'd go for a double-eye gouge move, like in the movies. And I tried to double-eye gouge him, but his head was too wide for me to reach as far high. So I thought, "Well, I'll just go for one eye, I guess." And in my mind, I was going to grip his ear and fur and stab in the eye and hold my thumb in there so hard that there was like no way I could be defeated or he could handle that pain.
27:07 John Hopkins? Colin moves fast. Still on his front, he twists his torso as far as he can and throws out his right hand, grabbing the bear's ear and jamming his thumb hard into its eye socket. The bear thunders out a roar, blood and saliva flying from its jaws.
27:30 Speaker 03 The next moment's blur, the next thing I know, I've been spun 180 and I'm on my back and my shoulders trying to bicycle kick this bear off me while he is corralling my legs with his paws.
27:46 John Hopkins? Now, the grizzly rears up and throws its full weight down on top of its victim.
27:53 John Hopkins? In the thrashing madness, Colin suddenly finds himself bizarrely trapped, his head squeezed between the bear's hindquarters.
28:02 Speaker 03 I'm pinned under his elbow, so picture his left elbow in my gut with his haunches wrapped up around near my head and he's biting into my upper thigh near my groin.
28:21 John Hopkins? His face pressed into the warm fur of the bear's underbelly, Colin kicks, flails, and thrashes, but the grizzly is undeterred.
28:31 Speaker 03 He bit in, bite, and then let go fully and lift his head up, and then bite in again, let go fully and left his head up. With each of these bites, he's doing a small shake to penetrate his teeth fully, I assume. And he did that maybe four or five times and finally settled in. And this is the first moment that I felt sincere pain.
28:56 John Hopkins? As the adrenaline wears off, the pain becomes excruciating.
29:02 John Hopkins? In frantic desperation, he reaches up and tries to prise the bear's jaws apart with his fingers.
29:10 Speaker 03 It doesn't bug him enough that he actually let go of my lap point, bit my hand, and then he moved down my leg a little ways and now he's closer to my knee and continuing to dig in. I didn't realize at the time, but at this point, he's like actually starting to eat me alive.
29:29 Speaker 03 And I remember, you know, yelling, "Why?" and "Stop!" And I was just beside myself. I couldn't think of anything else I could do. I remember feeling like really ashamed is probably the word, right? Because my wife definitely didn't want me to go on this trip. You know, I'd never seen that level of concern for her say bye to me before I went on these missions. So I just felt bad that I was abandoning Jen and my family.
30:07 Speaker 03 And then I remembered that I had a knife in my pocket.
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31:18 John Hopkins? In the coastal forest of British Columbia, a near 400-pound grizzly bear is in the final stages of a kill as the life bleeds slowly out of its prey.
31:29 John Hopkins? But Colin Dowler isn't giving up.
31:33 John Hopkins? Inside his trouser pocket is a short, two-inch hunting knife.
31:38 John Hopkins? It could be his last recourse. If only he could reach it.
31:42 Speaker 03 I didn't have the strength to pull my right arm through to get to my pocket with the weight of the bear on me. So I pulled with my right and pushed with my left and pushed my hand into my gut as far as I could to kind of get under the pressure of the bear laying on me.
32:01 John Hopkins? Colin wriggles the knife from his pocket, flicks out the blade, and pulls it across his body where he has more maneuverability with his left arm. As he yanks the knife across the other way, he can feel the blade cutting into the bear's underbelly. But it barely penetrates through the fatty layer of flesh beneath the fur.
32:21 John Hopkins? If he's going to deliver a fatal blow, he's going to have to choose his spot.
32:27 Speaker 03 And I thought, man, I need to like line this up more precision. So from maybe 10 inches away, I lined up a stab with his neck and in my mind, I'm just going to stab him and like really rapid stabs and yeah, stab him as many times as possible to try to kill the bear.
32:48 John Hopkins? Colin has seen what happens when the bear gets angry. He won't get a second chance. He'll have to make this one opportunity count.
32:56 John Hopkins? He grips the knife tightly and holds out his left arm, lining up his shot. Then with all the concentration he can muster, he slams his fist into the grizzly's neck, plunging the short blade as deep as it'll go. He pulls his hand away and brings it down again, hard, repeatedly stabbing the same spot in a frenzy of adrenaline-fueled desperation.
33:20 John Hopkins? The bear jerks its head up. Colin goes to stab again, then hesitates. It's not clear if his attack has worked or if the grizzly is just repositioning for another bite.
33:34 John Hopkins? Colin could lash out again, but there's a danger he wouldn't do any damage and simply make the bear more furious.
33:42 Speaker 03 And while I was thinking all these thoughts, giant gush of blood came spewing out of his neck. And I said aloud at that point, now you're bleeding too, bear. So clearly I was charged with adrenaline. And then he got right up off me. And he walked around me. And each time I moved, he would turn and look at me. So I was trying to keep an eye on him, but move as little as possible.
34:12 John Hopkins? Colin keeps his eyes fixed on the bear as it staggers into the road. It walks over to his bike, sniffs, then starts slowly walking back towards him. An unbroken stream of blood pouring from the wound in its neck. Colin lies still, playing dead.
34:35 Speaker 03 I'm seeing now that the blood is starting to slow down. And I'm laying there looking at him and thinking, oh, would you just die? And he wasn't falling over. And I thought, man, I think I'm dying here. So I need to forget about this bear and start worrying about myself.
34:56 John Hopkins? With the bear now off of him, Colin lifts his head and glances down at his own injuries. It's not a pretty sight. Grimacing, he takes his blood-stained knife and cuts off the sleeves of his hiking shirt. Then he fashions them into tourniquets for each thigh, trying to stem the bleeding. This done, he turns to check on the bear. But it's gone. A thin trickle of blood trails off into the trees. One part of the ordeal seems to be over. At least for now.
35:33 Speaker 03 So that was a relief. I took a moment, I laid back. And I thought, what are we going to do next? I thought, well, do I wait for a logging vehicle to be coming down the road?
35:47 John Hopkins? But what if nobody comes? What then?
35:52 John Hopkins? Colin has no cellphone service. And even if he did, would an air ambulance reach him in time? He needs urgent medical attention. And for that, he needs to get himself down to the logging camp seven kilometers back down the road.
36:08 John Hopkins? His only hope is his bike. Cycling in his condition is clearly ill-advised. Even with the tourniquet, he's losing blood. The movement of pedaling would only make him bleed out faster. But he can't stay here.
36:23 Speaker 03 I want to get away from this bear because I don't know where he is. And last I'd seen him, he was still alive. So I decided that I'd try to get on my bike and ride back to the logging camp. If I didn't make it all the way, at least I'd be away from this bear and I'd get found by one of the crew trucks.
36:43 John Hopkins? Colin drags himself across the gravel on his elbows. He picks up one of his hiking poles, tries to pull himself to his feet. But it immediately collapses under his weight.
36:56 John Hopkins? Lying in the dust, he tries again, all gritted teeth and grim-faced resolve. This time, he manages to get himself upright.
37:07 John Hopkins? He picks up his bike and throws one leg over the saddle.
37:11 Speaker 03 Went to paddle and take my first pusher off and immediately fell off the other side of my bike and face planted. And it was a pretty deathly moment, you know, man, I'm in trouble here. So I just told myself, you gotta suck it up and dig deep.
37:28 John Hopkins? Colin gets back on the bike.
37:32 John Hopkins? Fighting to ignore the rolling bombardment of pain, he pushes off and starts pedaling as hard as he can, trying to gather momentum.
37:41 John Hopkins? His left leg is so severely damaged, he can barely feel it, let alone pedal with it. Using his hands, he hauls his left foot onto the pedal and just lets it rest there, motionless, while he powers the other one with his right.
37:58 John Hopkins? And in this way, pedaling one-footed and lurching from side to side, he makes slow, agonizing progress down the road.
38:08 John Hopkins? Here, the road is flat. At some stage, the terrain should drop into a hill that he'll be able to coast down all the way to the bottom. That moment can't come soon enough. For now, he slogs on, dripping blood, sweat stinging his eyes. After what feels like an eternity, he reaches a distance mark in the road. But it's not what he wants to see.
38:35 Speaker 03 I look up and I see the five-kilometer sign, which meant I'd only made it halfway to the hill that I needed to get to to coast down. And my spirit sank at that point. I'm going, "Oh, man, I'm probably only halfway. If there's no way I'm gonna make it."
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40:02 John Hopkins? Colin sits hunched forward over the handlebars of his bike, his skin as pale as a cadaver. Dark, thick blood saturating the fabric of his ripped clothes.
40:14 John Hopkins? The gravel ground stretches out ahead of him. He needs to make it a few more kilometers to keep fighting. With his left leg no longer functioning, he relies entirely on his right. He pushes his foot onto the pedal once more and heaves off.
40:31 Speaker 03 My small man's confidence is one of the bombers, you never give up. So I just kept paddling. I told myself, Colin, you need to focus on breathing and keeping your foot on the pedal.
40:46 John Hopkins? If his foot slips off, he puts it right back on again and keeps forging forwards.
40:53 John Hopkins? Somehow, growing weaker by the second, he reaches the hill, just three kilometers from the logging camp at the end of the road, almost there.
41:03 John Hopkins? He coasts down it, willing himself to stay awake as the agony and the blood loss tug at his consciousness, blurring his field of vision.
41:14 John Hopkins? Finally, Colin rounds a corner, and there, up ahead, is the logging camp.
41:21 John Hopkins? He speeds down the rest of the way, skidding into camp and careening into the side of a wooden loading platform.
41:30 Speaker 03 I rolled in and I crashed into the deck, it's about, you know, two, maybe four steps. And I crashed into that and it just went with my plan, I yelled, "Help!"
41:41 John Hopkins? Several loggers burst out of the door of the cabin. When they see this mangled cyclist, they freeze, then issue a few shocked expletives. Colin manages to spit out a few words to explain the situation. The loggers snap out of their horrified daze. They carefully lift him inside the cabin, where they start tending to him as best they can with their basic first aid supplies.
42:09 John Hopkins? With shaky, panicked hands, somebody cuts Colin out of his clothes, revealing the full extent of the bite wounds to his abdomen.
42:18 Speaker 03 I knew they found something serious because they were trying to not let me know what they'd found. Didn't do a great job, but anyhow, I didn't ask about it. I just knew that it was bad.
42:31 John Hopkins? The loggers tie new tourniquet and apply pressure to try and stop the bleeding.
42:37 John Hopkins? After assure Colin that an air ambulance has been called, somebody hands him a cellphone and asks if there are any calls he'd like to make.
42:47 Speaker 03 I'm pretty sure they were having me call people because they didn't... Then they were like, they didn't say, "Hey, it's your last chance to say goodbye", but pretty certain that was going through their mind. So anyhow, I called my wife Jen.
43:06 John Hopkins? But there's no answer. He tries phoning his dad, but again, no answer. Finally, Colin rings his elder brother.
43:16 Speaker 03 And I got through to him and had the most awkward five or 10-minute conversation I had in my life. I don't really remember the phone call much, but I tried explaining to him that, like, if I don't make it out of here alive, I think I killed a grizzly bear with my knife, right? So just wanted him to know. Anyhow, then the guys are asking who else we could call. It was kind of outer, you know, out ideas. So I told them they could call my boss and tell him that I won't be in on Monday.
43:58 John Hopkins? The loggers are doing their best to keep Colin's spirits up, reassuring him that everything will be okay and that help is coming. But at this point, he doesn't have much fight left.
44:09 Speaker 03 I felt myself slipping away and, I don't know, it was a pretty blissful place, to be honest. There was no fear or sorrow, remorse, anything. It just felt like all my problems in life were going away.
44:25 Speaker 03 And then I heard the helicopter off in the distance.
44:30 John Hopkins? As he slips into a foggy, semi-conscious state, Colin listens to the distant, dreamlike hum of the helicopter coming in to land.
44:40 John Hopkins? Then a team of paramedics rush in. They kneel down next to him in their navy overalls and start expertly getting to work. They apply dressings to his wounds and insert needles into his collapsed veins, administering an emergency blood transfusion.
44:57 Speaker 03 And remember as they were checking over me, he told me that I was lucky that they had the blood-on-board system because without it, I probably wouldn't make it back to the hospital alive. And I thought to myself, "I'm gonna live." Because you wouldn't save something like that to someone that was gonna die.
45:27 John Hopkins? Hours later, Colin lies in a hospital bed, dosed up on painkillers, surrounded by the smiling, tearful faces of his family.
45:37 John Hopkins? Having been helicoptered over to Vancouver Island, medics quickly got to work to treat his brutal injuries.
45:45 John Hopkins? Colin suffered over 50 puncture wounds to his legs and abdomen. But the emergency surgery was a success. His wounds have been stitched up, and now he can turn his attention to recovery.
45:59 John Hopkins? It's a long, long process, but bit by bit, he will get better.
46:07 Speaker 03 It was almost exactly four months later that my final wound completely healed over with skin. And January, I was walking with poles, and I could walk probably three kilometers fairly easily. And I remember trying to run in January, and I couldn't run two steps, right? Like, my coordination wasn't there. Like, I would fall on my face if I tried.
46:36 John Hopkins? But his balance does come back. Soon he is indeed running again, then hiking and climbing.
46:43 John Hopkins? As for his emotional recovery, that takes longer.
46:47 Speaker 03 Six months later, I went, you know, from crying daily to maybe only crying several times a week. So now I'm at a stage where, you know, I only get really emotional about it when I'm talking about it. It's not as ever present today as it was two years ago, but it's constant, right? I am constantly reminded. Maybe not every step I take, but it's almost every step I take I'm reminded of being mauled by a bear, right? And, you know, it doesn't take much of a movement for the wounds to act up. There's a lot of nerve damage and stuff, so. Yeah, how do I reflect on it? I don't know. It's odd. Still sits with me.
47:31 Speaker 03 I don't even understand the depth of the trauma. Or is it a tough adjustment?
47:40 John Hopkins? In the aftermath of the attack, Colin is questioned by a conservation officer, who takes down the details of the bear that almost killed him.
47:49 John Hopkins? The animal is later tracked and put down. Standard procedure following an attack.
47:55 John Hopkins? Turns out Colin was in many ways lucky.
47:59 John Hopkins? The grizzly was indeed a near 400-pound adolescent male. Had he run into it a few years later, the beast would have been a prime alpha, a 600 or 700-pounder, and he wouldn't have stood a chance.
48:14 John Hopkins? When he looks back on his ordeal, Colin's feelings are mixed.
48:20 Speaker 03 Has it made me stronger? I don't think so. Has it given me purpose in the present moment? For sure. Because, well, for instance, I've summited 53 mountains since I was mauled. And, I mean, I only started four years ago because I had to recover for a couple of years. I know that my body's not going to last as long as I'd predicted. So it's like now's the time to climb mountains.
48:50 John Hopkins? And as for his remarkable survival, Colin says it came down to a determination and perseverance that started from a young age.
48:59 Speaker 03 When I was being mauled by the bear, it was more about breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, and about how I used to dig deep when I was competing in high school on endurance runs. And I even thought, maybe not at the moment, but after, how funny it was that in a survival moment like that, I was actually reflecting back on high school. It was just focusing on digging deep to have the stamina to persevere, to survive.
49:42 John Hopkins? Next time.
49:45 John Hopkins? So many tales of survival end with a helicopter crew swooping in to bail out those in peril. But what happens when that crew becomes the ones in need of rescue?
49:55 John Hopkins? In 1996, Sergeant Scott McCoy, as part of a search and rescue team, called out to assist a fisherman in a critical condition. But as they approached the Arctic Archipelago, their helicopter suddenly runs into trouble over the freezing waters of the Labrador Sea.
50:11 John Hopkins? As they careen towards the icy water, the men will have to face down a series of threats: crashing into the waves, drowning in the depths, freezing to death. They'll need to draw on all their training, resourcefulness, and teamwork if they're to stay alive.
50:27 John Hopkins? That's next time on Real Survival Stories.
50:31 John Hopkins? Listen today without adverts and without waiting a week by joining Noiser Plus. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started.
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