Fire & Ice - All Systems Down

Randy, the local surfing legend is in a one-man battle with the blaze at Sunset Point. Plus, the blizzard of the century traps four men on top of a Tennessee bald, frozen and hungry, but with a song in their heart. Sunset Point Randy, the local surfing legend is in a one-man battle with the blaze at Sunset Point. Thanks to Randy and Andrew for sharing your stories with us. Thanks to the whole Sunset Point surf crew. Special thanks to Sonya Geis, Phil Richards, and KCRW. And shout to Los Angeles Fire Department Station 23. The heroes who put out the fire on Gladstones and fought the flames in the Palisades. This story was produced by Jesse Dukes, John Fecile, and David Exumé. Original score by Dirk Schwarzhoff. Tennessee Whiteout The blizzard of the century traps four men on top of a Tennessee bald, frozen and hungry, but with a song in their heart. Thank you Roger Redding for sharing your story with us! Produced by Anna Sussman, edited by Nancy Lopez, original score by Dirk Schwarzhoff. Season 17 - Episode 34 Join Snap+ https://snap.supercast.com/if you aren't already a member! Get bonus eps, an ad free stream and more. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

• 0:07Speaker 00

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• 1:14Speaker 01

  Now, you may have heard the legend, the rumors of a magical place where the perfect surf break rises from the ocean. You can catch a ride for miles. Everyone wears a smile and all the children are above average. Today, for Snap's All Systems Down Fire and Ice episode, we're going to sunny Southern California with Snap's special surf correspondent Jesse Dukes to meet a man who embodies the SoCal surf spirit better than anyone. A man who stuck around when paradise became hell on earth. Snap judgment.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  I hang out with sharks in my little 10-foot plastic kayak. And so I'm used to like a little bit of a danger situation. And I've surfed some of the biggest surf LA throws at you over the last 50 years.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  If you've surfed at Sunset Point more than once or twice, you know Randy right. He's hard to miss.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Hey, how are you, buddy? I'm OK. You're doing OK? Right on, man.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  He's got this long, white beard, tattoos, one of a mermaid on his right arm. Usually, he's bare-chested. Today, he's wearing a Dodgers hat that's been scrawled all over with black Sharpie.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Are you gonna go surfing with your dad? Ah, that's a good thing to do.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Randy lives in his truck, a red Dodge Dakota that doesn't run in the parking lot of Gladstone's, which is this little seafood restaurant by the beach. You might catch him handing out wetsuits and loaner boards to newcomers or feeding his one-eyed pet seagull Andy or scanning the horizon with a telephoto lens, looking for sharks.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  I look for great white sharks to jump out of the water here. And I photograph them. And oh, there goes that kid again. Look at that wave.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Or maybe watering the gardens. He's planted succulents and flowers around his truck, by the Gladstone's restaurant, by the businesses across the street.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Everybody loves Randall because I do good around here. I'm gonna paint.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Randy used to own this legendary skate shop in downtown Santa Monica. And before that, he was a professional surfer. But about 15 years ago, he moved here to Sunset Point.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  It's a special place. And the waves aren't, for a person of my ability, the waves aren't that fabulous. This is the beginner's spot. But it's the people that make this spot special. This place is just so friendly with vibrant people, fun-loving people from all over Los Angeles and the world. People stop here and they just dig the vibe here.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  I've been coming to Sunset Point for a long time, but regularly the last two years. I don't actually want to tell you where it is, but fine. It's not really a secret. It's at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway. Past Will Rogers State Beach, where the coastline juts out a little bit, there's a mellow point break wide enough to accommodate dozens of surfers. And a good vibe. And right by Randy's truck is where you suit up, get your board out, clamber down to the water, or maybe just chill and watch.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Good ride.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Randy and I are watching a blond-haired woman catch a wave.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  She got that wave all the way from there. She was the furthest out.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a great ride.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  We're down here at the Sunset Point and sitting in some chairs. And we just watched Kelly get a really superb wave. She was the last surfer in the water as the flames came over the hill.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  On January 7, 2025, Randy started off his day sitting right here with this DSLR camera, looking for sharks.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a gorgeous, gorgeous day. The wind was just texturing the waves. The spray was flying off the back of the waves. Miss Kelly went out surfing and I could start seeing smoke. And then it was like, oh, whoa. And then people started coming down. I yelled at Kelly, Kelly, get out of the water. Kelly, get out of the water. This was around noonish or so. And finally, she listened to me. And then people were walking where we're sitting to escape the flames. And I did not know how severe it was yet. But the clouds, the plumes of smoke were getting bigger and bigger. And I was like, oh, dude, this is real, very real.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  This is not a good situation. If you are in your house, you definitely have to get out. A fire official is saying, "This windstorm is nothing like they've seen before."

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Behind Randy, just up a steep hill, the fire in Pacific Palisades had exploded from about 10 acres to 200 in just an hour.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  The fire was over the hill. And then it just kept coming down closer and closer. And it got higher than the building I'm looking at. And that building, I turned around and looked real quick. How tall is that building? That's like 40 feet, 50 feet tall, five stories tall.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Sparks started wafting towards the beach. Across the street from Randy, by the 76 gas station, plants were catching on fire.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  There's like 15 propane tanks that are in danger of exploding.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Randy spotted a fireman across the street hooking up a hose to a hydrant.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  And like, hey, help me. I got 15 propane tanks. They're gonna explode. And he's all, I can't help you. He told me, shut the pump, shut the gas pumps off and get out of here.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  The fire truck peeled off down the PCH, away from Sunset Point.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  There was nobody here, nobody. Everybody left.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  But Randy was not about to go anywhere.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  If I had left my vehicle unattended, it would have been gone. It would have burnt. My worst-case scenario was I'm gonna lose everything.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Randy's truck is full of camera equipment and hard drives with over a decade's worth of shark and surfer photos.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  As far as fear, nah, I wasn't fearful. I was just doing what needed to be done.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  The wind was just so ferocious. It would knock you sideways and stuff. It wasn't like 20 miles an hour, like 50, 75, probably gusts up to a hunsky. And it's going gnar-gnar. And I'm the only dude here. It was pretty gnarly, man. And the flames, I watched them cross Pacific Coast Highway. They jumped over the highway. I was surrounded by then by embers and sparks. It was like being in Star Wars. And here's all these flame particles. The palm trees are on fire. And I had a spark go down my back. People were coming out of the smoke, trying to escape the flames.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  And that's who put out the fire, the ember that was down my back.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  A stranger poured some water down Randy's shirt and patted him down.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  And I yelled at the guy, "Hey, can you come help me?"

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Randy was worried about those above-ground propane tanks at the 76 gas station across the street.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  If they started exploding, I would have been shrapnelled, you know, and, you know, possibly gravely wounded. It was nerve-wracking.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  He grabbed two buckets from his truck and filled them up at a spigot behind the 76. He and the stranger began a bucket brigade, putting out the little fires igniting around the 76. Then the stranger left.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  And keep in mind, there's smoke billowing everywhere, there's flames everywhere, and that's on fire, the beach is on fire, and it went all the way up towards the Getty. It burnt lifeguard station number two down, and I'm just going, "Okay." And meanwhile, I'm going, "What's going on with my truck?"

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Randy ran back across the street to check on his truck, and he saw that the back of Gladstone's was on fire.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  That is a wooden structure, and then a yellow fire engine came out of the smoke.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  He waved the fire engine down.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  And he busted out his hose, and it was under control, so I finally came over here.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  He made it to his truck, where he kept his gardening equipment.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  I have, you know, work glasses, you know, like, you know, for, to keep wood chips out of your eyes. I have three 100-foot sections of garden hose, so I have the length of a football field, and I also have a sprayer, a backpack sprayer. You know, you can water plants, you can put pesticides, or you can fight fires with it.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  For the next 12 hours, that's all Randy did.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  You just look at that palm tree, you see which way the wind was blowing?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I see it.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  And the ladder's right there.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Go stand on that, put that fire out real quick.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  He had water access at a spigot across the street, and he would fill up his backpack three gallons at a time and put out spot fires, one by one. Did you feel like you were in any danger, either from flames or smoke inhalation, or heat, or losing good breathing air?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. I, I did my best, and I'm going back and forth from the 76, the Pacific West General Store, to the Vons, putting out fires on the back.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Sometimes he put them out only to see them reignite moments later.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  It was rather gnar-nar for a while, touch and go.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  So he kept improvising.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It got so silly that I was filling up a squirt gun, you know, one of them ones that the little kids use, the pump ones?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  And I was shooting down the embers as it got towards twilight, towards dusk. When I, when I finally, you know, took a break, I would rest my eyeballs for like 15, 20 minutes, and then I'd get up and check, and make sure my truck's not aflame, you know? If my truck had caught on fire and it was all the way over here, I was gonna jump in the ocean.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  When the morning came, the fires still had not been contained, but all the buildings at Sunset Point, they were singed, but standing.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  So just thinking back to all the firefighting you did that night, putting out fires, bucket brigade, spraying things down, what do you think this area would look like if you hadn't done all that?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  We would have lost this whole neighborhood right here, because we lost that neighborhood and that neighborhood. The Malibu Village is gone, the Palisades Bowl is gone, the Tahitian Terrace is gone. You know, all these houses right here, I'm looking right behind me, all the houses, apartment complexes are gone.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  When Snap returns, Randy is in the middle of the apocalypse, and no one knows where he is. Stay tuned.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Welcome back to Snap's All Systems Down, the Fire and Ice episode. When last we left, Randy Wright had managed to fight off the flames at Sunset Point, but now he's stranded, all by himself in a burn zone. Alone, but not forgotten. Snap's L.A. surf correspondent and Sunset Point regular, Jesse Dukes.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  During the fires, I often thought about Randy. Did he make it out in time? Where was he? And I wasn't the only one. Surfers were posting on Facebook, trying to find answers. The Pacific Coast Highway was cordoned off, choked with abandoned vehicles, but on the morning of January 8th, the day after Randy's long night, a Sunset Point regular named Andrew McDonald and his son Sebastian managed to ride bikes past the police barricade so they could check on their home.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  My name is Andrew McDonald. I moved out here with my family in 2006. We were in an apartment building, basically overlooking Sunset Point. Up in the Palisades, things were, things were still on fire. It was gray, it was like nighttime up there. Car batteries were exploding, just things popping all over the place. So I got to, I got to our apartment building, there's nothing but the facade, the front facade, and not even half of the front facade is there. The rest of it is just totally smoldering, on fire, gone, collapsed.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Andrew's a bookseller in downtown L.A. His apartment was full of rare books. First edition Kerouac's, signed Gabriel Garcia Marquez's, an edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, illustrated by Henri Matisse.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  The feeling was just, it was just harsh, like, burning emptiness. It was like, "Oh, my God, what do we do? Who, where is there directions for this?"

• 15:28Speaker 03

  After a few silent minutes, Andrew and his son headed back towards the PCH, towards Sunset Point.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  I'm thinking, I mean, everything's closed, the Vons, I'm surprised that the Vons didn't burn down. And then I saw Randy out there, so, "Oh, thank God, somebody's alive," you know? It's just grim.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Randy Wright was standing by his truck in the Gladstone's parking lot. He was shirtless, wearing a black face mask, drinking a can of seltzer.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  He looked horrendous, you know? He had like this mask line on his face, and like a total, you know, survivor walking off a battlefield. It was just such a relief to see him. Just, I was amazed that he had survived. I mean, amazed that anybody had survived this, you know? It was like, "Oh, my God, Randy, how did you do this?" And I sat with him, you know, he comes out with the surf quotes, "Yeah, super gnarly," and that kind of thing. "Yes, beyond gnarly, man." And he goes, "How's your place?" Because he knew where we lived, and he said, "It's gone, and, and everything's gone." And he said, "Oh, my God." Well, I said, "Okay, I'm gonna film, I'm gonna make a video of you as a survivor of this thing."

• 16:43Speaker 05

  One, two, three, you're on.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Hey, Randy, Randy Wright, all right. Hey, still here, still jamming, still alive, helping put out fires. I put out about 40 of them yesterday, and this morning. Anyways...

• 16:55Speaker 05

  You're fucking wonderful.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Hey, hey, hey, I'm so sorry that you lost, you know?

• 16:59Speaker 05

  You're so fucking wonderful, Randy.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Hey, anyways, I'll see you when I see you, brother.

• 17:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  When Andrew posted this video to Instagram, it was the first proof of life we had, and people were stoked. They posted comments like, "Long live Randy, legend king of Sunset Point, he helped save Gladstone's."

• 17:20Speaker 03

  After saying goodbye, Andrew and his son walked down to the sand.

• 17:25Speaker 05

  Sebastian and I sat there and, you know, kind of cried and hugged on the beach,

• 17:33Speaker 05

  watched the waves, listened to the fire behind us.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Nobody could come up here, you know, nobody. And then the military came, they put, you know, they put a fence around it and I'm not going anywhere.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Only emergency personnel and first responders were allowed up the PCH.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Sheriff deputies, LA County Sheriff stopped by a few times, fishing wildlife. Baywatch lifeguards would stop by and check on Randy, you know. The, the, uh, fire department crew were giving me, you know, something to eat. The military, you know, style, uh, you know, meals, you know, you, you just open them up and, you know, play with the packs and you got a little warm meal to eat.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  But for the most part, especially after the fires were contained, Randy was left alone.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  I, I just lost a lot of companionship. There was nobody here. It was like being the, uh, the, uh, Tom Hanks on, uh, in Castaway on the island. There was nobody here. You could hear a pin drop. There's no footprints on the sand. It's like being on the moon. There's no footprints. There's only my footprints.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  I watched the water. The water, the water was so clean the day before the first rain. I could see the eagle grass. I could see the structure of the reef. It was beautiful. There was nobody surfing here. Then the rain came, the first rain came and the water, the water coming out from the whole Palisades, the white water of the crashing waves, it became black water. It wasn't brown like, uh, after a normal rain, the first rain of the season, it was black.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Debris, trash and toxic waste from around 7,000 burned buildings had washed into the ocean.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  And it was like that for a couple of days. It, uh, turned, you know, dark brown and then after a few more days, it became light brown, like the color of the coffee that I like to drink. Finally, you know, about four months later after the fire, I went down to the beach. There's nobody here and I'm just laying there all by myself and I said, I'm going to go skinny dipping. This 62-year-old man is going to go skinny dipping. So I did. And then, you know, after like, you know, like a minute or so, you know, it started shriveling up, you know, in certain areas, you know, I was like, ah, I got out of the water and I dried off in the sun.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  And then I put my board shorts back on and then I walked up to where everybody has to come down the ramp area. And there was a second set of footprints. I was like, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Somebody saw the old geezer, this old man with the old man beard, which I haven't shaved since the fire. And somebody was down here on the sand. I was like, whoa.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  And I got so excited.

• 20:33Speaker 06

  Good morning. It's been a long time now, but Pacific Coast Highway has finally reopened to everyone just in time for the long holiday weekend. It was supposed to officially reopen.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  On Memorial Day, 2025, the surfers came back. I mean, it wasn't everyone. I know people who are still worried about heavy metals in the water at Sunset Point, but I've gone surfing there. So has Andrew.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  We just went through this huge thing, but it's like, it's my baptismal bath. I feel like it's a kind of a sacred spot. It's our bar. It's like the, where you meet people and you're enjoying the, the same thing. But I think Randy has, because he's there and people stop by and talk with him, I think he's like the bartender.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Nice bottom turn. He's got speed. He's got speed. Whoa, ah, ooh, that was a nice hit. You must admit that was a good hit.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  On a good day, about 40 or 50 surfers get out there.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I had, you know, like have a dozen people see me and go, hey, you're dead. You're supposed to be dead. No, Randy's still alive. I'm a different Randy. A Randy died.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  There was another Randy.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, over by Topanga.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Another surfer close to Randy's age, also named Randy, Randy Miod, died in his home right next to Pacific Coast Highway, just a few miles up. 12 people lost their lives in the Palisades fire, at least 31 across LA.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Am I going to live and die here at Sunset? Uh, I'm going to live and die somewhere in LA. I mean, I'm born here and raised here and, uh, if it's at Sunset, it's going to be at Sunset, you know?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Look at this set coming in. There's some, some really good surf out here right now.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Couple of months after we interviewed Randy, LA County told him he had to clean up his truck. So the community fundraised for him and helped him buy an RV. He's still there at Sunset Point. Big thanks to Randy and to Andrew for sharing your stories with us and thanks to the whole Sunset Point Surf Crew and special love to Sonya Geis, Phil Richards and KCRW. Big shout outs to the Los Angeles Fire Department Station 23, the heroes who put out the fire on Gladstones and fought the flames at the Palisades. The original score for this piece was by Renzo Goryeo. It was produced by Jesse Dukes, John Faseo and David Exame.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Now, Snaps All Systems Down plows straight into one of the largest snowstorms in history. Stay tuned.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the All Systems Down Fire and Ice episode. My name is from Washington and we recently heard a story, a kind of unbelievable story about a group of guys and their Bronco, about surviving, barely surviving a freak event of nature. So we called them up. I'll let producer Anna Sussman take it from here.

• 24:46Speaker 07

  Hi Roger.

• 24:46Speaker 08

  Hey Anna, how are you doing?

• 24:49Speaker 07

  Good. So I had to introduce yourself.

• 24:51Speaker 08

  Oh, uh, my name is Roger Redding and I live in East Tennessee and have been throughout my life an avid backpacker.

• 25:00Speaker 07

  Roger was headed out on a one night camping trip with a few of his buddies. He had years of experience camping in the Tennessee hills.

• 25:07Speaker 08

  And, uh, it was March, uh, in 1993. The Butter Cups were up in the Knoxville area and our intention was to go out for just a single night into the mountains.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  Roger and his friends, Phil, Bob, Louis and Steve, hopped into an all-wheel drive Bronco with some sleeping bags, tents and one day's worth of food.

• 25:30Speaker 08

  We stopped in Teleco Plains. There was a little grocery and, uh, we kind of joked because there had been a weather report that there might be some snow coming and we really thought how pretty it would be to be off on a trail and see a little bit of snow up in the forks of the trees and it would just add to the beauty and the adventure. So we headed up into the mountains to a place called Bob's Stratton Bald. It's a southern Appalachian bald where there's no trees and a great view, a 360 degree view. You can see in every direction. They say you can almost see so far you can see tomorrow.

• 26:12Speaker 07

  I'm going to let him say that one more time.

• 26:14Speaker 08

  They say you can almost see so far you can see tomorrow.

• 26:22Speaker 08

  And we thought, oh, that'd be a great place to go. And as we got out of the Bronco, there were just tiny little snowflakes that were starting to fall and it was pretty cold and we put our gloves on or our backpacks and off the trail we went. And as we're going up the trail, wind started getting colder and colder and we finally get to the top and this great view that we were looking forward to seeing was nowhere to be seen.

• 26:49Speaker 07

  Because the clouds had rolled in and visibility was close to zero, but what they could see was concerning.

• 26:58Speaker 08

  The snow started picking up and the flakes started getting bigger and every once in a while we see a flash of lightning. I mean, I've never seen anything like that in a snowstorm and the snow did start sticking in the, the branch of the trees and it started sticking to the grass.

• 27:18Speaker 07

  It was Tennessee in March. The thought that there would be an actual snowstorm was not something they had much reason to even consider. They set up their camp, but when it was time to cook their dinner, all the wood was too wet to make a fire. So without much else to do, they all just climbed into their tents.

• 27:41Speaker 08

  And we woke up in the middle of the night, seeing these flashes of light and the wind blowing the sides of the tent. One of my tent poles cracked. Then I crawled to the end of my sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. All of a sudden, this wasn't just a little snow. This was something I had never experienced in my life. And it fell in the end of my tent and it's like, oh my gosh, I've never seen this much snow. And, I mean, there's so many thoughts going through my head. I had never anticipated a blizzard of this magnitude. What are the instructions? What are we supposed to do?

• 28:24Speaker 08

  You just can't stay in a freezer.

• 28:31Speaker 07

  The snow was piled so high and was so heavy, because it was spring in East Tennessee, that all the tents were collapsing. And they hadn't packed any snow gear.

• 28:40Speaker 08

  It's morning now. The wind was roaring, but we were chatting between us. It's like, we've got to get out of here right now. And other voices were, no, we've got to hunker down and stay. When you're in a situation like this, you've got to stay put and somebody will rescue us. So, we decided as a group that we were going to pack up what gear we had, get dressed. The snow was over three and a half feet deep at this point.

• 29:09Speaker 07

  Three and a half feet deep. You can do almost nothing in snow that deep. They couldn't even pack up their stuff.

• 29:17Speaker 08

  There were canteens and gears in our backpacks scattered about the campsite, and you couldn't see any of it. We finally got our backpacks. It was quite an effort. And one by one, we formed a line and we started trying to find our way off this boll. The wind was blowing and the clouds, the snow was coming so thick you could barely see. But it was like, to try to find our way off this boll. It's interesting, there's no reference. There's no trees, there's no blazes, there's no way to know if you're on the right path.

• 29:51Speaker 07

  But the guys came to a hesitant consensus. They picked a direction and started walking.

• 30:00Speaker 08

  We had to take turns being the bulldozer, the guy out front that was blazing the path into this snow. We must have walked for two hours or more before we even came to the edge of the boll. Our legs were sore to ice. It was sticking in our mustaches, our hair. It was scary. But we had no choice but to continue. So, you could kind of feel the trail under your feet because it's worn out. But you'd find when you got off the path, because you'd trip over rocks and logs and all kinds of things. So, constantly, we were reaching behind us or in front of us to pull a guy out of the

• 30:45Speaker 08

  snow. There was this very large rock, and snow had piled up on one side and made a wall. It was 10 or 12 feet tall.

• 30:57Speaker 07

  Roger and the guys realized that this rock wall formed a little bit of a shelter from the snowstorm. It was the first relief they'd found in hours.

• 31:07Speaker 08

  We could crouch down behind this and get out of the wind. And it was like this amazing feeling of warmth when we were down below the top of the snow level, that we were actually warm. I know we weren't, but it felt that way. And we weren't walking, we weren't aching anymore. And I remember taking some gloves off and getting a one canteen that we could get our hands on that wasn't frozen. And we passed it around and had a drink. One of the guys wanted to stay. He says, "I can't go on anymore. It hurts too bad." And we had to make him go. We had to all make ourselves go, even though it hurt to stand up. We had to continue on this path.

• 31:53Speaker 08

  We were scared. What would we do if something happened to one of us? There's no way that we could carry anybody out. It was everything we could to make ourselves go. We had to encourage each other, despite the pain, the anguish, the doubts. Were we even going in the right direction? One guy said, "No, we're going in the wrong direction. You know, we should have stayed put, I told you so." And we wanted to kill him. It's like, no, we've already made the choice. We're going this way, and this is the way we're going, whether it's right or wrong. This is the way we're going. And there's this one point on the entire trail where there's a sign.

• 32:35Speaker 08

  The only sign that exists out here, and it says Cherry Log Gap. And it's just a wooden post, but to us, it was the most exciting thing in the world. It's like, we were on the right path. Now, we may not make it, but we were on the right path. Our friend Bob, he was very impatient and probably maybe in the best shape of the bunch, and big, long legs. And he was our bulldozer guy, and all of a sudden, we couldn't even see his tracks. The snow was blowing so hard that it filled in where he had even walked. Where's Bob? What happened? But the rest of us are within sight of each other.

• 33:18Speaker 08

  Finally, I remember Phil, my friend Phil, said, "There's the gap. It's up ahead." And I looked through my fingers, it's like looking through clouds and fog, and I could see the outline of something. And there's our Bronco. It's out ahead, and there's our friend Bob with a camera out, and his backpack's off, and he actually takes a picture of us.

• 33:42Speaker 08

  And the snow had piled up on one side of it. It's all ice covered, but there's this beautiful Bronco. And we throw off our backpacks. There's five of us. And three of us pile into the backseat, and two in the front. And Phil has his keys, and we're watching the gauges, worried sick that it's going to turn on, that there'll be any juice left in the battery. But the lights come on, and then we're looking at the gas gauge, and it's full, and we're all fired up. He fires this thing up. It's an eight-cylinder Bronco, and it's like being in an army tank. And yes, we're going to make it out of here.

• 34:26Speaker 08

  He puts it in gear, and we go about three feet.

• 34:35Speaker 07

  As burly as the Bronco was, it was no match for this amount of snow.

• 34:40Speaker 08

  We were trapped. There was no way that we could drive out of this. And slowly, we realized, we were there. There was nothing we could do about it. And then reality sets in, that we had one day's worth of food, and we ate most of it last night. And honestly, we were terrified.

• 35:02Speaker 07

  Waiting it out in the parked Bronco, as the snow piled higher and higher around them, was their only option.

• 35:12Speaker 08

  And our socks are wet, our clothes are wet. And we get out of the Bronco, we get our sleeping bags out of our backpacks.

• 35:20Speaker 07

  Every few hours, they'd turn on the car engine, just for a few minutes to warm up.

• 35:25Speaker 08

  Periodically, on the radio, we'd hear, it was strange, the radio station that should have been there, wasn't. And it was somebody else broadcasting on this signal. And it turns out, a tower had collapsed. But we would get reports of a station.

• 35:41Speaker 09

  Something called Thunder Snow, something we're not used to here in the South, and in fact, across most of the country. ...of what can only be described as a massive storm.

• 35:50Speaker 08

  We heard about deep snow in Atlanta, Georgia, in Birmingham, and that people were trapped on interstate highways going up the East Coast.

• 36:01Speaker 08

  People were stranded in Gatlinburg and couldn't get out.

• 36:04Speaker 10

  Now, this bulletin just in from our newsroom, Governor Guy Hunt has now proclaimed a state of emergency, and this is a storm of historic proportion. This will be the storm of the century.

• 36:16Speaker 08

  And it's like, oh my gosh, we're just, we're a speck out in the middle of nowhere, and nobody really knows where we are.

• 36:25Speaker 08

  As we're breathing, vapor out of our breasts would form on the top of the ceiling of the Bronco, and it would turn into icicles. The biggest fear that we had, the biggest regret, was that our families were probably worried about us.

• 36:47Speaker 08

  It was frustrating to not be able to think our way out of predicament. I mean, we're all smart guys, and it's like, there's got to be a way that we can be MacGyver, and we can do something to get our way out of this situation. But there really wasn't.

• 37:03Speaker 08

  One guy, Bob, he said he couldn't be stuck there. He was going to dig this path down to the highway and get on his sleeping pad and slide down the mountains. He was going to go for help, and we had to beg Bob, "No, stay. You have to stay. You're going to get injured, you're going to get hurt. We've got to be there for each other." As uncomfortable as it was, we were scared, but we were terrified. We were terrified for each other. Our fingers and toes hurt physically.

• 37:41Speaker 08

  There was a knock on the door. And it's like, did you hear that? And it's like, we all were like, oh, my gosh. Somebody's here to save us. And we opened the door and there's a single guy there. And he looks bad. He's terrified. He's all covered with snow and he's shivering. And he asked to come in. And, I mean, there's no room at the end.

• 38:07Speaker 07

  There was no place for this kid to go outside of the Bronco. And kind of no place for him to go inside the Bronco either.

• 38:15Speaker 08

  Uh, I mean, there's, we're already packed, but we gotta get this guy out of the snow. And he's a young guy, maybe in his teens or twenties. I mean, we didn't have the heart to tell him to get out. I mean, how could we explain that grown man throwing this young guy out? I get in the back with a spare tire and we pull this guy into the Bronco. And he's terrified.

• 38:40Speaker 07

  The young man was from South Carolina. He was backpacking with some friends when the storm rolled in.

• 38:46Speaker 08

  He smells bad and he's terrified. And we're listening to his story. And he began to cry. He talked about his friend that they had lost. And they looked for him and they yelled and the wind roared so bad, they couldn't hear any voices. And they didn't know what happened to him. So he became one of the group. And now, he smelled pretty bad because he'd already been backpacking for a week.

• 39:17Speaker 07

  It was now Saturday night, about 36 hours since Roger and the guys had set off.

• 39:23Speaker 08

  That night, we had the radio on again. And I remember the, you know, kind of reflecting off the inside of the windshield, the radio light.

• 39:32Speaker 09

  What you would have to do, again, this is for people listening perhaps on their car radios on the FM dial, what you need to do is be very aware of the tailpipe. You don't want that to get filled with snow. You don't want any of the exhaust, the carbon monoxide gas to get back into the car. You can run the car a few minutes at a time to keep the heat going.

• 39:49Speaker 08

  And we, we heard more devastation out there. But we heard that definitely that the US military was called.

• 40:01Speaker 08

  Sunday came and the storm had stopped. And it was this peaceful quietness, something special about seeing a blue sky and beautiful white snow covering, blanketing everything. I remember being in the back of the Bronco and feeling this vibration. It was really a vibration in my chest. And I told the guys, listen, listen, there's, there's something coming. There's something out there. And it got louder and louder. And so we gotta get out. And so we all crawl our way out of this Bronco. And there coming over the horizon is a helicopter. It turns out it's a National Guard helicopter.

• 40:43Speaker 07

  They watched the helicopter fly around the mountain. Then it hovered over the group of bedraggled men.

• 40:50Speaker 08

  They came back over and hovered and it seemed like it was forever. It's like, well, what's gonna happen next? And out of this helicopter, eventually comes this red thing. And it kind of flutters in the wind and the, in the trees. And it lands 25 or 35 yards away from the Bronco.

• 41:08Speaker 07

  And Roger volunteered to trudge out and find the red thing.

• 41:13Speaker 08

  The snow is deeper than I am tall. And it was stuck in the limb of a tree. And I was able to kind of snag this thing and pull it back in and work my way back to the Bronco. And so I get in the passenger side and here's this red thing. And it's a bandana. And it's tied in a knot. And we untie the knot. And it's weighted down with a pair of pliers and a folded up piece of maintenance log. And I unfolded it and it had one word written on it with an exclamation point. It said, tomorrow. And we all broke into the Annie song, tomorrow, tomorrow. It was spontaneous. It was wonderful.

• 42:06Speaker 08

  And then the guy that was worried that we were going in the wrong direction said, what if it means it's gonna snow again tomorrow? And we wanted to kill him all over again. We didn't know what it was gonna be for sure. But somebody knew we were there. And they told us that there was gonna be a tomorrow. That was the greatest word to hear. I can't think of a better word to hear for a group of guys that were terrified out of their minds that tomorrow was gonna happen. And it was magic. It's Monday morning now. The sun is coming up and we get out of the Bronco. And it's not warm. It's still below freezing, but the sun was shining.

• 42:51Speaker 08

  And then around the mountain comes the big helicopter. And it is putting wind out from under its rotors. Tree limbs are blowing sideways. The, the ice and the branches were snapping. Couple of us got behind this big oak tree. Bob and I got behind this oak tree. And we're, we're looking between our fingers at this helicopter. And we're looking straight up in the gap. And you see this big red cross sign under it. And, and then there's this guy coming down on a cable. And he's coming into the gap. And two of us run out. And he's got this thing on the end of it. And it looks kind of like a boat anchor. And I, he said, you're going home.

• 43:36Speaker 08

  And I said, when? And he said, now. And I said, what do I do? Put my foot on this? And he said, no, you're ass stupid.

• 43:47Speaker 07

  The helicopter couldn't take them all at once. It was already loaded up with other hikers they'd plucked off the mountain.

• 43:53Speaker 08

  We, two of us, Bob and I crawl in this helicopter. And the soldiers aren't talking to us. And there's benches, big, big benches to carry troops. And there's one backpacker. And I didn't tell he's a backpacker because of how he's dressed. And he's in the helicopter. And I go over and he says, are you out backpacking? I said, yeah. And I said, how about you? And he said, yeah. And he says, I'm, I got separated from my guys. And turned out this guy had, had found a hollow tree and crawled inside a hollow tree and lost his friends and sat out the storm in the tree. And then he couldn't find his friends. And I said, are you from South Carolina? And he said, yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 08

  How do you know? And I told him about his friend coming and knocking on our window. And I wanted to be able to tell him that your friend is alive and well. I don't think I'll ever forget that moment. But then what? They were able to get us home. And everybody did wind up getting home. It was quite an experience.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Thank you, Roger Redding, for sharing your story with Snap. That piece was edited by Nancy Lopez. The original score was by Dirk Swartzoff. It was produced by Anna Sussman.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Now, if you missed even a moment of Snap's All Systems Down series where everything is on the line and help is not on the way, get ye at once to the Snap Judgment Podcast because some stories are best lived vicariously. That's right. Experience danger in the comfort of your living room. Take U D in San Francisco, Snap Judgment's Orbiting Hall of Justice, and big news. At long last, we're opening up the curtain. Snap Plus is now available. Subscribe for bonus Snap episodes, special Snap meetups, more Snap.

• 46:35Speaker 11

  Hey, this is Snap Judgment producer, John Fecile. So while we were making the story about Michael Backman, the 31-year-old who went back to his old high school in Portland, Oregon, I kept wondering about like, what it must be like to be a kid and to realize that there's an adult in your midst who's deceiving you. And this has like, happened a lot. There is like, an insane number of instances of adults going back to high school.

• 47:07Speaker 12

  This mom went back to school, middle school, disguised as her 13-year-old daughter.

• 47:14Speaker 11

  There was a mom who wanted to test the security of her daughter's school, so she went undercover. There are grownups who have gone back just so that they can crush it on the basketball court. And I actually, I found the story of this reporter, Shawn Nix, a 26-year-old, married San Francisco Chronicle reporter. She posed as a senior at George Washington High School for four weeks in 1992 so that she could later unveil in a series of articles, the pressures on the lives of students and teachers at a time when California schools were facing brutal budget cuts. But not even, most of the teachers knew that Shawn was an adult. She auditioned for a play. She joined a peer counseling group.

• 47:59Speaker 11

  She made real friends. And she went to real parties, all before revealing herself four weeks later to the entire school. I got a chance to talk to Mario Trigueros, who was a senior at George Washington back then. And I wanted him to tell me what that felt like. I want to start with the reveal.

• 48:23Speaker 13

  You mean when, when Shawn revealed who she actually was?

• 48:26Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 48:28Speaker 13

  I was walking down the hall and a woman walks in who looks like Shawn, but is dressed like a grownup, wearing heels, a professional suit, like wearing a business skirt, holding her head up, her chin up, walking straight, the way grownups walk, walking in with a photographer. And my chin just dropped on the floor. I couldn't believe it. It was shocking and kind of funny. And it reinforced hunches that a lot of us had. We were, you know, there was something weird about her.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Snap Plus, the world of Snap awaits at snapjudgment.org. Robots and people trying to be robots. Please note that no Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. Snap is brought to you by the team that knows full well to leave firefighting to the professionals. Except for the Uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich. He says he can beat back the flames with bottled water. And there's Nancy Lopez, Pat McMillan, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goryo, John Fasile, Shayla

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Shealy, Taylor Decot, Flo Wiley, Beau Walsh, Marissa Dodge, on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51. And this is not the news. No way is this news. In fact, you could try to fight fire with fire and discover that, except in extremely controlled circumstances, that is a very, very bad idea. And you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.