Out Alive from Backpacker - SAR's Secret Weapon: An Ultra-Running Volunteer

SAR's Secret Weapon: An Ultra-Running Volunteer

04/21/21 • 22 min

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When Jeremy Humphrey set out to find a missing hiker in July of 2020, he didn't have any training or fancy rescue gear. But he had something else, legs that could carry him for miles and miles in a day, an intimate knowledge of his local mountain range and a voice inside him telling him that he was the right man for the job.

Previous Episode

The Mountains Called, I Shouldn't Have Listened

If you listen to this podcast you can probably relate to a sense of being pulled by the mountains. A feeling that John Muir put memorably when he wrote the mountains are calling and I must go." We answer the call for our own sense of adventure or to recharge our connection to nature. But some of us are called to higher, harder pursuits.

These mountaineers head high with safety equipment skill, and experience. Essential equipment on the glaciated peaks of crampon country, close call country. But just as the mountains call us, they also let us know when not to go and our ability to hear and listen to that call, that can make all the difference.

Next Episode

Arctic Nightmare: Mauled by a Polar Bear

Polar bears, the grand beasts of the arctic, are one of the most fearsome predators on earth. Healthy males can weigh half a ton, stand eight feet tall on their hind legs and possess enough power to get all that mass moving at 25 miles per hour. Few sites in nature will inspire the sense of panic and doom as seeing a polar bear loping across the ice headed your way. They are aggression sheathed in fur, spiked with two inch claws and armed with teeth designed to catch and hold slippery prey. As a rule, few animals survive encounters with these hyper- carnivores. Matt Dyer is that rare exception.