National Park After Dark - Death in Denali, Carnivores of Katmai

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Pack all your gear and don’t forget the bear spray as we head out to Alaska. In this week’s episode, Cassie starts us off in Denali National Park and recounts the tragic tale of the deadliest climbing accident in the Park’s history. Then, Danielle takes us to Katmai National Park where she shares with us the tragic demise of grizzly bear researcher and advocate Timothy Treadwell.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everybody, welcome to our third episode. We are very excited to have you back here. Welcome back if you were here before. Welcome, if it's your first time ever listening. Either way, we're very excited to have you guys here. My name is Cassie. And I'm Danielle. And time is just flying by.

I can't believe it's our third episode already. I know. I was thinking that. I was like, how have we done three episodes? I know. Well, it's just, it's so exciting. So just time is just whizzing. But I'm actually having a lot of fun researching all these topics before because I'm learning a lot of stories that I never had any idea about.

It's kind of like having to do book reports. I feel like I have homework every week. Every week. Yeah. And it's like, okay, let's go to work 40 hours a week, come home and do more work. But this is fun. Yeah, but this is fun. We get to read stuff we're actually interested in and then talk about it in front of the class.

Yeah, and be excited about it instead of being like, this is the history of the Civil War. Actually, I like the Civil War stuff, so I guess that doesn't count. But anyway, just quickly, before we start, we wanted to thank everybody that's either messaged us or reached out to us in any way. And we have some listener stories starting to pile up. So we're going to start doing some listener episodes in the future, but we're really excited for them because they're all super interesting and pretty different from each other, you know. Yeah, I don't think we've even had one listener story that has been in the same park, never mind. Or the same subject, really. Yeah, we've had a variety of a lot of different things.

So it's really exciting to read all these emails. Yeah, I can't like every day I get home from work and I just ferociously like check the email. be like, oh my God, Cassie, you see this one? How cool? How cool is that one? How did that happen? I've never even heard of that. But yeah, so if you have a story that you want to tell us, we absolutely want to hear it. You can go straight to our Instagram at National Park after dark and click the email link and it goes directly to our email. Send us your stories. Or you can go on our website, npaddpodcast.com. That's npaddpodcast.com. and you can go to our submission link, and you can write us straight from there as well.

And then also, last thing, truly, the last thing, before we get started, thank you times a million to all the patrons, patrons. Patrions? Is it a Patreon or is it a patron? I don't know, honestly. Well, either way. Either way. Thank you.

Thank you so much to everyone who went on Patreon and followed us. subscribed. Yeah. I mean, that is blowing our mind. We appreciate it. It's going to help us grow the podcast and be able to offer more things. We really, really appreciate it. And we wanted to thank you. Yeah. So thank you very much. If you haven't looked into our Patreon page yet, you can check that out at our website as well. And we're just offering from every episode we do, we do notes and we include photos from the stories that we're talking about. So you can really see the people that are involved in this, the scenes, the areas that's involved in this. We're also giving automatic entry into our future giveaways that we're doing. You also get added to our close friends list on our Instagram.

So you see stories and sneak peeks that other people don't see when you subscribe. So you can go on to npADPodcast.com and you can check out that link if you're interested. But either way, Thank you so much, everyone. We really appreciate you. Okay. So, seeing as how, you're the only one of the both of us that has visited this state, I think that you should go first this week. Okay. So this week is very exciting because Danielle and I both pick stories in the same state, and we chose Alaska. I love Alaska. It is such a cool place. It is beautiful. If you have not been there before, go. I just had a lot of, I saw my first Aurora Borealis there. I saw my first grizzly bear there. I saw

daylight at 2 o'clock in the morning there. I just think that Alaska is such a magical place, and I'm really excited to dive into some stories that have happened there. Yeah, I mean, technically, I've seen Alaska when a few weeks ago, I was in the San Juan's, and we were at an area called Lime Kiln State Park and across the ocean, across the bay, you could see the mountains of Vancouver Island. So technically, I've seen Alaska. I've just never stepped foot there. Oh, no, that's Canada. I was like Vancouver Island is not Alaska.

It's like, I was just about to Google Vancouver Island, Alaska. I'm like, is there something else that you're talking about? And then when you said, when you were in this movie. And last week it was stupid for the diphen hydrant thing, which people loved, by the way. All right. So Alaska, here we go. Here we go. So for my story, I am going to dive into Denali's deadliest climbing expedition in the history of Denali National Park.

Ooh, hoo. I'm so excited because I love not knowing. So I get to just sit back and chill and drink coffee and listen to your story. And listen to a story. Yeah. Your own personal podcast in person. And I was really excited to talk about Denali because I've been there a few times and it is such a beautiful park. If you've been there before, you know the magic that Denali just has to offer.

It's one of those experiences. You just have to see it for yourself. And if you get lucky enough to actually see Denali and the weather is good, then and you have entered Alaska at a really good time. So I wanted to talk about this because it was labeled as the deadliest climbing expedition in Denali's history. There's a lot of mountaineering up Denali, but it is known as one of the most dangerous climbs in the world. So, yeah, and it's because of their weather conditions and also the elevation of Denali. So just going into the person who started this expedition, his name was Joe Wilcox.

He was only 24 years old. He was a grad student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. So he was working a summer job for the Forest Service in 1966, and he came up with a plan to summit Denali. He went out and he wrote a newsletter advertisement looking for climbers to go on this expedition with him. He advertised that it would cost $300 per person to cover their food, gear, and round-trip transportation from Seattle to Alaska, which I think of now $300. Yeah, but it's $1967, so money's different. Okay, yeah, but $300.

Inflation, I feel like that's still not. That's a steal. For sure. I mean, maybe not back then. Things are way different. But it was $300. So this advertisement attracted the attention of eight different men who signed up to join him and they have regulations for Janali. So if you want to hike, you have to go in a group of at least

four people. So he needed other people to go with them. You can't summit Denali by yourself. So eight men signed up to join him and at that point he was able to apply for a permit to climb Denali. So you also have to get permission to do it. You can't just go. He applied for this permit and it was met with a lot of hesitation. These people really did not have a lot of mountaineering experience and climbing Denali is meant for experienced mountaineers. So a ranger of the park suggested that they joined a group of men from Colorado that were very experienced climbers who were also planning to summit and needed more people to join them to be granted permission. So the group agreed to do the expedition together and their permit was granted but only dependent on a few additional requirements.

They were only allowed to do this climb if they agreed to carry a radio with them. Also, they had to agree to stay together throughout the duration of the trip. And all, Also, the less experienced climbers of this group had to take a training course beforehand. Both groups agreed and completed their requirements so their trip began. So I don't feel like that's very out of this world for requirements. No, I feel like that's the bare minimum. Yeah, very basic. Basically stick together.

There's safety in numbers and know what you're doing before you go to attempt to do it. Good luck. I think this was kind of out of the norm for this because most people who are, were trying to summit Denali were already very experienced mountaineers. So these people kind of came in from left field who were outdoors, avid outdoors people, but had never done any mountaineering even close to the magnitude of this one besides the three Colorado men. So I think that's part of why this was kind of out of the norm was because they were making these requirements or they weren't going to grant this permit for them. That makes sense. So the names of the men that were on this trip, which I'm not going to

say a bunch because there's 12 of them and it would be really confusing if I was saying their names all the time. But for the names of the men on this trip were Steve Taylor, Joe Wilcox, who was the one who originated the plan and got the other eight men to join. Howard Schneider, Dennis Lutcherhand, Mark McLaughlin, Paul Schlitzer, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Jerry Clark, Jerry Lewis, Angel Schiff, Hank Janes, John Russell, and Walt Taylor. Donali is known as one of the hardest climbs in the world because of the weather, but also because it's the largest base to summit climbs on the planet. It's actually 6,000 feet greater than Mount Everest, and the weather is a lot worse.

So even though Donali isn't taller than Everest, they start at a really high elevation. They start... Base camp is at a higher elevation than when you start climbing Denali. Yeah. So it's actually 6,000 feet difference. And the weather is a lot worse. there too. So Denali is 20,310 feet tall. And because of Denali's location and only being 400 miles from the Bering Sea, they're also prone to intense low pressure systems that are stronger than any other place in the world. And combined with that elevation and how far north and latitude Denali is, their storms move stronger and faster than anywhere in the world. This makes an environment that can have storms emerge completely out of nowhere that are powerful and extremely cold. Basically, everything I've Red just says that storms on Denali just come out of absolutely nowhere. It can be bright and sunny,

and then it is clouds and snow and wind, and they can come out of nowhere. And if you've been to Alaska in the Denali area, locals will tell you it's very rare to see Denali to actually see the mountain because it is always surrounded by weather. So it's just really unpredictable weather patterns. That makes it hard to plan and prepare and all that. Exactly. Okay. And actually, the times I visit Denali, I was very lucky and I got to see it each time I went, which is like unheard of. But there is a very extreme weather, some of the worst weather in the world. They headed to Donali. And the way that Denali is set up, when you come into the park, there's a road and you can drive down this road and there's little hiking trails.

When you get to a certain mile marker, I forget what mile marker it is, you actually need a permit and a pass to drive your car in the road. So most guests are not allowed to drive through Janali. You have to buy a bus ticket and you take the bus to go all the way to the final stop, which is called Ileson Visitor Center. Every year, you can join a lottery to win to be able to drive your own car through the park. And these roads are really thin and windy and they're along cliffside. That sounds terrifying. Not something that's hard.

But the shuttle drives them, right? The shuttle drives those roads. A huge bus. drives on these roads and you're looking over the edge and you're like, how is this bus going to go around this corner? And they pass each other. Two buses on either side will pass each other. I actually took the bus to Isleson before it and it's sketchy. It is. Count me out. I'm not, I mean, when I lived in Colorado and I lived next to Pike's Peak, everyone that visited me was like, let's drive to Pike's Peak. Like, no, I want to stop making this drive. It's scary as hell. It's not by any. means like not doable. I mean, it's one of the biggest tourist destinations, but it's really

frightening. So scary. No guardrails, you plummet to your death, it's over. And with someone has a fear of heights. It's over. It was right. Yeah. I want to. Yeah, there's no guardrails and Donali either. And there's cliff sides and all of it is sketchy, but there's some big chunks that are sketchy. So the group gets to Isleson. And Isleon is actually, the Center for Communications as well for all of the mountaineering people. That was their last stop before they started heading up the mountain. So they kind of stopped there, checked in with everybody, let them know their route, their plans, the typical thing before you head out on a mountaineering adventure. So they set out for their trip on June 22nd, 1967. And from the start,

this trip was planned to take a long time for several reasons. Their plan was to do climbs multiple times and going from one camp and back to the other because they had so much gear, they couldn't carry it all in one trip. So they would move their supplies to one camp and then go back to the previous camp to pick up more and then move it to their next camp. And this was helpful because it helped acclimate them to the elevation as they went higher, but it also meant that they had a lot more miles to hike. So very quickly into their journey, their first obstacle came and that was that they got a lot of rain. After it rained, their clothes and their sleeping bags were drenched in water, and the sun never came out long enough to completely dry their gear. So they're hiking and they're wet, their gears wet from the very start. They're not dry.

So from the very beginning, there's an issue. And I feel like that's a pretty big issue if you're hiking and it's freezing and you're wet. Definitely. I mean, looking back on it, you know, you're on a day hike somewhere. And if it rains, that feeling of not ever getting completely dry and having to move with wet gear and wet clothing, it's hard to focus on other things. And I can't even imagine being in Denali with all your wet gear. Well, this past summer, I hiked up one of the 4,000 footers in New Hampshire. And I hiked, it ended up being a tropical storm.

And I slept in a tropical storm camping outside on this mountain. My socks were soaked and my shoes were soaked and there was no drying them because it was overnight that this happened. It was on our hike and then overnight and then in the morning we were in the woods area and it was cloudy. So there was no drying my shoes. I just had to hike that way and my feet were hurting. And when we finally got back to the car, we did 21 miles or something like that that day. When we finally got back to the car, my feet were soaked. shriveled up. They looked like I was like 140 years old. So I can only imagine being freezing and

wet. I mean, it was 80, 85 degrees that day. So I was fine. Right. It was just uncomfortable. Yeah. And you had the feet of a 104 year old woman, which is in a good luck. Yeah, 140. Oh, 40. Wow. Okay. Wow. But anyway, so that was their first issue that they came across. And then the group actually didn't meet eye to eye on a lot of things. They had a lot of issues from the very start. And I think a lot of this probably stem from their experience. So the three men from Colorado were very experienced bountenaires working with a group of men who were not.

So the group quickly began to argue about what gear was necessary, whether it was important to use skis while they were hiking, and what gear was too much to carry on their trip. So they ended up deciding to leave a stove, shovels, and saws behind, so they wouldn't have as much to carry, which later ended up proving to be a very, very fatal error on their part. So then after that, more obstacles came. The next was an avalanche that brought down a massive pile of rock, snow, and ice, and cut off their original route. So this avalanche came, they had their whole route planned out, and they had to come up with a whole different way around that area. because obviously with that much snow, you can't just walk through that. Right. So another obstacle that they faced is as they gained higher elevation, the men of the group

started experiencing altitude sickness. They started getting severe headaches. They started vomiting. They overall were just feeling horrible. Of these 12 men on this expedition, only two of them had ever been above 15,000 feet, and they were not used to these conditions at all. So remember this mountain is over 20,000 feet. and none of these men had been over 15,000 except for two.

It doesn't seem like so far at least that, unless there's something that I'm missing, that the vast majority of the men involved didn't do much preparation work or training before the expedition. I don't know how much training they did, but these men were from Colorado and Utah. Although those states are very high elevation, so I don't really know what they're training. was like, but they certainly don't seem like they were experienced enough to be doing this trip, per se. Yeah. And the only way to cure altitude sickness is to get to a lower altitude, and none of the men on this trip were willing to do that. So they trekked on despite how sick they were.

As they got closer to the summit, this took a while to get up there, and they got closer to the summit, and they realized that the weather was looking really good for the next few days. So they are just like, if it looks nice out, we have to plan to summit. They established two different camps for the group, a higher, and a lower camp. They made a camp at about 15,000 feet. And then other men in the group prepared for the ascend up to a higher camp at 18,000 feet. So they had two separate camps that they were making. So four of these men, including all three of the experienced hikers from Colorado,

which were Paul Schlitster, Howard Schneider, and Jerry Lewis. And then Joe Wilcox also joined them to head to the higher camp to prepare to summit. So if you remember, their permit that was granted specifically said that they could not separate. So this was a direct violation of their order for them to have half of their group at the 15,000 foot camp and half of them at the 18,000 foot camp. And the group that was at the 15,000 foot camp were all the less experienced men. Right. They didn't split up the experience between the two groups. No. So now they were left with none of the experienced bountaineers. Not that the other men didn't have experience outside. You just hiked in Ali with no experience ever.

Right. But they just didn't have experience enough. So while they were at the 15,000 foot camp, these men, one of their tents actually was engulfed in flames with six of the men inside. They ended up escaping with a few cinch eyebrows and beer. and minor burns, but they lost their tent, some down parkas, and a sleeping bag in the fire. So this automatically changed morale. They were frustrated and angry. Also, they obviously just lost a bunch of gear. So that's a huge problem. Important gear, yeah. Very important gear. So that happened, and they're re-getting everything together, kind of resetting up, figuring things out. And they had radios to radio each other from the different camps. They radioed,

about how the weather seemed like it was going to hold out, and it was time for them to head to the summit. Before this expedition in 1967, there was no communication with Park Service on weather updates. It wasn't like you could call down and be like, hey, what's the weather going to be? In fact, nobody was even monitoring the weather onto Nali. Like, you know how Mount Washington has like the whole weather observatory and everyone's following weather patterns and everything like that? Yes, you know what you're getting into, or at least plan for the potential. of what the weather pattern is looking like. And you can warn people and things like that.

So on Denali in 1967, they didn't have any of that. Nobody was monitoring. They could monitor it, but nobody was continually monitoring the weather up there. So, and unfortunately, none of these men had previous experience with Denali's unpredictable and constantly changing weather, nor did they have the experience to recognize early signs of deteriorating weather specific to that area. So then on the morning of July 15th, the four men at the higher camp ended up summiting Denali. So if you remember, they started on June 22nd.

So it took them almost a month to summit just with the conditions and everything. So as soon as... In my mind, I'm thinking like, okay, like a couple days later. And these are the, this is the experienced group, right? Yes. This is the experience group. Yeah, because they had the avalanches. There's all the extreme weather.

There are days where you have to just stay in your tent because it's too dangerous to climb. So this is a really serious intense hike and there's a lot of different aspects to it. So it took them a while. But as soon as they did reach the summit, they called the Isleson Visitor Center to relay their happy news that they finally made it. And the weather was perfect. There were blue skies, low wind speeds. And they had views for miles and miles. It was the perfect day to summit this mountain.

It is cool just imagining what they saw and how little people have seen that. Because I can't imagine there are a lot of people out there that have experienced Danali in that way, like actually summiting the mountain and being able to see on a clear day. I'm sure it was a very, very magical experience. And I know that they do lead more hikes now than they did in 1967. They have mountaineering groups, but it's really expensive to do, and there's a lot of planning involved. So still, the number of people who do it is not very high. But they got to the top.

They're so excited. So they started celebrating. They set off some smoke flares. They started taking photos together. And they broke open a Coca-Cola, which I'm sure was like one of those things that they were carrying, that they're like, we can't drink this yet. We're going to celebrate when we get to the top kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

But Coca-Cola. So they were up there for about an hour and a half. And then the team decided that they would start their dissent. They had clear views and they noticed that the other team hadn't started their hike to the summit yet because they could see down. If you've seen pictures, you can see pretty far down the mountain. And they saw that they hadn't started. So they ended up meeting up with the eight other men that were now at the higher camp. And the group told them that they were planning to summit the following day. So the weather, were still really nice. This other group for whatever reason decided that they were going to do it the next day. So at this point, both groups are now together at the higher elevation camp? Yes. They're both at that camp. And then on July 17th, they woke up. It was still a little cloudy, but then the clouds cleared. And the group who had already summited decided that they were going to start heading down to lower camp to get to lower elevations. The higher elevation you are, the more dangerous it is, the more severe the weather is. So the group that had summited was just trying to get a little bit lower to safer camp, which was the lower camp. The eight men who had not summited yet were planning on

summiting that day, but at the very last minute, one of the men was suffering severe altitude sickness and decided to head to lower camp with Wilcox and the rest of the group. So they went back, so there's only seven men now who have left to summit. So the group starts heading down to lower camp and one thing that they noted was when they look back, it didn't look like the other group was even starting to prepare their summit. They were just tidying and packing up their camp. Later in an interview, one of the men said, you don't waste good weather on Denali. When the weather is good, you go. So when they noticed that they still weren't summiting, it was kind of a surprise because the weather was still okay. Right. And they were just kind of like be-dilly-dallying. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they just were taking their time, I guess. The second group of men did decide to start their summit on July 17th around 3 p.m. Another man, Steve Taylor, who was only 23 years old, he was also suffering from severe altitude sickness. And at the last minute, he decided that he would stay at the higher camp and just hang out there and wait for the other six men to come back for him. He stays behind in the camp. and the rest of the men decided to continue on, even though the weather was starting to deteriorate at this point, winds were starting to pick up and clouds were coming in. By the time these men reached the top, there was a white out of snow with no visibility at all. The only thing that they were able to see was each other.

So there's no views. The only thing they're in a storm. Kind of like our hike. To Musilock. I was actually just thinking that to Musilock. Oh, my God. When we got to the top and there's no view at all. and we took the wrong trails, so we did like six extra miles that day.

Oh, my God. But yeah, we were so psyched. It was peak foliage in New England. We were so stoked to hike Musilok, get to the top. Cassie was going to take some awesome pictures. We get there. And it is a cloud blanket of fog over everything. Literally everything.

You can even see like 40 feet in front of you. I didn't even know there were people. people up there until we were standing next to them. I know, like the wind every once in a while would kind of sweep the fog away. You could get like a brief window of some of the rolling mountains and foliage. And we were chasing it around the 30 seconds. Yeah, we were like running around the sides of the mountain trying to find a view as is blowing the fog away. Oh my God.

Okay, go on. But yeah, okay. So kind of similar, I guess. Kind of similar. It's a bummer. It's similar. but not. It's a bummer you just spent, I mean, we spent a whole four hours compared to months. But our hike was a little different, but it is a bummer to do all that work and then you don't have the view from the top.

That is a bummer. But I guess it's about the journey, not the view. Is that a good destination? Yeah, it's the same. But anyway, they get to the top. There's no views. It's so bad that they can only see each other. And they call into Ielson Center to let them know that they made it to the top. But they also let them know that their reception was broken and their batteries were running out. And they also reported that one of their men, John Russell, was missing and not accounted for. So there was only five of the men at the summit. So one stayed behind and one was missing. What do you mean missing? So he's just gone. He, when they were submitting, they lost him at some point. Okay. And they had no.

no idea where he went. And you remember, like, these conditions are so bad, they can just barely see each other. So I'm sure they were hiking and turned around and it's like, he's not here, then just never showed up. Oh, my God. Okay. They're talking to Isleson Center and they promise that they're going to call around 8 p.m. to give an update. But that call was never made. On the morning of July 18th, the climbers heading to Lower Camp noticed a saucer-like cloud that had formed over the summit. If you remember, they started their summit at 3 p.m. on July 17th. And this is a long hike. They're up there.

These people are still potentially at the summit, and the other climbers noticed a huge storm forming the morning of July 18th. And July 18th ended up being the worst storm in all of Donnelly's history. The half of this team that was still on the summit was really at the mercy of this huge storm. And because they had abandoned their shovels earlier in the trip, they had no way of digging a shelter to build a snow wall around them to help block the wind. They had, so those shovels ended up needing to be really important. And this storm was so bad, the wind speeds increased to 100 miles per hour and had gusts of wind. of 300 miles per hour. And the temperatures, yes. And I read that and I was like, wait a second, but the fastest wind speeds were recorded on Mount Washington and they were 230 something.

But this was just gust. This wasn't continuous wind speeds. A consistent stream of, okay. Yeah. But oh my God. And you're just standing. You have no means of shelter or protection. Yeah. There's no means of protection. And the temperatures drop to negative 30 degrees while they were up there. So there's 300 mile per hour wind gas. It's negative 30 degrees. And just as like a comparison, hurricane strength winds are 80 miles per hour. It's something I can't even imagine because I've never even experienced something that compares to that. Yeah. And no storm has compared to this on top of Denali since then either. So these hikers just came across the worst storm and the worst luck when they were at the summit.

These winds were so strong even at the lower camps that it made breathing outside super difficult. The other men at camp couldn't even leave their tents. So they were just sheltered down at lower camp during this time. And then on July 20th, so this is two days. The storm lasted really strong for about two days. The four climbers at lower camp prepared to go back to the summit. to search for the rest of the group because obviously this huge storm came in and they were worried. But the storm had brought a foot of snow and completely covered their original trail.

And the travel was super slow and dangerous and the group had to turn back, taking shelter for days. Because even though it wasn't the peak of the storm, the storm was still happening. And the storm actually continued on for about a week. Goodness. I'm assuming they didn't contact search and rescue. Is it just them? So actually what happened after they tried to head up to help them, they realized they had to turn back and Wilcox called the Isle Center report the other half of the group was missing. The Rescue Coordination Center contacted the Air Force Base in Anchorage and they requested a high altitude overflight to make an air drop of fuel and radios to hire and lower camp to help them out.

but the winds were still estimated at around 80 miles per hour. You can't fly in that. Exactly. So no rescue planes were able to come. I mean, this kind of reminds me of the stories on Everest, you know, of the bodies on Everest. I mean, if you, the conditions are so bad and it's so dangerous. If you die, you're left there. There's no rescuing.

There's no coming back for you. Yep. No recovery efforts are. worth it enough. It's just too dangerous for other people to come rescue you when you're not alive. And it's sad because you never get your burial or anything like that. But also it's too dangerous for other people to risk their lives for it. So it's a tough situation to be in. And personally, for me, I love hiking. But I could not imagine if someone was like, there are so many bodies up here. A lot of people don't make it. There would never be a point where I would be like so extreme that

I wanted to do that, but I understand why people do, because it's such a place that no one else goes to. And I know I'll never summit Denali, but I've seen it, and they have helicopter rides where you can take helicopter rides. I don't know if they go all the way to the summit, maybe on good days, but they actually fly around to Nali, and you can see all the views up there. So one day I would like to do that, too. But as far as actually hiking the whole mountain, I don't think that will ever be something in my future.

I don't blame me. Especially after reading this story. Yeah. But anyways, the following morning, the skies did clear, but the winds continued. At this point, the other men in the group had been missing and silent for about a week. And the mountains still remained too dangerous to send a rescue mission by air. So this was a week-long storm that hit, which was unusual in a once-in-a-lifetime event. Like I said before, this is the worst storm to ever hit the mountain.

and it was at its peak while the group was at the summit, and it came in quick. During this time, there was actually another group mountaineering coming up from a different side, and they were preparing to summit Denali. This was the Babcock MCA team, and this was a group of very experienced mountaineers who had been camped at lower elevations during this whole storm. So they were very well prepared. They had shovels, and they had all the tools that they needed to withstand the storm. So they had built snow walls around their tents to help protect them from the wind.

And they had been hanging low and not trying to summit because of how bad this weather was. And they were also somehow in contact or knew about what was happening with the Wilcox team that they had been trying to summit. So they knew that they were in danger and they needed to rescue. So as soon as the weather became safe enough for them to start hiking up, they started heading towards the summit. When they got closer to the summit, soon they found a sleeping bag with a pair of wool socks inside, and it was next to a big crevice. So immediately they assumed that this person did not survive. Their stuff was right next to a huge crevice. So they continued towards the summit, and there was no movement or welcoming calls from the group.

There was only silence. Ghost can't. Yeah, it's just complete silence. The first thing that they see when they get to the summit is they spotted a homemade tent with a man sitting upright alongside of it. His hands in his face were blue, green, and white, and frozen, and he was starting to decompose. He had been blown over during the storm, but he was holding the pole of the tent where he froze to death. Like in the windstorm, we're assuming? Yeah.

Yeah, in the windstorm, they had attempted to make some type of tent, and he was holding. holding the pole to keep it together, but it was a man-made tent. So it wasn't proper equipment. Also, these were 300-mile-per-hour wind gusts. Like, right. And they didn't, and they weren't able to protect themselves from the wind either. So he was the first person that they came across. They found a second man who was frozen, and he was found in a sitting position, and he had no pack or sleeping bag. He was completely exposed to the storm. And right below him was another man with the sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders and in a seated position. And the men were not roped together, which is something experienced climbers would do as you would

stay roped together. So when these winds came, you wouldn't be blown away because you'd have the weight of other people. And also so you wouldn't lose each other in these storms, like how they lost someone previously to that, when you're all tied together. So you don't lose anyone that you're with. So that was kind of an indication of how inexperienced that they were, was that that, that wasn't something that they did. But they also noticed that the men had no gloves on, they had no

pack, they had no gear. And it is thought that the winds were so strong that their gear most likely blew away, that the wind actually took their gloves right off of their hands. Oh, oh my God. Well, because at first when you said that, I was thinking maybe the storm came so fast and suddenly that they didn't have time to properly, you know, put on, I don't know. But it's already cold. It's, yeah, that's true. It's already cold. Why wouldn't you have gloves on? It's already cold up there. So I'm sure that they did have that gear, but they speculate that the wind was so strong that it actually blew their gear off of them. Okay. Wow. So these three men were the only ones who were found. And later on, they actually organized a climb to find the bodies of the other men, but they were never found. So the only men who survived were the men who were in the lower, who had. to lower camp. So only five men survived this expedition.

Out of the original 12. Out of the original 12. Oh. And only three of them were found. And only three of them were found, yeah. And the other ones have just are up there somewhere. Yeah, up there somewhere. And I mean, it was in 1967, but they never found them.

And there was debate for a long time of if anyone was at fault. for these men dying and if there were things that they should have done differently. When they looked into the weather reports from that day, it was found that there was no way to survive the storm from the summit. No matter what those guys did when they were at the top, there's no way that they would have survived. Even if they had shovels, no shovel is going to save your life in conditions like that. Yeah.

So it was a really unfortunate and crazy thing that happened because that did end up being the worst storm ever recorded. So they were just there at the wrong time and weren't as prepared as they should have been and made some decisions along the way that ended up not being the right ones. So overall, this was just a really sad story. The one thing I like to think about it is that if you are to go out on an expedition and do this trip, You are a very outdoorsy, adventurous person. And the only thing I can think of is that if you're going to go out, you would want it to be doing something like this.

Doing something that you love. Right. Yeah, doing something that you love. And you are going out, doing something really incredible. And those views that those guys had the last few days and de-adventures that they had leading up to that point. I just like to think that that is how you would want to go if you had no choice and you were going to go. Right. You know what I mean?

There are worse ways. I mean, not to say there are worse ways to go, but people die every day without having an experience like that. Exactly. I love Denali and I love Alaska and I just see these men just saw the draw of it. They saw the magic in Denali. And unfortunately, Denali did take some of their lives. But the adventure and the excitement that these men went out there to have was something that I thought was really cool. I think it's really brave to go out and do an expedition like that.

So even though it ended up the way it did, I think that all these men were really brave. And out of the norm of other people, you don't meet a lot of people who are like, including myself, who want to hike to Nali. So these were obviously very courageous and adventurous people who were looking for an adventure that turned wrong. Right. And they set out to do something that, you know, they wanted to do. How many people do you know, even in day-to-day things that say, I'm going to do that or I want to do that, and then never do? And they're all taught. There's something to be said about people who go out and do these kind of crazy things. And I, at the end of the day, even though there were mistakes made and maybe in some way this could have been avoided if taken different measures, I think that all these people are really. courageous and very cool people. And I'm sorry that it went the way that it did for them, because I think that they probably had a lot more exciting things that they would have done after if they had made it. Well, thanks for sharing that. It was really interesting to listen to. And I mean, it has lessons that you can take away, even for people like us who don't

too crazy expeditions. But, you know, rethink not taking that shovel or that piece of equipment that. Yeah, even for backpacking trips. Like I've done quite a few backpacking trips and it's just being prepared, making sure that you are capable and checking the weather and following like the time I was talking about earlier where I literally camped out in the bonds in northern New Hampshire. I camped out there during a tropical storm. I had not checked the weather before. There were literally trees blowing so hard around me and trees falling down. And trees falling down around our tent and we set up our tent under a fallen log. It was like one of those fallen trees that was fallen onto another tree. So it was standing up. And we set up our tent under there.

So if another tree came down, we would hopefully have protection because we weren't wide in the open. Would at least be shielded a little bit. Yeah. By something, but I laid awake that entire night and I was terrified and I, it was not the smartest choice. and we came out of it just fine. But, you know, there's times where you don't. So it's just important to be really prepared and know exactly what you're getting yourself into before you go out there and just make sure you're prepared.

Okay. So for my story, I'm also in Alaska, the story of Timothy Treadwell. Do you know who? I feel like I've heard that. I've heard his name before, but I'm not super familiar with or familiar at all. Okay.

With this story. Well, get ready. And I'm just going to say off the top, this story is pretty graphic and there are details in it that can be upsetting. So if anybody is listening that is sensitive to that or does not want to hear graphic details, then I would maybe not listen. Just a warning as of right now. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, in general for our podcast, this is a good warning. We talk. We talk. about murder and death and tragedy quite often. So I think you should just always have that in the back of your mind. But you may not like what we have to say. Yeah, but I just did want to give a little bit of a warning for this one because it is upsetting. Few people who have ever lived know what it's like to literally live and die for something that you believe in. And to have such a passion and belief in the work that you're doing, that you dedicate your entire life to it. Timothy Treadwell

was one of those people. He had an immense and deep love for the grizzly bears of Alaska, and it consumed his entire life, and it ultimately led to his death. So this week, I'm going to cover the story of grizzly researcher and grizzly advocate Timothy Treadwell. A little bit about Timothy. He is a self-proclaimed eco-warrier and photographer. He was born Timothy Dexter on Long Island in 1957. He was one of five children and lived a pretty normal life, nothing really of note in his younger years. He loved animals from an early age, and he actually had a pet squirrel named Willie. He went to Bradley University in California on a swimming scholarship, but the college party life kind of took over and he kind of got wrapped into the drug alcohol party scene pretty quickly.

He eventually lost his scholarship. He had an injured back and obviously all the partying and stuff, they kind of booted him from that. So he finished school and after that he changed his last name from Dexter to Treadwell, which is actually still a family name. It was his mother's maiden name. And he did so for more of like a stage name. He thought it was rolled better off the tongue because he wanted to be in TV.

He auditioned for a lot of different TV sitcoms. And he even made appearances on some shows like Love Connection, which I have never seen. I have never seen that either. But yeah, as a 90s baby, I have never seen it. But I've definitely heard of it. And he did try out for an audition for. the sitcom cheers, but he lost the role to Woody Harrelson. So he was second in line to Woody Harrelson. That's pretty good. That really broke his heart because he was really committed

to acting. And when he lost that role, he kind of started to spiral down. He started using alcohol and drugs a lot harder. And he actually almost died in the late 80s from a heroin and cocaine overdose. So he was like, he was a lot more than just partying. Right. Yeah. At this point, he was an addict and he was losing control of his life. So after that overdose, a friend convinced him to get away, get away from the California, get away from the scene, and take a trip. So he decided with the encouragement from this friend to go to Alaska. And this is where he encountered and encountered bears for the first time. He discovered his passion pretty much right away for them. So it was in Alaska that he actually attributed his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

So he fell in love with the wild and he ended up changing his entire life. He spent 13 summers living in remote areas of Alaska with the bears and then would fly back to California for the winters and work at odd jobs, restaurants, serving, bartending, things like that. He felt a deep connection with nature and the escape from daily life that those summers and those experiences provided him, which is something I think we can all connect with. I was going to say, what a cool way to live your life. Yeah. That is just like my dream life go up to Alaska and be outdoors with animals and seeing grizzly bears. Like, that just must have been amazing.

Amazing. And he did it for so long, you know? Yeah. And he just, he didn't live a lavish life. He made literally enough to get by in the winter and enough to save up to make these trips up to Alaska. And then he lived off the land. Wow. During the summers.

And he was, but he was mostly on his own. And the last, so he spent 13 summers there. and the last five, he started bringing camera equipment up there and recording his experiences. That's literally my dream to go up to a beautiful location and take pictures and research and take videos of just beautiful landscape, beautiful animals, the outdoors. Like, this guy is living my dream. Well, I think you're going to change your mind eventually. But yeah, I think from the intro to the story, I think I'm going to change my mind too.

Yeah. So he wanted to show the bears in their natural habitat and he recorded over 100 hours of footage. He would migrate with the bears throughout the peninsula as the seasons moved on and the salmon started running. So he would literally live with these bears for months at a time and follow their daily habits. And for these trips, he was. dropped off and picked up by a seaplane in remote areas of Catmine National Park. And for this trip that we're going to focus on, his friend Willie Fulton was the pilot that transported him back and forth. And he was the one who ultimately discovered the death of Tim and his girlfriend, Amy.

Not much is actually known about Amy other than she was a physician's assistant in Aurora, Colorado. but she fell in love with Tim's 1997 book called Among Grizzlies living with wild bears in Alaska, and she eventually met him and fell in love with him as a person. And they spent parts of three summers together up in Alaska, and she eventually quit her job in January of 2003 and moved to Malibu, where she was planning to start a new job after she and Tim returned from Alaska for the winter. So they had been dating for several years prior to this trip. And she finally was like, you know what?

This is the real deal. And I'm going to quit my job and move in with you. And they never spent full summers together up in Alaska. She would only go up for a couple weeks at a time. But she was with him at the time of his death. So she also only appeared twice in all of the hours of the footage that Tim has. and in Tim's diary, personal diary and journal, he even stated that she was pretty afraid of the bears. So remember, Tim is documenting literally everything.

He's like the pioneer of vlogging. Before vlogging was a thing. Before vlogging was a thing. He was on it. Almost every waking moment he filmed, whether it was the bears, his daily life, different encounters with wildlife. He was on it. Just documenting everything that. happened. Exactly, exactly. So there is, and I'll mention it later, but there is a documentary out about

Timothy Treadwell and his life, and most of it is personal footage that Tim had then recorded himself. That's really cool. It's really interesting. So a little bit about Katmai National Park. It was established in 1918, and it's located on the Alaskan Peninsula right across from Codiac Island, and it encompasses more than 4 million acres, which is a little bit less than the size of Connecticut, the state of Connecticut, just for some reference. It was originally founded to protect the area around a huge major volcanic eruption that happened in 1912, and it formed what's now called the Valley of 10,000 smokes, which is a huge valley.

It's 40 square miles and can go down to 700 feet deep. And it's kind of like what the park is centered around. A lot of people go to see that valley. Very cool. Most of the park is designated wilderness, so all hunting has been banned. And the park itself has a total of about 3,000 of the total 35,000 Alaska and grizzly bears, which are also referred to as brown bears. So they have a very dense population of grizzlies in this park.

Every photo I've ever seen of this park has grizzly bears in it. And actually, the last time I was in Alaska, I wanted to go to Cat My National Park so badly. I was researching it so much because there's a lookout that you can go to where you actually look into this waterfall. There's a bunch of waterfalls and there's grizzly bears fishing for salmon there. And it's not one or two grizzly bears. It's like 50 grizzly bears will just be down there fishing. Yeah, and salmon run. Yeah, and you can go down there and you can watch them.

And I wanted to go down there so badly, but you can't drive there. You have to take a plane. Right. So that was what, because I was in Kenai, which isn't that far mileage-wise, but you can't drive there. You have to take one of those little charter planes. Which is awesome. I mean.

Which is very cool. Yeah, there's something to be said about keeping remote wild areas wild. Well, that's Alaska, the last frontier. It's all wild. Most of Alaska you actually can't get to unless you're in a plane. So a lot of people in Alaska are actually pilots or have planes or. or something because most of Alaska, you cannot explore without one. Alaska is definitely on my list for this upcoming year because I'm so close.

I can take a ferry there. You are. Back to the Grizzlies in the park. Most of them weigh in at over a thousand pounds easily. Okay. I'm sorry I have to interrupt one more time, but if you go on Katmai's National Park, Instagram, they actually have a fat bear contest every fall before hibernation where they weigh the bears. I don't know how exactly they weigh them.

I don't know if they walk over something or if it's just by their size, they estimate their weight. But there's actually a bear contest and you can vote for which bear you think is going to be the fattest before the hibernation. Brilliant. I thought it was the cutest thing and I followed it so hard. past fall. I'm definitely looking into that because that is excellent marketing. Excellent marketing. Be better. And they post photos of like the winning bear. Just go on their Instagram and you'll see the winning bear. I forget her name. It was a girl. And she, I'm pretty sure she won last year too. But she's a big girl. She thick. Okay. I will be. All right. I will be looking into that after this. Tell your story. I'm sorry. Moving forward.

So most of them weigh in over a thousand pounds. And the park itself contains the world's largest protected brown bear population, which is probably why Tim chose it for his studies. And in the 85-year history of the park, so up until that time, so we're talking 2003, up until that time, no park visitor had ever been killed by a grizzly, which is kind of, you know, says something. because they have so many bears, such a high density of the population and no fatalities from a park visitor. So, I mean, they had a good track record. Kind of from the start, Tim had issues with the National Park Association as they expressed their worries about his behavior.

According to the file kept on him by the park service, Rangers reported that he had at least six violations from 1994 to 2003. So something that you should know about Tim is he was a character. He did things erratically, differently. He was very animated. He, as my mom would say, marched to the beat of his own drum. He did things his own way, which is admirable, but it also, as you'll see, probably contributed to his downfall. Included among these violations were guys. riding tourists without a license, camping in the same area for longer than the park service is seven-day limit, improper food storage. So once he was cited for having a cooler, with food in it, still in his tent. So not using proper bare boxes and food storage when you're in bear

country, as we know, wildlife harassment and conflicts with visitors and their guides. So Treadwell also frustrated the authorities by refusing to install an electric fence around his camp and refusing to carry bear spray to use as a deterrent. And in fact... So he wasn't really taking any precautions for if a bear was to approach him. No. And quite the opposite, he approached bears all of the time. There's footage in his video archives that show him within inches of bears.

And reaching out and having like a cub sniff his hand. and it's wild. I highly recommend watching this documentary. It is available for free on YouTube. I'm going to watch this later tonight. So in fact, he actually didn't carry any sort of deterrent or weapon at all. So not even bear spray. I carry bear spray even on the East Coast.

I mean, it's not for bears. It's probably more for people, but I still carry bear spray. Yeah, I mean, that would have come in handy on the trip we were just talking about. Yeah, when we ran into the back there. Yeah, that was. And when we looked up the sounds later, it was the noises of an aggressive fare that was like getting ready to attack. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that was scary for sure. So I can't even imagine he just, he lived for this stuff. He lived for those types of encounters. So he did say that at one time he did carry pepper spray with him and he had to use it once, but he said he felt terrible grief over the pain. He perceived it had caused the bear and then refused to carry it from then on. So basically he had to use this deterrent spray on a bear and he felt like upset the bear and he didn't like that. So then he refused to carry spray from there on out.

Makes sense. take that for what you will. Yeah. So Deb Liggett, who was the superintendent of Katmai National Park, was concerned about him. She said that they met for coffee in Anchorage a couple years before his death. And she said, I told him that if we had any more violations from him, we would petition the U.S. to ban him from the park. She said, I think the work you're doing is great. I applaud you because you're winning fans for the bears.

but you need to be more careful because you're going to get somebody hurt or somebody in trouble because she was afraid that one swipe of a paw would undo all of the advocacy that he had put in, get people to be frenzied about people eating grizzlies and kind of do more harm than good when it came to how people viewed bears. And at this point, they had no fatalities from bears either. So risking that reputation was dangerous. Exactly. So Tim's last expedition and last season in Alaska was in 2003.

So he often established his camp either on or near established bear trails. So he had a higher likelihood of running into them. So he was inserting himself into their lives. He was doing the opposite of what. Every national park tells you to do when it comes to bears. Correct. Pretty much. Yep.

Yeah. Correct. So during this last season, he also hid and camouflaged his camp at what he dubbed the grizzly maze within the thick alder brush and an effort to hide from the park service because they had a new rule which required all back country campers to move their camp at least one mile every five days. So when he set up camp, he hunkered down there and he lived there until it was time for the bears to move on at which time he would move with them.

But so he wanted to disguise and camouflage his setup from the park service so he didn't have to move until it was time. In late June 2003, Tim and his girlfriend, Amy, arrived in Katmai and set up camp at Hollow Bay in what Tim referred to as the sanctuary. So there's different parts of the area of the park that he is in that he nicknames throughout his footage. So this part of the park, he nicknamed the sanctuary. They spend some time there, and then Amy returns to California after a couple of weeks, and then returns, just as Tim was moving his camp to what's called the Grizzly Maze on Cufflia Lake. I don't know if I pronounce that

right. I also don't know. Yeah, I've never heard of it. And I've never heard it pronounced. So as he was moving to this more dense campsite area, dense with a lot of underbrush and trees, whereas the sanctuary was a more open, but you had a higher area of visibility in the sanctuary versus this place, very dense, underbrush, hard to see, especially bears approaching you. Okay. So Willie Fulton, who is the seaplane pilot and their friend, drops the pair off on September 29, 2003. Tim had sent a letter back with Willie in which he wrote a few of the bears at his camp were more aggressive than usual. Tim and Amy decided to extend their stay by one week in effort to locate a favorite female brown bear of theirs that they hadn't seen earlier.

and he, Tim also writes in his diary that Amy believes that he is quote unquote hellbent on destruction and that it would be her last season in Alaska with him. So it seems like their relationship was kind of on the rocks based on Tim's behavior with the bears. She was recognizing how dangerous he was being. That's right. She expressed to him that she was really looking forward to starting a new job and she was desperate to return to California.

On Sunday, October 5th, 2003, sometime between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m., Tim and Amy make a satellite phone call to Joel Palvac, program director at Grizzly People, which is the foundation that Tim and her are co-founders of. At the time, there was no problem at all. She didn't hear any sort of issue in their voices. They didn't express any concern to her. and they both seem to be in happy spirits. So that's October 5th, October 6th.

So a day later, Willie returned to the area to pick the two up. So they had a designated spot where they would meet him on the beach. He lands the plane, gets out on the beach and doesn't see them, which is a little abnormal, but not cause for concern right away. So he's calling out to them. He said it was windy, so he wasn't sure if they just couldn't hear him over the wind. So he starts up this hill towards where he knows their camp is to see if they're just still gathering their things. And about three quarters of the way up there, he started to feel like something was off.

And he felt really strange. It was eerily quiet. And being an experienced outdoorsman, he kind of recognized the signs of something's not quite right. And he decided to turn around to the plane. And as he was making his way back to the plane, something called. caught his eye and he turned and there was a grizzly bear quietly stalking him through the dense brush. Oh.

Which is terrifying. That's so terrifying. He quickly made his way back to the plane and decided to survey the area from the safety of the air. And while looking down from the window of his seaplane, he saw a bear consuming a human ribcage, which he knew was either Tim or Amy. Oh, my. Yeah.

Like, he saw it happening. Mm-hmm. Wow. So, Willie repeatedly swooped the plane really low over the area to try and run this bear away and scare him off. But every time he did, the bear would hold his ground and start eating faster, which is, I know, I know, I know. I wish people could see my face right now. Oh, my. It's cringy.

And, yeah. It's difficult. So this is what I am. That like almost makes me want to cry. Just like thinking. I will say I watched this documentary called Grizzly Man, by the way. And I teared up a couple times because they obviously didn't show any footage. There is no video footage of this.

Yeah, I'm sure he wasn't filming it while it was happening. But the way the documentary is filmed is you connect with Timothy. you can't help but connect with him because most of it is his footage that he just filmed himself, you know. So you get to know him. You get to know him. And you get to know his mission and what he stood for and the connection he felt to not only the bears, but the landscape and his love and passion for conserving Alaska and it's animals that it makes you want to cry, you know. And I recommend watching it for, you know, it's free. Look it up on YouTube.

Yeah, I'm going to watch it tonight, probably. Yeah, and coming from just a little side note before I continue, coming from a person that obviously the vast majority of our listeners, I would assume, feel a love for the wilderness and animals. But coming from a person who has dedicated a lot of their life to animals, And not just in the veterinary fields, but as you know, I worked for several years at a wolf sanctuary in Colorado. And the whole purpose of that was to educate people on the importance of wolves and why we should protect them. And the dangers they face and conservation issues, et cetera.

And that's what Timothy was trying to do in a different way. So I personally was really moved by his story. and it's really unfortunate the way it ended, but I understand his mission, and I really hope that people can see through his erratic, you know, flare and tendencies that... Like, he was doing this thing because he seriously believed and was trying to help them, even if it wasn't the orthodox way that people were asking him to go about it. Yep, and a lot of people, as we'll talk about, kind of put him down, and said, you know, he got what he deserved.

He was crazy and he was a psychopath and all this stuff. But so, yeah, his methods were unconventional and they were dangerous and not recommended to ever be repeated. But his heart was in the right place. Yeah. So moving on, this part is also a little rough. Willie ended up contacting the National Park Service and Alaska State Troopers to report the situation and call for help. And he led them to the area that he had just. walked and while stopping to survey the area, someone noticed a bear approaching them. They

immediately fired and once the bear was dead, Willie said, this must have been the same bear that killed my friends because it was the same one that was stalking him when he arrived to pick them up. As they're searching the area, Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine and right forearm and hand with his wrist swatch still on were recovered a short distance from the camp. and Amy's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt. Timothy was mostly consumed by the bear, but Amy was cached. So a lot of, for people who don't know, a lot of predators will kill and cash their food. So they're basically saving it for later, but they're bearing here to keep it away from other predators.

So other predators can't get to it, essentially? A large male bear, which was actually a tagged bear. He had a tattoo on the inner part of his lip. He was number 141 was protecting the campsite. And he was killed by the park rangers during their attempt to retrieve the bodies. And a second adolescent bear was also killed a short time later when it charged park rangers during their recovery efforts. And they did an on-site necropsy, so like an autopsy for an animal. of that bear 141, and its stomach contents revealed human remains inside.

So he was the bear responsible for the attack and consumption of Amy and Tim. Unfortunately, the younger bear was consumed by other animals before it could be necropsyed. So that other bear was never fully tested or looked into. But they believe that it was multiple bears. that did this? They know, you'll find out pretty soon. There is one bear responsible, but that other bear, the younger one,

was involved after the fact. Okay. So, like I said, this documentary is full of footage of Timothy, and it's so chilling because there's so much footage of him pretty much immediately before his death. I was just going to say, don't tell me this was all filmed. Well, okay. Oh, God.

I know. So 10 days before his death, there is footage that is shown in the documentary that shows Timothy speaking in front of a bear that he named Ollie. So if you can picture it, he's kind of on the edge of this stream, and there's a grizzly right behind him. Like, I'm talking like less than 20 feet behind him, just doing its thing in the river. and he had encountered him a few days prior. And like I said, he has studied these bears for years.

He names them all. He gets to know them all. But this one he had never seen before until recently. And he was describing him and saying that he described him as like surly with some aggression issues. And he was on the thinner side. So he was hungry. He was hungry.

And he actually, the bear actually charged him at one point, not in the footage, but he was describing the charge. And Timothy held his ground and ended up getting the bear to back down a little bit. But he goes on to explain that after the encounter, Timothy is kind of reflecting on the experience. And he does say, quote, I was able to deter him, but I will tell you something. It is the old bear, the one that is struggling for survival, who is the one you must be very careful of. For these are the bears that on occasion, for survival, will kill and consume humans. Could Ollie possibly kill and eat Timothy Treadwell? I think if you are a week around him, you're going down his gullet.

So he says that, 10 days before he guys. So he knew it was a possibility. Or like he not knew it was a possibility, but he was already weary of him. him of this bear. Right. And, you know, he takes a lot of unnecessary risk all the time. That's very clear in his, in the footage of him. But he's also not, and this is controversial. A lot of people have very different opinions on this. But I don't think that he was stupid. He spent enough time around bears to know what to look out for and what is dangerous. I mean, he clearly just said that. You get to know them. It's like,

in a very different perspective, but like in veterinary medicine, we know what to look out for when a dog or a cat is stressed and seems like they might. Like you can read their body language. You know, you get to know how they act. Right. Like contrary to a lot of people's thoughts, he didn't live in a fairy tale land that he thought that they were cuddly, cute little teddy bears. Yes, he might have portrayed that sometimes by the way he spoke to them. I mean, in the footage, you can, you can see him. He clearly talks to them. Like, you would talk to your dog or cat. Like in the little cute voice, like, do, de, de, de, you know, which is, it's kind of like,

what the fuck are you doing? But it was just part of who he was. So the saddest thing about that, well, one of the saddest things about this whole situation is Willie says that Tim would have never wanted the bear to be killed. he would have never wanted one of the animals that he loved to be killed because of him. Yeah. I mean, we do live in a world that if an animal is known to attack and kill and consume a person, they should probably not be left to do it again.

Yeah, it's too risky. There is a man named Sam Egli, who is a helicopter pilot that was high. to assist the cleanup of this entire site. And when he said that the bear was cut open in the field during the necropsy, they emptied his stomach, obviously found remains, human remains in it. And they had to haul away four garbage bags worth of human remains and clothing outside of this bear. So remember, these animals are huge. The coroner received the remains in it looked like a metal coffin type container.

in different, with various different bags in it. And he had the unfortunate task of sorting through them, identifying which parts were Amy and what was Tim. And the saddest part of this and the most horrifying part of this is that there was audio recovered and analyzed by the Alaska State Troopers that caught this entire attack on film. Oh, my God. Is that in the documentary?

So yes and no. So like I said, Tim, the OG vlogger, documented everything. So it was not abnormal to have his camera running for pretty much everything. The video camera was on and it captured audio, but the lens cap was still on. And it's rumored that the attack happened so quickly that it's. Amy was the one to pick up the camera and turn it on because she wasn't exactly sure of what was happening in the moment because she was in the tent. And in this whole, it happened so fast. And obviously it took a turn for the worst that she never removed the cap of the video recorder.

So it's on, it's running, it's capturing audio, but there is no visual video footage. It's just audio. Thankfully. Thankfully. And it is helpful because, I mean, all. describe it. So again, warning for anybody that doesn't want to hear these details because this is from the actual attack. And it's helpful to put the pieces together of what actually happened to them. Because if it wasn't for that, this man, Willie, would have just walked up to this camp, or someone would have walked up to this camp, saw all these remains, and would have no idea what happened. You know, they wouldn't have the details of what happened. So as I said, the exact details of what led up to the incident are vague and pretty unclear, but there are several theories. What we do know for sure

is that they heard a bear outside of their tent as they were inside it, relaxing and about to eat on the night of Sunday, October 5th. And remember, they're going to be picked up by Willie the next morning. So this is their very last night of the summer season. Amy turns on the camera. So this is where the audio comes in. This is what we know from the audio. Amy turns on the camera and asks if the bear is still out there. Tim then yells for Amy, get out of here, get out of here. I'm getting killed. Amy leaves the tent because you can hear the sound of the zipper and the tent door being opened and sees Tim on the ground struggling with his head inside of the bear's mouth and yells for and she yells to him, play dead, play dead. And he responds saying,

get out of here, get out of here. And Amy is heard screaming. And you can hear the rain hitting the tent. So there's wind, rain. There's screaming, muffling. It's not very clear audio, but it's something. So seconds pass. And then she says it again, play dead.

And with all the screaming and yelling, it seems to work. And the bear lets go of Tim and backs off. So he breaks his attack. And there's a short conversation between Amy and Tim. So he's still conscious. He's having a conversation with her. And they're trying to determine if the bear is truly gone and not coming back. And it's believed that Amy approaches Tim by the sounds caught on the tape,

but the bear returns as she's approaching him to help him so she has to back off again. And Tim is clearly heard screaming that playing dead isn't working and begs for her to hit the bear with something. thing. So she does. She starts hitting the bear with a frying pan on top of the head. So this is a woman that, let's just put this in perspective. This is a woman who's terrified of bears and is about to end or not to say that, okay, you're planning to break up with someone. You're not going to help them from getting them all to death. But she's in an uncomfortable situation. Like she never stayed the whole summer anyway because of her fear. In all the footage that is, that Tim has of her, the brief appearances she makes, when she's around Bear, she's leaning away from them.

She's clearly uncomfortable. But she is fighting for Tim's life. She's beating the Bear on the head. So she's not just yelling from afar. You have to be so close to be hitting a bear with a frying pan. So you can... The handle on that. is like six inches. I know. Like you're touching the bear. Yep. So she's there.

She's whacking the shit out of this bear, trying with everything that she has to get him to let go of Tim. And you can hear Tim moaning, making sounds. And it's believed at this point in the attack that the bear lets go of Tim's head and then bites him on the upper part of his leg and starts to drag him away. and Amy is losing her mind. She's screaming as loud as she can. And Tim is heard over the sounds of the storm and over,

and over Amy screaming, Amy, you need to get away, get away. At this point, it's very clear. He knows he's done for. He went from saying, please help me do something to let me go. You need to get away. He knew at this point that Amy needed to try and save herself. It's really hard to get through. This is a really hard story.

I know. This is very, like, in detail of exactly what happened to these people. Yeah. So in the audio, only really low, it's not like a theatrical. It kind of reminded me of the Revenant, the movie The Revenant. Do you remember with Leo DiCaprio? Have you ever seen it? Yeah, with the bear.

With the bear attack. and it's like this wild crazy attack scene and fight. But in reality, in this situation, there was only really low growls of the bear and like intermittent and periodic grunts from the bear, which is even more terrifying because it's kind of this like, I don't know. It's not a big-

silent attack. Yes. And you can hear Tim being dragged off and his scream kind of and sounds just fade away as he's being dragged away. And he's being dragged away from the camp area. As the tape comes to an end, the sounds of Amy's screams rise to a new level. So she's obviously freaking out the entire time, but there's a change in the pitch of screams at this point. And there's a biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game named Larry Vival.

Van Dale, and he theorizes that Amy's screams may have prompted the bear to return and kill her. But we don't know the details of Amy's death as clearly as Tim's because the videotape ended. It ran out of tape. That was it. So there is no audio of the attack on Amy. All we know is that the bear came back and killed her and cashed her body before consuming or after consuming Tim. remains, which I'm assuming is after because why would Amy stick to the area as her boyfriend

is being eaten? Like feet away? Away from her. Another side note, Jewel, who is the co-founder of that foundation with Timps, who is actually was obviously one of his close friends, but they also dated for several years. She is the only person who has this audio. and she has no plans of duplicating it or releasing it. So there is audio on the internet that claims to be the real deal,

but it is rumored to be fake. It's not real. Yeah. Yeah. And there is so much detail on the actual audio that it, I mean, for someone to duplicate it and replicate it and say that it's real, wouldn't be too hard to do because there's so much detail.

Like written out of what is in it. Yeah. Exactly. So the bear that was killed at the campsite, like I said, he was tagged. He was number 141. And at the time of the necropsy, the field necropsy, which was three days after Tim and Amy were killed, the bear was reported to be scrawny, but still, you know, over a thousand pounds. He was 28 years old. And he was probably looking to fatten up for winter. Remember this is in October. Yeah, it's right before the cold weather comes in, especially in October. October is like right at the start almost of winter in Alaska. And he also had broken canines and they were worn all the way down to the gums. And if you know anything about wildlife and what that means, this bear was fighting for resources, I'm sure. He's an older bear.

his canine, so the four big teeth in the mouth, are worn down either due to injuries or fights or just natural progression of aging, he's in competition for food. And he probably wasn't, he wasn't starving, obviously, but he was opportunistic at this point. And he was taking what he could get, I'm sure, which it's just, it's sickening to even think about it that way, but from a very, from a removed perspective, like, this is nature. From a wildlife nature perspective of why he would even go after people, because bears aren't known to, I mean, there are bear attacks, but they don't specifically target and hunt people for food.

So to try and understand why he would target a person. That's right. And it makes sense. You know, a lot of reports. There are rare. occasions where a healthy animal will attack a person, but overwhelmingly, there is something wrong. Whether it be an illness, they're underweight, they're starving, they have some sort of disease, or they're young, like an inexperienced, like mountain lions are known to do that,

attack people in a lot of, in a lot of cases. I mean, when I worked for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, there was a couple cases that were reported of attacks on people, and it came to find out that their mother, who teaches them to hunt efficiently and prey to go after, had been poached and killed. So these two mountain lines were young and inexperienced and resorted to attacking people. Right. Yeah. So anyways, so this biologist goes on to say that

right at the end of the three-month-long salmon spawn is when this happened, which is when this happened, which would indicate that the bear was no longer able to feed on natural food items as efficiently and was in competition with other younger, stronger, and more dominant bears for what little food remained. We know from past experience that an older bear no longer able to feed on natural food will make more use of garbage and often raid camps and cabins if it ever has those food items available. in it. It's believed that Bear 141 is the same bear that Tim named Ollie in the footage recorded of him 10 days before his death. So looking back on that footage and having him say those words, you need to be afraid or cautious of bears like this one. It's so creepy.

It's really, it's really, it's really creepy. It's just, I want to make it like through the story, I don't want people to be like, oh, there's man eating grizzly bears and, you know. No, of course not. Not the takeaway from this. This isn't the takeaway. So there are reasons why situations like this happen. And most of the time is there are factors that contribute to an attack like this. It's not just because these animals are vicious predators that we should all be afraid of always.

and go out and hunt and kill them all. That's not the point of this. At the end of the day, these animals are trying to survive. They're not, they don't have a grocery store where they can go pick up what they need. Like, they're actually out in the wild and just trying to survive like the rest of us. Right. The great debate of Timothy's work is, like I mentioned, a pretty hot topic. A lot of people believe his work was admirable.

He was bringing a lot of much needed attention to, the grizzly by advocating for their protection and preservation of the land that they lived on, keeping Alaska wild. But others acknowledge, yeah, he may have meant well, but they don't agree with his tactics at all. A lot of people say he asked for it and he got what he deserved because he lost sight of the danger that of what he was doing and that he blurred the lines, that boundary between him and these massive apex predators. Yeah.

And a lot of his friends received hate mail, literally thousands of letters from people all around the world saying he was a stereotypical wacko environmentalist, and that bears have known to have a diet of liberals and Democrats and that maybe we should increase the population of bears in places like Berkeley campus. Like, come on. You know, that's horrible. It's horrible.

I also feel like that just takes away everything he had been working for for so long, too. Like, that's exactly. Well, that's what that woman was warning him about. Remember? Was that. Yeah. Yeah. Everything, all his work was going to be for nothing because if he was attacked or someone

got hurt, they were going to forget about all the research that he had done. Exactly. It's going to, that one incident, which is obviously massive, is going to overshadow. is going to overshadow the years and hundreds and thousands of hours of work that he put in to protecting Grizzlies. I guess my biggest issue with the way he handled things. And I don't totally, I don't agree with not taking the precautions. But again, that is his choice.

He is the one out there. What I don't get is why he didn't take more precautions. when his girlfriend was with him, who was specifically scared. And he already, like the tape showed, he was already weary of this bear, and he had his girlfriend with him. I feel like that was irresponsible to not consider that as, like, a big issue that if he was by himself to risk, to have that risk,

but with your girlfriend there is a totally different story for me. Yeah, and, you know, that's something that I guess we'll never know why that he chose to do that. And even why she, I mean, she did say after this she was done, like she didn't want to do it anymore. But she was an active participant in this. No one forced her to go to Alaska with him. And she knew what she was getting herself into when she went. It wasn't her first summer. Right.

And she knew him on these expeditions. And she knew the way he did things. It wasn't like she was under the last. this illusion that this was her first trip. And she thought she was going to be in a cabin away from the bears. Right. She knew. Yeah.

Which doesn't make her fault or anyone's fault. It's just. It happened. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people find fault and how he wanted to become one of the bears. They viewed it as the ultimate disrespect for the bear and what they represent. And that he did more damage than good as he was habituating the animals to people.

which is a great point. I mean, this wasn't just bears. It's actually really cute to watch, but in his footage, there's foxes that, you know, are on his tent. He even pets them, hangs out with them, they follow him around. And even with studying the bears in this way, you're habituating them to people. And whether or not he, I don't believe he was feeding them or whatever, but it's a big problem. And it's a big problem in a lot of national parks.

You see it everywhere. Don't feed the wildlife. Stop feeding. Don't even, like, I have to say, Yellowstone is the worst national park I have been to for that purpose of how people react to the animals around because there are so many animals that are in that park. And people treat it like an amusement park where I have seen.

Disneyland. It's, they do. It's infuriating to watch and to witness in person. I have seen people come within five feet of an elk and her baby taking photos. And the park rangers came by and ordered them to step away. And I was pretty far away. I was across the river and saw all this stuff going on. So I was far away, but I was down the road from it. And people, the park rangers demanded them to leave.

And people walking by me to get to their cars were talking about how upset they were that they had to leave because they paid to get in and wanted to take pictures of these elk. You know, I could go on a rant about this subject. I have a little something planned that kind of has to do with that for a future episode. But you're right. You're absolutely right. The amount of people that think. And for, it's not just recently, but of course it's gotten worse with the development of the internet and getting the perfect picture and the perfect experience or whatever. However, it's always been an issue. If you do any sort of research into the history of Yellowstone and National Parks in general, it's always been a problem. And it takes away not only from the experience of other people, you're putting those animals in risk, at risk, by feeding them and habituating them to people.

They're braver. They're going to associate people with food. They're going to attempt to approach people. And they're going to get killed. The park service is going to euthanize them, which has happened on many occasions. And it's because people do this shit. And I'm sorry, but it gets me so amped up. And if you don't.

Well, not only, not only habiturates. When you habituate them, they lose their natural instinct because they're not searching for food and the way that they normally would be. So when there are people around, they're now associating people with food instead of going out looking for their food. So when there's people that aren't around, especially in the shoulder seasons, these animals are not going to have that natural instinct to find their own food. So that's a huge problem for their survival for when you're doing this. So when you go to the national parks and you think, oh, it's just a piece of bread or, oh, it's just my chip that I'm giving them or anything like that, you are contributing to a huge problem. Yeah. And it's not just you.

Like if you think it's just you feeding this piece of bread or it's just you, it's just one piece. It's not. It's you plus a million other people who come into this park and do the exact same thing. Yeah, beautifully said. That's exactly the problem. And to kind of end this conversation, because I'm sure we're going to get into it in a different. We're both so angry about it that we piss. It really upsets me.

But if there is anybody who hasn't heard of this account, please follow them on Instagram. It's called Torons of Yellowstone. And it's literally footage of idiots in different national parks, mainly Yellowstone and Teton. area. But this person posts videos and photos from submissions from all over the place of people being idiots in national parks, whether it's feeding the wildlife, approaching wildlife, putting their kids on top of bison, entering the hot springs. Putting kids on top of bison, that is wild. Just entering the hot springs, like, you know, clearly marked paths, you know, stay on boardwalk, people off the boardwalk.

like trying to get a cool picture. It's just it's one of those accounts that I hate to love. But I definitely recommend it to anybody who is upset about the same thing because you can laugh at how stupid people are, even though it's infuriating because it's still a problem. But anyway, don't end up being one of these people on this. Don't be a tour on. You are in the wild.

You just have to remember that when you're in the park. Right. But anyway, our lecture for all of you who probably don't even do this stuff, since you're listening to National Park stuff, you probably don't even do this. So sorry for our mom lecture, but we just start. We're probably just speaking to the choir, essentially, and that's fine. But I'm sure there's people who have the same grievances. And it's just, you don't talk about this every day. So it's nice to get it off your chest. Yeah. Now I'm like angry. Okay. Let's bring it back to Tim. Bring it back to Tim and now, yeah. Okay. Okay. So amongst the other issues that people had with Tim and his methods is the perception of how he was doing things led a lot of people to believe that these animals are safe. And you can approach them and talk to them like cuddly bears. And so he was setting a bad example. Yeah. And,

And a lot of native peoples of Alaska have clearly lived with these animals for thousands and thousands of years. And they are very throughout history, it is very apparent that they had a clear respect for them. They avoided them, respected their space. They lived amongst each other. But there was definitely a line and a boundary that you did not cross that Tim crossed frequently. and they found fault with him for doing that. On the other side of it, there's a bear researcher named Charlie Russell

who actually lived with bears as well, but in Russia. And he brought up the point of if Timothy had spent those 13 years killing bears and guiding others to do the same and he was eventually killed by one, he would have been remembered in Alaska with great admiration, which is also a good point.

So if he was a famous grizzly hunter and he led an outfit that you could go and trophy hunt grizzlies, but he ended up going down by one of them, a lot of people would have viewed his death as admirable and would have applauded his work. But because he was a quote-unquote psychopathist hippie that met that same fate, a lot of people disrespect, like disrespect, memory. So yeah, I found that interesting. But overall, I think there are two points that are valid in their own way. And in their own way. Yeah. Yep. And I mean, no matter what side you're on, a lot of, most people can agree that the foolish disregard for his own safety and his overconfidence with the bears, as well as placing anthropomorphic values on the bears contributed to his death and the death of Amy. So my anthropomorphic meaning, you're attributing human emotions and values onto animals.

You're interjecting and applying what you would feel as a human. Like, prime example, earlier on when he said he used bear spray on this bear and he's afraid because it might have hurt his feelings. That bear probably didn't give a crap that he was just sprayed by bear spray. Yeah, he's deterred. he ran away, but Tim viewed it as. He's in Picking, but besides that. Yeah.

So he's giving these animals, personal. Human emotions. Human emotions. And that's one of his biggest mistakes. So to wrap this up, he had, like I said, under all of this, he had a really admirable mission. He did a lot with his life and for bears. the advocacy and getting the word out about the animals.

He, like I mentioned earlier, was a co-founder of grizzly people along with that woman, Jewel, and this organization is dedicated to preserving grizzly habitat. So he's not just wanting to save the bears. He wants to save the land that we all hold as a treasure as well. He wrote a couple books, one of them among grizzlies living with the wild bears and the one that Amy read back in 97. And he was kind of like a celebrity in a way. He appeared on a lot of programs like the David Letterman show.

Like he wasn't just a random. He wasn't just a random guy out in the woods that people are following what he was doing. And he was a big advocate for not just bears, but for all wildlife. He spoke out a lot about Fox. Like I said, there was, he made fox friends when he was out there. And he advocated for their protection against different things like sport hunting of fox. A lot of fox are factory farmed and used and raised for their fur. He called for an end to that.

And a banning of steel jaw traps that a lot of people used to kill them. So he was a champion for a lot of different. animals and he traveled the country. He made appearances not just on the David Letterman show. He was on this discovery channel. He was on Dateline NBC. He went to schools all over the country and held viewings of his footage and presented all his findings and did all these lectures. And he just wanted to share his knowledge. And he did this all for free. Like he never charged anybody to, for his presentation. He truly just wanted to, spread the work. It was truly his passion. Yep. He just wanted to. This was so important to him.

Yep. He really just wanted to educate the people of the world and especially the next generation, so school children about the animals and how important it was to preserve the wild world. And a clip in the hundreds of hours of video footage that he has, he, and this is where I teared up a little bit, he said, he's, you know, filming himself all alone. And he starts to tear up and he said, you know, it's good work. I feel good about myself doing it. And I want to continue it. I will die for these animals.

Thank you to these animals for giving me a life. Because if you remember, he was an addict. He almost died. He had a really rough life before this. And the animals in his mind saved him. They gave him a purpose. And they gave him a purpose. So in one of his last letters that he wrote, he says,

death may be the best option as my work would be much more seriously looked at. And it would make the difference that while living, I just can't do. The video footage we have of him was recorded on October 5th hours before his death. So this is what from the footage, this next quote, is recorded just a couple hours. before he died. He, it's kind of like blustering, it's raining, which is also creepy because in the audio footage, remember it was raining. It's like foreshadowing in real life. Yeah. He says, you know, I live for them. I die for them. I love this. It's tough work, but it's the only work I know, and it's the only work that I want to know. Please take care of these animals and take care of this earth.

and that was it. And he died a couple hours later. And for all of that, I just want to say Tim's work was important. And like, I'm already crying. Like I'm crying right now. I was going to say as someone who such feels so strongly for four animals and for the planet. And I see what's happening to them for someone to dedicate their entire life to that. Like this isn't someone that was just like, you know, I really like bears. They're cool, and we should probably protect them. This is someone who dedicated, literally dedicated their life. Right. I don't know anybody that dedicates their life like that. No, to anything. To anything. Never mind. Yeah. So he did make an impact on a lot of people, clearly, no matter if you were for or against him, he brought the story to the attention of people.

You could just- going to say no matter what, if you disagree or not, he brought his work to your attention. Yep. And you learned about bears because of him, whether you agreed with him or not. So for that, I personally think that his story in his life did make a difference to a lot of people. And I can say for sure, it certainly changed, certainly made a difference in my life. And I really hope that I did his story justice. I think you did a very good job telling his story. Thank you.

That was such a good story. Isn't it? I just, like I said, I knew of him and I knew like the rough outline of like what happened. Like I knew he was a bear researcher and he got eaten by bear. Like I knew what like the average person knows. But after watching the documentary and doing a lot of research on him and his life and his life were his life. work, I just really connected with his mission. And I thought that even if you do think he's a wakadoo and even, I mean, there are even parts of the documentary coming from someone who is on his side, I was kind of like, that's a little bit of a wacadoo. Yeah. I'm not like his number one fan or anything, but I appreciate, I can appreciate and connect with his mission. And I think that it was really important. And it.

it's tragic the way that him and Amy went. But I mean, they were out there without protection. They did last a really long time. I mean, he lost in a long-ass time. He did that for over 10 years. Yeah. I am going to, I will post a couple pictures on our Instagram of Tim and Amy, but I'm going to post on our Patreon a few more photos that I don't want to post on Instagram just because there's no pictures of, like I said, the attack situation, but there are pictures of the actual bear and the necropsy and some documents from the National Park Services effort to clean the area up and things like that. So we're just going to keep that to Patreon.

So if you want to see that and you want to know more, you can look at it there. But I do encourage everyone to watch that documentary. I know I'm going to be watching that tonight. And I know that was really rough at times. and we did get off on a rant, but I think it's all very important. I do too. So that's it for this week. If you want to follow our journey, you can find us on Instagram at National Park After Dark.

You can check out our website, npaddpodcast.com or send us an email at npad podcast at gmail.com. And we look forward to hearing from you guys and seeing you next week. So remember to enjoy the view. you. But watch, you're back. That was awesome. Yay. Yay. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount.

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