National Park After Dark - Lone Survivor: Yosemite National Park

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Donnie Priest was just 10 years old when the plane carrying his family crashed just outside of Yosemite National Park, killing all on board except for him. His incredible story of survival was only the beginning - it was what he went on to do with his life that would up being the true inspiration. Join us for a LIVE show in Denver! Tickets HEREFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: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!Miracle Brand: Use our link and code NPAD to claim your free 3 piece towel set and save over 40%.Prose: Use our link for a free in-depth hair consultation and 15% off your first order.Skylight Frame: Get $15 off a Skylight Frame with promo code PARK.StoryWorth: Use our link and save $10 on your first purchase. For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Bobbing and weaving, ditching and dodging, all around just avoiding the worst of life's hurdles, such as illness, tragedy, accidents, or loss. No one wants to experience a traumatic event, as they inevitably come hand in hand with suffering. This suffering is a struggle. It's messy and difficult and painful, but as it goes with the dichotomy of life,

where there is darkness, there is a problem. light, where there is loss, there is gain. It may be immediate, or it may take an entire lifetime, but according to studies on PTSD and trauma, an overwhelming amount of the 75% of people who will experience a traumatic event in their lifetimes were changed in fundamental, positive ways. It's almost impossible to imagine how burying a loved one, battling a cruel disease, or wrestling with survivors' guilt, could be a good thing. But trauma has proven, time and time again to be transformative. From becoming closer to family and friends,

finding greater inner strength than peace, finding life more meaningful, or simply, just learning to let that shit go. So many of us who experience a life-altering event do not view them as the end, but rather as an opportunity at a new beginning. Playing the game of statistics, odds are you will become part of that 75%.

Rather than being afraid, ask yourself, what would you do with your second chance? Welcome to National Park After Dark. I feel a survival story coming on. You know, you're right. You're right. And I feel like I don't do them. I feel like that's your thing.

I love survival stories. And you have done a handful of them, and I've loved them. Your presumed dead episode. Okay, that was like over a year ago, I feel like. I know it's been a really long time, but you're presumed dead episode. I just loved that one so much. And also your Yossi episode, two survival stories. Oh, Yosey Ginsburg. Yes. The two of them. Such good episodes. Okay, well, those were hard hitters. And it's funny that you brought up the presumed dead one because this story, it's not in Kings Canyon or Sequoia,

but it's not too far away. It's going to be taking place in Yosemite. Oh, we're going back to Yosemite. Mm-hmm. Fan favorite. It is a fan favorite, for sure. But before, but before, we dive into that one quick thing, we're going to be coming to Denver live. Yeah, we have our live show. It's coming up really soon. It's first week of December. It's December 4th at 7 p.m. Sunday. We are having our live show at Comedy Works in Denver. Come hang out with us. We're going to add our link to get show tickets in the show description. It's also in the links on all of our socials right now. And tickets are selling pretty fast. So I'd say if you're interested in coming, you should jump on them because last I checked, We really didn't have all that many left, which is really exciting because this is our first show.

So we're so excited to meet all of you and hang out. We got some cool stories that are up our sleeve for sure. And I think I want to drag you to Great Sand Dunes when you come. You can happily drive. I will happily be dragged to Great Sand Dunes. Okay, cool. Because I want to go to the Watchtower and see Snippy and do all that. It's been a while since I've been to the sand dunes.

So anyway, that's something for another time. Everyone come hang out with us in Denver. If you can, we would love to see you. But for now, I have an exciting story. And like I said, it's taking place in Yosemite. We've been there, I feel like quite often in episodes. We've done your first one with Carrie Stainer. I think it was like episode four.

I know that I've done dying for a cause there, I think episode 53 or something like that. And we've mentioned it quite a few times. So I'm not going to go super in depth into. explaining the park as far as background, but of course, I have to do a little bit of it. Of course. So, located in California, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Yosemite was established as a national park in October of 1890. America's third national park, it encompasses nearly 1,200 square miles of some of the most

pristine and beautiful landscapes in the entire country. Giant sequoias stand tall in old-growth forests, water tumbles over some of North America's tallest waterfalls, and giant red paint brushes bloom in the high elevation meadows of the park, splashing them with seasonal crimson. The park is now void of some species, such as the wolf and the grizzly that once roamed the land, but now the park currently supports more than 400 species of vertebrates, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Rafting or fishing the Merced River, horseback riding or hiking, some of the 750 miles of trails, biking or driving Tyoga Road, which wind throughout the park, or staying up as the sunsets and the moon rises to

gaze at the stars and a sky void of light pollution are all very popular within Yosemite. And as we covered in the episode, like I just mentioned, the dying for the cause one, so is climbing and base jumping, even though base jumping isn't exactly legal. If you want to learn more about that, you can go back to that episode. Of course, as Alex Honnold made extremely popular in his film Free Solo, climbing is a huge part of Yosemite culture as well on all of the big rock formations, which we have to think because of ice fields and glaciers. So as time past, ice has, of course, melted away. The glaciers receded and sculpted the park as we see it today. Much of the underlying granite resisted the erosion and the large shear faces such as El Cap and half dome were

left standing, which are obviously like crown jewels of the entire park. Of course. And while Yosemite is open throughout the entire year, the winter becomes a season of snow and relative solitude. Roads close, attendance drops, and hiking boots are swapped for cross-country skis. The solitude can be extremely refreshing. Being amongst the vastness of the unspoiled wilderness can make you feel alive. But for Donnie Priest, the isolation almost became his death sentence. Oh, spooky. Spooky. Tant-dun-ton. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories. and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice.

Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. On January 3rd, 1982, 38-year-old Chevron research chemist Ronald Vaughn, his wife Lee, who was also an attorney for Chevron, and her son, Donnie Priest, were flying from Oklahoma to a

California, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. They had spent Christmas with some family out of state out in Oklahoma, and they were flying their small private plane, which was a single engine, grooming American AA5B Tiger, back home. Surprise, I'm doing a plane crash episode. She said she'd never be back here and here we are. I just can't stay away. I'm here for it. I love the plane crash episodes. Okay, you know what? I had this kind of in my list. are on my list of episodes I've wanted to do. And I almost did it a couple weeks ago, but it would have lined up almost perfectly

for when we were recording right before you left for Iceland. So I'm like, I don't want to do a plane crash story right before you're about to get on a plane. That is really considerate and nice of you. Thank you. I know. I have had legitimate, like, anxiety on planes recently. Well, that's the thing.

I didn't want to add to it, even though, I mean, there is a nice outcome to this one. it still would have not been very nice. So I really appreciate that because actually my flight to Iceland was one of the first flights I've had recently where I had no anxiety at all on it. And I don't know if it was because I usually travel by myself and meet up with people. And this time I had a friend with me on the plane and I really didn't think about it too much. But I feel like if maybe I had just listened to a plane crash story right before it might have

been a little different. Well, there you go. I appreciate you. You're welcome. Ronald, a moderately experienced private pilot, had stopped at the Mammoth June Lake Airport in California for one last refueling stop. So they were almost home. They took off just after 3.30 p.m. with plans to follow Ronald's original flight plan, which was to fly the shortest route over the peaks of Yosemite's Tioga Pass. But flight control had denied that because there was a massive storm system that was brewing nearby.

And they were afraid it would be pushed into their path by the jet streams. Okay. Ronald switched things up and decided to fly north along the eastern edge at the Sierra Nevada before crossing the mountain range near Reno. Less than an hour into the flight, trouble struck. Ronald was on the radio with flight control in Oakland, reporting that he was losing altitude and could see the ground. They had flown directly into the turbulence of the storm and had wandered off course, heading directly north and into a dead end canyon. Then suddenly, the radio went silent. Unable to communicate with the plane, the last known location of the aircraft was documented, half a mile north of Tioga Lake, just outside of Yosemite National Park.

That storm that the family was warned about ended up being severe to say the least. It ended up being the most lethal natural disaster to hit Northern California since the 1906 earthquake. Oh, shit. It raged for over three days. The confluence of two storm fronts stalled over the region, and at one point it dropped nearly two feet of rain in just 24 hours. Wow. The landscape took a huge beating and the continuous mixture of this rain, snow, rain, snow pelted and toppled the trees. It flooded the rivers and triggered massive landslides and in all 33 people lost their lives during this storm. Wow. So this isn't just some,

it's not a little baby storm here. Right. This is, yeah, huge. The Vaughns had lost contact on a Sunday afternoon. But as the storm persisted, air search was out of the question. Obviously, you're not going to put helicopters up in that. No. The park service reached out to two backcountry rangers instead, the following day on Monday, a couple named Chas and Anne McQuire, who were spending the season in a nearby cabin in Tuolome Meadows, which was dozens of miles from the nearest plowed road, but less than 10 miles from the last known location of the plane. This couple was no strangers to difficult assignments. Just as a little example, they climbed the 20,320 foot Mount McKinley, which as a refresher, I think we've mentioned this in an episode before, but Mount McKinley is the highest peak in all of

North America. They climbed this mountain twice on their honeymoon. Well, that's Denali. Right. Right. Yeah. For fun. They just twice on their honeymoon. Oh, no. They're the type of people who wake up on holidays to do 5Ks. Thanksgiving doppel-trak. Whatever it's called. I don't ever want to. I mean, I admire people who do it because it takes a lot, but I am not one of those people who is going to get up to. I've never done any of that. Actually, that's a lie.

I did a 5K. I forget what it was for. It was with the dogs, though. It was for a shelter back home. It was like a fundraiser. I've done 5Ks before. It's just, it's the holiday 5K people are the intense ones. They're a different breed.

It's a different breed because you're supposed to be like eating a lot of food. and drinking and they're like still in training. I know they're like I got one thing on my mind and it's health. They're like we're drinking water and we're eating good food but not too much good food and then we're going to run and then we're going to go to the gym. I've been to the gym on Thanksgiving before. Anyway that's what I pictured these people being like intense and very athletic and probably really cool people. Yes. Well all of the above yes. This really cool couple prepared their rescue packs complete with first aid supplies and survival gear. They strapped on their snow shoes and waded out into the now waist deep snow and headed for

Tioga Pass, which was eight miles away. Despite their experience, impeccable fitness levels from all those Thanksgiving gobble trots and their determination, blazing a path through the fresh snow is obviously not an easy feat, especially when it's up to your waist. And it's still coming down. This isn't like a Bluebird Day yet. They're in the thick of the storm still. So throughout that entire first day, they barely made it a mile. Wow. By Tuesday, conditions began to improve, and by Wednesday, the skies turned blue once again. Better conditions meant more rescue support. Mono County rescuers were dispatched on snow cats. Leymour Naval Air Station personnel and Yosemite Rangers took to the skies in helicopters, surveying the last known radar location that they received from the aircraft. About 120 miles east

of Yosemite National Park. No trace was found, so the decision to expand the search area by about 100 square miles was made on Thursday. Again, no progress. It has now been four days since the crash and between the impact, the sub-zero temperatures, you know, the chance of anyone surviving were very slim. And at this point, everyone involved kind of came to the realization that at this point, the operation had switched from a search and rescue to a search and rescue to a search and

recovery, but there was an additional obstacle as well. The plane's emergency locator transmitter, which is designed to go off on impact, had not activated. In response, John Dill, an MIT graduate and a local rescue ranger began to attempt to locate the plane on paper. And he did this by manually plotting the coordinates on a topographical map based on the last known few minutes of flight information, as well as just kind of inferred information about the aircraft's capabilities and kind of get between what he thinks the pilot would have done, the weather conditions, the last known locations, and the aircraft itself. What is it capable of doing? How would it be acting in a storm like this, et cetera? So he's putting all of this together. You know, math is so crazy. It really is

because you go to school and it's like, two plus two is four and you're like, wow. And then you get into this type of stuff and it's like, according to my calculations with a wind speed of 50 miles per hour and an altitude of 7,922 feet, then this plane would have gone on course. And the wind speed and direction. Yeah. You know, like it's just so crazy what math can do. And I'm just picturing like all the calculations that this person would have had to come up with to pinpoint a location.

Yeah. And he has no computer support either. This is the 80s. It's all hand. Handwork. All him. But according to his calculations, shit wasn't adding up. He was getting a totally different result than the search area.

that they were currently looking in. Instead of the logical assumption of it being somewhere in the direction along the flight path of the last known location that they were kind of basing everything off of, he was gathering something different. And at the time, at best, it was a well-educated guess, but he believed that the plane rested somewhere on the eastern flanks of Mount Connest and White Mountain.

Civil Air Patrol investigators speculated that Ronald, the pilot, revised his flight plan without communicating with them, perhaps after he got lost. And later that night, they received data from the Oakland flight control logs with information confirming this, kind of. Shortly after takeoff and after receiving that revised flight plan, remember when air traffic control was like, no, you can't do this. And original plan, there's a storm coming.

You have to switch it up. So after he agreed to do that, he actually re-radioed and amended the plan again, despite the advisement from flight controllers. So he changed the plan and told them he was heading for Tioga Pass. after all. So he kind of was like, I'm just going to do it. Oh, shit. After they told him no, and that there was a storm. Right. And the rescue operation personnel did not get this information until days later. This is like day four. Wait, so he radioed in, but no one responded to him. Is that what happened? They confirmed it and they advised against it, but he did it anyway. He

went forward with doing it anyway. And then they didn't relay the information for days? This information somehow was not relayed to rescue operations until days and days later. Oh, okay. So that changes everything. Right. This changes everything for the team. So instead of looking for a plane that was traveling north to Reno, which is what originally they thought, they were searching for one that had a plan to cross higher altitudes through Yosemite. This poor guy who just did all those math calculations. Well, he was right. Oh, he was right in the... Oh, okay. Yep. So John Dale pulled an all-nighter plotting, the new data. I mean, he wasn't spot on accurate. He took this new information and added it to his calculations, but he was already getting something different than originally before. So he takes all

this new data, starts plotting it and pulls an all-nighter. And the next morning, the search area was narrowed down to a very thin, six-mile-long strip of wilderness that ran from Tioga Pass to Mount Connus. And it's worth noting that this isn't like hundreds of miles away from their original spot. It's still kind of in the same area. And it was passed over in the initial searches, but it wasn't the center of their attention. So this time they go back. But with this new information, they're really looking hard. At this point, another helicopter team returned to this area and search again, like I said,

closer back and forth, taking more passes. And it was at that point when Jim Sano, a Yosemite Ranger with extensive experience in aerial searches, knowledge of the area's terrain, and quite sharp eyes, I should say, because imagine looking for, it's all, it's a blanket of snow. Yeah. There's no differentiating feature. It's just snow. Just a white out.

Yep. And he saw a slight shadow in this snow. And it ended up being the tip of the plane's tail that was protruding out just a couple of feet from the snow. and it was on the eastern slope of the 12,057-foot White Mountain. So he was right, White Mountain. Not to be confused with the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Correct, yes. Other side of the country.

Accessing the crash site required expert mountaineering skills, which the McQuire couple possessed. Fitted with their skis, rope rescue gear, and shovels, the couple was picked up in the meadows and dropped on a ridge directly above the plane. And belayed Chaz over the edge, gripped with fear of an avalanche, which the area was clearly primed for.

After 100 feet, Chaz reached the snowpack. Hoping for the best, but fearing the worst, he began digging immediately, shoveling away foot upon foot of snow until he hit a window and heard a sound. A muffled cry from the inside of the plane. What? A survivor, he cried back up to Anne,

who at that point bounded down the slope, throwing the fear of the avalanche to the wind with her rush of adrenaline. Like I said, they had no... Obviously, you hope for the best, but at this point, it's day five. It's a recovery mission. It's a recovery mission. So they're both frantic at this point.

They're digging away all the snow to get to the plane, and they finally reveal the back of the fuselage, and they gain access to open the rear window. Meanwhile, a helicopter dropped Chief Petty Officer Jerry Balderson onto the scene, and he assisted the couple in their effort to get inside of the plane. Once inside, it was apparent Ronald and Lee were deceased and died upon impact. The muffled cry had come from a 10-year-old boy, and that was Donnie. Oh, my God. He was only wearing a T-shirt and almost completely white from the cold, which at that point,

with the wind chill factor, put temperatures between negative 40 and negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. What an awful scene. So bad. And I did just say only a T-shirt. He was, I meant to say he wasn't wearing a jacket. He was wearing pants, but his pants were frozen solid. and they were so frozen that they couldn't fit him into the harness with them on.

So they had to strip them off of him before they got him into the harness and they attached into a hoist line along with Balderson to winch them back up into the helicopter. And right before they were about to get lifted away, Donnie's eyes rolled back into the back of his head and he fell into a coma. After surviving a plane crash and five days of sub-zero temperatures, Donnie was in shock and severely hypothermic. His body temperature measured 84 degrees. Wow.

And he's 10. He's 10 years old. That's just such a horrible scene to be stuck inside a plane freezing with two people who have died. With your family. With your family. Your mother and your stepfather. Yeah. Yeah.

Your family. Your parents that have died, you're under snow. I'm sure it was so dark in there. Dark, cold. Being under snow. Dark cold. Can't move. Five days is a long time to be sitting there.

William Gooden, a naval flight surgeon, was on board of the helicopter and was able to stabilize Donnie until they arrived at a hospital in Fresno. He was later transferred to another medical center where doctors made the decision to amputate his frostbitten legs below the knees. Regarding the crash in the aftermath, he can't recall much. He says of the five days he spent inside the wreck as more of like a still picture rather than a movie. What he did remember consisted of trying to reach his sleeping bag, but he was unsuccessful at freeing it because it was lodged in a position behind him, and he was unable to free it. So he wasn't even able to wrap himself in something warm. He was also dressed to fly over the winter landscape, not survive in it.

So like I said, he was just in a T-shirt, and he also didn't have shoes on. He tried using the radio to call for help, but was unsuccessful in that attempt as well, despite trying to fix it after finding the user manual. So he did try in the beginning for a 10-year-old kid who just went through an extremely traumatic event. What a smart kid. And he must have had some light in there to be able to read and look for things. He went through his mother's purse in search of food, but came up empty. And he sucked on handfuls of snow that fell through the cracked windshield that he accessed by reaching past the bodies of his stepfather and his mother.

Oh, my God. Back in the hospital, he was reunited with his father and stepmother. So he does have surviving family. And he spent months in recovery. But recover, he did. His story hit the headlines all over the Bay Area and gained him kind of like a little bit of a celebrity status, a local celebrity status. And players from the Oakland A's and the 49ers actually visited him in the hospital. And four months after the accident, Donnie walked onto the field and threw the first pitch at the Oakland A's season opener on his brand new prosthetic legs.

Wow, that's really cool. And of course, he moved in with his father and stepmother. And they said that they enrolled him into counseling, of course, to receive the support he needed as far as mental health and all that. Like, that's beyond something that you can do alone as parents, I think. So they did the right thing there. But according to them, he adjusted really surprisingly well. Kids are resilient. Yeah.

They said, quote, he never complained, never said life is unfair. He never said, why me? He just wanted to do everything his friends could do. And when Donnie is asked about that time in his life, he says, quote, at that age, you're too young to appreciate what you can't do. You're just focused on doing what you can do. I hadn't formed an image of myself yet. So what happened wasn't a dramatic change. I had age on my side.

I think it was harder on my family than it was on me. I mean, like I said, kids are so resilient. And that's such a interesting way to put it that he didn't have like this view of who he was yet. so he was still being molded and created. And when you're a child and you go through something that you have to survive, I feel like that would just give you a new perspective on life versus make you better. Yeah. And that's exactly, you know, what happened in this case.

And at the time, his family treated him no differently than anyone else, which I think also helped him tremendously. There was no babysing or coddling type of thing, which I think is very easy to do. I mean, your kid just lost his parents and his legs at 10, you know, like, and barely survived. This wasn't something he walked right out of, like, he almost died on transport. It would be easy to be like, you don't have to do anything. I'll take care of you. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, of course. It would be easy to, like, try and be that person for someone, even though realistically they need to find their own ground again. Yeah. So, and that's, I think, based on all of this, what they did for him. For example, he had to walk, Donnie had to walk up a line. long steep hill to get to his junior high campus and his parents never gave him rides like Ryan Easton. They're like, all right, get up there. Get on up there. He went on to compete as a varsity wrestler in high school and he learned to ski and water ski. He went on to compete in the

1993 disabled water ski championships in France and he received a gold medal in the trick category event as well. So he got the swing of things for sure. That's awesome. As an adult, he found college a bit tougher than high school. He bounced from college to college and switched his majors a couple of times, never really finding the perfect field within the confines of university, which I think many of us can relate to on many levels. He said of his college years, quote, officially, I was studying engineering, but I was really

studying the local bars. Fair. Which I also. Isn't that what college is? D's get degrees. Oh, yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. As with many of us, like I said, didn't find his true calling until later on in life.

A lot of us find that our calling and what we end up doing is completely different than what our degree says. And he found a career as a small business owner, building and fitting prosthetics for amputees. Very cool. That's very meaningful, too, and to have personal experience and knowledge and be passionate about it. What better person? Some things you get from real life and not from a classroom, you know? Absolutely. And he said of his work, it is the most challenging and rewarding thing I've ever done.

It's carpentry, sculpting, automotive body work, pre-med biology, psychology, and physics. With such a personal story and hearing from so many others of their own through his work over the decades, he found himself kind of yearning to be with his rescuers again, the people that he owed his life to. who he had lost touch with in the years directly after the accident. He felt a poll to return to the crash site for the first time in decades, saying, quote, there was always an empty void in me, a hundred unanswered questions. I had finally gotten my own life in order. I had gone from being a burden on society to someone who was starting to give back.

I had completed the circle, and now it was time to look for some closure in my own life. So in 2007, at the age of 35, thanks to some Google searches, Donnie tracked down his rescuers, John Dill, Chas McQuire, and Jim Sano, and returned to the scene of the accident on White Mountain. They all made the difficult ascent up, but the terrain proved to be a little more difficult than Donnie had initially expected, and after several hours of climbing and trekking, at about 1,000 feet below the crash site,

he decided he had gotten close enough. One of the questions that had always bothered him was, how close were they to passing over that mountain? Could they have cleared it? Was it just, like, they just barely crashed? What did it look like? Because he had never returned to the site after he was hoisted away at 10 years old. And you said he fell into a coma.

Yeah. So he wasn't really a witness to his rescue either to see what was around him. So he looked up at the impact site and he was almost crestfallen because it was almost 800 feet below the summit. And at that point, he went through a lot of questioning about. about, you know, he said in some of his interviews that he doesn't want to speak illy about anyone who isn't here anymore, aka Ronald, his stepfather. But he went through a period of time where he questioned, you know, why would he put his family at risk like that? And his mother as well, Lee, was also an experienced pilot.

So they both had pilot experience, flying experience. And he kind of grappled for a while with, you know, they knew of the dangers of the storm coming. they were traveling with their child. He just had a lot of emotional wrestling with those thoughts, especially after seeing that. Yeah, I can imagine how that would be really difficult, especially if you see that it sounds like he saw it and it seemed like it was pretty impossible to clear this note. Kind of like, why were we even here? We were advised against it.

Look what happened, type of thing. But you did say there was pretty bad weather. So maybe they didn't realize how close they, I don't know. No, I think that that's a really good question. I just think maybe they didn't realize how close that they were to the summit when they were flying. Which I think is absolutely true, but I think what he was more so of questioning was bad weather or not, they wouldn't have been in that position if Ronald had listened to the changed flight plan and avoided the storm altogether.

Yeah. So that trip was difficult not only physically for him, but emotionally, all of these questions. That trip kind of bubbled up a lot of, I don't want to say, suppressed. because I don't know if they were suppressed, but a lot of emotions that he had been dealing with for a long time, and he kind of confronted them during that trip with his rescuers. But he turned all of that into gratitude to the people that saved him. He says of the group and how he repays them in his life now, quote, they taught me what it means to risk everything to save others.

I can never pay them back, so I pay it forward. When I'm having trouble getting a patient fitted just right with a prosthetic, I think of Chas and Anne fighting through the snow for a whole day just to go one mile, or of John staying up all night plotting radar data, or Dan, in a blind hover when he was almost out of fuel. That is what inspires me. A year later from that return visit in 2008, Donnie also paid a visit to Dr. William Gooden, the doctor who saved his life during his initial helicopter transport to the hospital. Dr. Gooden says Donnie has left a lasting impression on him.

He says of Donnie, he's the hero. his strength of character and the will to survive was the miraculous part. In many ways, he saved himself. And I think that's just so moving of a doctor to say of a patient. Definitely. In 2008, the Park Service presented John Dale with a Lifetime Achievement Award. So this guy is, he's hot shit. So he began his time in Yosemite just going there with plans as having like a rock climbing vacation.

And he wound up becoming kind of. of like a Yosemite legend. He almost single-handedly invented modern helicopter and rescue techniques that are used in search, rescue, and recovery operations today. He is also known for his innovative, unique, and sometimes unorthodox techniques. For example, he has brought in a hypnotist to jog the memories of the relatives of missing people, and he even once wore a deceased man's climbing gear to see why the gear failed himself. That's scary. Yeah, he's like, all right, I would to understand what happens, so I need to be put in their shoes. He always dives into what lessons can be learned from each and every incident he's involved in.

He doesn't shy away from difficult challenges, and he shows care and compassion to friends and relatives of those involved in the incident, not just the victims. After over four decades of service, John can still be found in Yosemite Valley. Dave Ellison, the Navy pilot who maneuvered the helicopter above the crash site, was awarded the Navy's Distinguished Flying Cross and Chief Petty Officer Jerry Baldock. was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, which is the service's second highest non-combat award. Jim Sano, aside from serving on Yosemite's search and rescue team, became special assistant to the superintendent at Yosemite National Park and went on to become the recipient of five different National Park Service Special Achievement Awards. After his time in Yosemite, he continued on to work for geographic expeditions, which is a San Francisco-based adventure travel company that offers different educational travel.

location management and sustainable travel consulting services, which is so rad. I looked it up, went down a rabbit hole. During that job, he casually led the first American men and women's expeditions to Mount Everest and the first guided crossing of South Georgia Island amongst many other mind-blowing expeditions across Asia and Latin America. Casually led. And after he was like, okay, I'm moving on from that job. Like, where do you go from there?

Where does one go from there? He can now be found at the World Wildlife Fund as vice president of travel, tourism, and conservation. So cool. So this is what happens if you run 5Ks on holidays. Yeah. Well, okay, well, that wasn't the couple, but yes. Yeah. This guy runs 5 games on holidays as well.

Yeah, so jokes on us, huh? Yeah, for real. Some people are just so cool. Some people live really fulfilling and exciting lives. Yeah. And bringing it back to Donnie just to kind of wrap the story up. Despite such a traumatic and life-altering experience, Donnie says his life has been good to him. Thanks largely in part to the perspectives the accident has given him.

And he says, experiences make you what you are. Why change that? And that is the story of Donnie Priest and his incredible rescue. I love that he took a bad situation and he turned it into something positive because there's something so true to be said that you can't always control what happens to you in life. And the only control sometimes you can have is your reaction to it. And to be able to take something, because it would be so easy to be like, you know, I lost my legs. I lost my parents. This awful thing happened to me and go into this deep, dark place, which I'm sure did happen in times just in the struggle of all of it. Oh, of course.

But then there's also something to be said, you know, to take such a horrific and awful experience and be like, this has helped shape who I am, and it has made me become a better person because I have a better outlook on life and I have been able to use this experience to help other people. Yeah, to help other people. And not only that,

but to gain just such a perspective on life that who knows if he would have had that, if that didn't happen to him. I mean, I know from personal experience, when bad shit happens to you, you come out, the other side changed. Whether or not you asked for it, you know, I, like I said in the intro, no one asks for this stuff to happen to you. It's not like,

you wake up one day and you're like, wow, I really hope I can go through a traumatic event that will hopefully shift my perspective. And you don't need a traumatic experience to shift your perspective and to kind of alter your life. But it definitely gives you a kick in the ass. I'll say that. And it's all about, yeah, what you do with this opportunity, this second chance you've been given, this new perspective you've been given and Donnie proved that great things can come from that because how many people, you know, do you think he's helped through his work, you know, and not even directly through his work, but through his story. A lot of people, you know, you don't need to be an amputee to feel moved by his story. So, yeah, I just think it's beautiful and amazing to be able to take such a hard situation

and make things better for other people. I'm sure he has been a huge life changer for a lot of people who are living in similar situations where they are amputees and they have had situations where they need prosthetics and I'm sure he's made a huge difference in their lives. So I just think that's a really cool story and something that anyone can take from. You know, appreciate what you have and the things that are difficult in your life to be able to find a way to spin it to learn something or to create something to do something that's not, it's so easy to fall into negative pits when you're having a really time. Oh my God. I'm like raising both of my hands. I know. Yeah. It's unrealistic to be like, turn it around. Like, you've been given this new shift in opportunity to change your life or

your outlook or blah, blah, blah. And then you're like, yeah, you're right. It's kind of like when someone, I kind of equate it to when you're riled up, you're pissed. And someone's like, hey, hey, hey, relax. It's like pouring water on a cat just like. And you're like, what? And you're like, that's the last thing I'm going to do. And I fucking hate that you just told me to do that. So I hate to come off preachy or anything like that. But it just is true.

And whether it takes you, you know, you get glimmers of that, you know, they can come in moments. At least for me, that's how it comes. It's not like one day I wake up and everything shifted. Sometimes it comes in small moments. Some days it's the whole day, an hour, 30 minutes. And then I hope that throughout time in my life, those moments get lost. longer and that just cascades into more areas of my life. And then one day I wake up and I'm a changed person because of the things that I've been through for the better. You know what I'm saying?

Of course. Donnie didn't wake up, I'm sure, at 13 and was like, I'm good to go. You know, it only took me a couple of years. Like, this took decades of self-work. Well, it's so easy to look at something and be like, wow, they've turned this into such a positive situation because you see the work that's put in. You see the results of the work. You don't see the work that's put in. You don't see behind the curtain. Yeah. You know, and I think it's really easy to get lost in that too, to just see the final result. It's kind of like people, you know, you see people who are in the best shape of their lives.

And you're like, oh, so cool. Like, great, they're there. But then you don't see them sweating it out at the gym and being on a diet for 10 years. It's like you just see them in a bodybuilding competition. And I'm just saying this because I just watched. Did you watch that show on Netflix about the bodybuilder? I didn't. Al started watching it.

And he explained it a little bit to me, but I haven't watched it. You should watch it. It's really good. And I totally forget what it's called. It's something Sally. Oh, Sally. Right. Yeah.

Sorry, everybody. They're probably like screaming at us. These are the moments. These are the moments. We can't pre-plan our authentic conversations because we wouldn't know about this in our real conversations here. Right. Yeah, I don't know.

It was really good that show. But anyway. Okay. Well, we're digressing. I know this episode, the story at least was on the shorter side, but I really enjoyed researching it. And I think it had a really sweet message despite the tragedy involved. So that's why I wanted to cover it. I know it's no, you know, three-parter or anything. But no, I kind of reminded me of the story that I covered in the White Mountains where after, if you remember the people who survived ended up being amputees and rock climbers. And they went on to start working in. prosthetics and went to MIT and like did a bunch of stuff there. So it kind of brought me back to the White Mountains episode in that you take like this awful tragedy and you turn it into something positive and you can take something good out of it. So I thought it was a really cool story and I've never heard about it. And I think we all like to hear about Yosemite because Yosemite is so magical.

Like I can remember the first time I realized that Yosemite existed. I was like, oh my God, what is this place. I have to go here. And I remember I flew to California to see one of my friends. And she lived like nine hours from Yosemite. And I'm like, we're going. I saw photos. I'm so close. I can hear her now. I'm right next to it. I'm so close. We could drive there. It's so much closer than being in New Hampshire. We have to go. Well, I first heard of this particular story actually through Kevin, Kevin Grange. Oh, really? Yeah. I think it was one of our conversations or maybe on an email. Or was it his book? Or was it his book?

Yeah. I think maybe it was his book, Wild Rescues. I think he briefly mentions it. Yeah. If you guys haven't listened yet, we have a People of the Parks episode with Kevin Grange. And we talk about his book, Wild Rescues. And he has all these amazing stories in Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Grand Teton's because he's worked as an EMS person and Ranger within those parks.

So he just has these incredible stories. It's a really good book if anyone's interested. But yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, so I think that's why I had it kind of written down on my list and obviously waited until you were no longer on a plane to tell you. I still appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, well, let's wrap this up. Go grab your tickets for our live show in Denver. If you're going to be in Denver, you want to come hang out in Denver, we have a link in our show notes.

And in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you back. Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider by joining our Patreon where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content.

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