Real Survival Stories - Man vs Beast: Half-Eaten Alive

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

In July 2019, Colin Dowler is exploring the rugged natural beauty around the southwest coast of Canada. After a night camping in the forest, he’s cycling home… when an unexpected obstacle appears in the road up ahead. A tense, terrifying, drawn-out encounter ensues. In the blink of an eye, Colin will find himself on the wrong side of an unfair fight against one of the animal kingdom’s most powerful creatures…   A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.   Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.   For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions   If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's July 2019 in southwest Canada, near the coast of British Columbia. An unpaved road cuts a narrow path through the pines. Tall grass grows along the verge and sprouts through cracks in the thinning gravel. At first glance, you'd assume that nobody had come down this way in years, a forgotten logging road, slowly being reclaimed by the forest. On closer inspection, it seems somebody has been here, recently, a walker by the looks of it. A discarded backpack rests among the weeds and wildflowers. Over there, a hiking pole, slightly bent and badly scratched, lies in the dirt.

There, a scrap of torn clothing. And on the overgrown verge, some 50 feet further up the road, a pool of blood turns dark in the afternoon sun. Clearly, something dreadful has happened here. A short distance away, another drop of blood stains the ground. Then another, and another. It forms a trail. Frimson flecks dripped along the road, leading in the direction of the shore. Down to where 44-year-old Colin Gowler is peddling for his life. Each little rise they came over, each corner I went around and thinking, man, I've been

peddling for so long. That's got to be where I get to the hill, where I can coast out of here, because I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. Collin's bicycle weaves down the road. His legs struggling to maintain enough momentum to keep him upright. Blood trickles from his thighs and midriff. His face is ashen gray. This road leads to the coast where help hopefully awaits.

It has to. Without it, Colin won't survive the hour. As he pedals, he glances over his shoulder, heart thumping. As the creature followed him. Nothing. He looks forward again, fingers squeezing the handlebars, his teeth gritted, his jaw clenched. But he isn't making enough progress. Enough progress.

He's moving too slowly. I look up and I see the five-kilometer sign. This man, I'd only made it halfway to the hill that I needed to get to the coast down. And my spirit sank at that point. I'm going to know, man, like probably only halfway. If there's no way, I'm going to make it. Ever wondered what you would do? when disaster strikes.

If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to real survival stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced a fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Colin Dowler. In July 2019, the father of two

is exploring the rugged natural beauty around Mount Dugi Daula on the southwest coast of Canada. After a night camping in the forest, Colin is cycling back to the boat landing, heading for home, when an unexpected obstacle appears in the road up ahead. A wild, dangerous animal

that nobody wants to run into in these parts. And so, a tense, terrifying, drawn-out encounter commences. It started to seem like it was just a prod, and I blocked it with my bike, and then, you know, another little swat and they were blocked it with my bike. And getting into the fourth or maybe six, one, they were getting more aggressive.

And then he came down and he lunged at me. This was all super slow motion. In the blink of an eye, Colin will find himself on the wrong side of an unfair fight. Thrust into a deadly struggle against one of the animal kingdom's most powerful beasts. The next thing I know, I've been spun 180, and I'm on my back and my shoulders,

thinking to myself, oh, man, like, I am in trouble here. And then I remember that I had a knife in my pocket. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories. It's Sunday, July 28th, 2019. A motorboat navigates an intricate maze of inlets and fjords, the shattered mosaic of islands that comprises Canada's coastal southwest. Sitting with his bearded face tilted into the sun, 44-year-old Colin Dowler carefully guides his vessel through the channels. The surface of his wraparound shades reflects a ribbon of snow-capped mountains, loombs.

mountains looming above the shoreline. He breathes in the fresh sea air and smiles, feeling the motion of his boat as it slaps over the gentle chop. Colin is on a route-finding mission. He and his brother have made plans to climb a mountain on the mainland. But due to how wild and unspoiled this region is, he decided it would be a good idea to scope out the area first. This time, My intention was not to climb the mountain, but to see if I could find reasonable access to the alpine so that when it was time to climb the mountain, we weren't wasting your time. Colin steers into a sheltered cove. He ties up to a wooden dock, hoists his mountain bike out of the boat, and wheels it along the jetty.

When he reaches the top of the beach, he gets on his bike and pedals into the forest, following a gravel road through the pines. After a little while he reaches a logging camp, a collection of metal-roofed sheds with stacks of lumber piled outside. He gets off his bike and approaches one of the loggers, an older man who turns out to be the camp cook. Colin explains that he's looking for a path up to the mountains and asks the man if he knows of any viable roots. The cook sizes him up. It's pretty rough country up there But if he's determined to go ahead with it Then he'll help him out

The cook hands him some pepper spray Always useful in these parts And then offers to give him a lift At least some of the way Colin thanks the old man And loads his bike into the back of his truck He drove me about nine kilometers Until he couldn't push the truck any further

Because there was too many trees and too much underbrush in the way. So it was a tighter bush than I'd expected. To grab me off, I thanked him. He took a picture of me and laughed. This one's for the milk cartons in case you don't return. Colin grins for the camera before the old man wishes him well and drives off.

The cook's parting joke would likely freak most people out. But Colin laughs it off. After all, he grew up in these parts. This landscape is woven into his DNA. Colin spent his early years on nearby Quadra Island, a sparsely inhabited outcrop sandwiched between Vancouver Island to the west and the mainland to the east. I grew up on an island, there was a little more than a thousand full-time residents.

We didn't have cable television. Of course, there was no computers. I mean, there was the odd one. I guess in the late 80s. Certainly no internet. He's my closest friend, as in physically closest friend, was about a kilometer away. Back then, you made your own fun. For young Colin, that meant exploring the local beaches and creeks, dragging his mountain bike

all over the little corner of the island. With its long, punishing winters and reliance on traditional industries like fishing and logging, this part of British Columbia breeds a tough, resilient sort. Scrappy and hard-wearing, Colin is not likely to back down from a fight, even when the odds aren't in his favor. He attributes this in part to his relatively diminutive stature. I sincerely think that it comes from me being so small and always trying to keep up with the big boys. I mean, I had no place being on the grade 12 rugby team, but I was. So it was a hundred and eight pounds, five foot seven, you know.

in rugby. I don't know. I just, but I'd keep up. It wasn't until I was doing a first-year psych course at UBC that I realized that I had small man's complex, whereas I like to refer Littalitis. Defying expectations would become a habit. After finishing high school, Colin went off to university in Vancouver, with dreams of one day becoming a physical therapist. But it turned out that academic life wasn't for him. At university, there was a bunch of young people, nobody really seemed to know what they were going to do or where they were going.

It seemed like I was working my way towards a desk job, which was about the last thing in life that I wanted. So Colin dropped out of university. But he didn't go home to the island straight away. With some money saved and an uncertain future to ponder, he boarded a train south for Mexico. I actually went traveling, I did a solo backpacking trip. This would be about 1995, and I got on a train down to Guadalajara, Mexico,

and then I backpacked and took buses and cabs into Guatemala and Honduras, and flew back to New Orleans and took a bus home. So that's kind of like my sole-searching trip. And on that trip, I decided that I'd become an electrician. That's what I did. Colin eventually settled in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, a town of about 40,000 just over the water from where he grew up. He got married, had kids, and built a good life for himself and his family.

Being an electrician kept him on his feet, while still affording him plenty of time to fish, hike, and climb at weekends. But things change. Colin ended up getting a job as maintenance and operations manager for a health care authority, a far more desk-bound role. And now he's feeling the effects. I'd been getting out of shape because now I've been working a desk job for about four years

like I never wanted to do and I was in my 20s. And I found that I was just in the worst shape of my life and I was no longer able to go from couch to adventure on the weekends. So when he got a call one afternoon from his brother suggesting the two of them go off and summit a local peak, Colin didn't hesitate. Mount Dugie Dowla is located on the mainland, but at nearly 7,000 feet, it's visible

from all the island in the surrounding area. It's distinctively shaped, with a wide, flat summit and steep sides that abruptly flatten out at the base. From a distance it's easy to see why some people call it the Cowboys Hat. It really does resemble one. But for Colin Dowler, the mountain's official name has special resonance. named after his grandfather, Doogie, who used to run a convenience store on Quadra Island with a view over the mountain.

When he died in 83, some of the community members thought it would be fitting to name a mountain that was in view of the grocery store after him. So they went through the process. It was an unnamed mountain. They applied to have it named after him, and so it became. This will not be a straightforward trip. And Colin's wife, Jen, has some serious reservations. But she's always been supportive of her husband's need to quench his thirst for adventure. With its sheer rock walls, climbing Mount Dugie Dowler is difficult enough. But even reaching the base is a challenge. After landing by boat, climbers must push through miles of tangled forest.

It's a punishing approach. Which is why Colin came out this weekend to scout a way through. When he returns with his brother in a few days' time, they'll already have a route map to out. After the cook drops him off, Colin cycles as far as he can, before parking his bike and continuing on foot. He bush waxes his way through the forest, hacking at the undergrowth with his hiking poles. Eventually, he finds a shallow creek, which he follows upstream.

He's getting closer to the base of the mountain, probably just a few kilometers off, when he decides to stop for the night. The sun is going down, and there are things in this forest you don't want to encounter after dark. Colin pitches up in a sheltered clearing. He unrolls his bivvy bag and sparks up his camping stove.

As the light dwindles, he reaches for the pepper spray the cook gave him earlier. But it's not there. He roots around in his pack, emptying all the pockets. No luck. The canister must have fallen out at some point along the way. Colin sighs and shakes his head. His eyes shift across to the forest. The shadows between the trees morph into dark

shapes, leering and snarling. He looks away. Better get some sleep. Colin wakes to the sound of birdsong. It's another beautiful morning. His clearing is flooded with bright, warm sunshine. Satisfied, he now has a good route to the mountain mapped out. He packs up his things and starts making his way back through the forest, heading to where he left his bike yesterday. It descended back down through the bush.

I stopped and looked for my pepper sprayed where I thought it was most likely to have fallen out of my pocket, maybe a half an hour looking for it. Ultimately decided it was a needle in a haystack. So carried on down the trail. As he walks, Colin deliberately makes a racket. He thwax tree trunks with his hiking poles and belts out a stream of nonsense.

Good practice in these parts. You know, the odd scream and just letting animals know that him in the area because when you can't see 20 feet in front of you, I kind of want to warn things that you're coming. Colin pushes his bike through the bush, back towards the logging road, near to where the cook dropped him off yesterday. At that point, I kind of felt relieved. I thought, all right, awesome.

At my bike, you know, maybe a half hour from the boat. It only puts me a few hours from home. This is great. It's my birthday tomorrow. So I'm going to see what I can talk my wife and kids into doing for my birthday, maybe get home, have a couple of beers, and then kidnap the family for a day of fishing. He might be turning 45, but there is a child-like spring in his step

as he wheels his bike onto the logging road and hops into the saddle. Cruising down the road, at a decent speed, I was on a flat stretch, and I looked up to my right, I saw the 7-kilometer sign, which means that you're 7 kilometers from the end of the road, which ends where my boat is. I looked up the sign, and I looked back down, and 75 or 100 feet in front of me, there was a guzzly bear standing on the room.

Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for 250 a month. Learn more at pceexpress.ca. It's July the 29th, 2019, near the coast of British Columbia. Colin Dowler breaks hard, bringing his mountain bike skidding to a halt. There, standing on all fours on the forest-lined path in front of him, is a hulking, grizzly bear.

It must be at least £400, or roughly 180 kilos. An adolescent male, not fully grown, but already big and powerful, with a wide, furry face, and a pair of narrow-set eyes fixed firmly on Colin. The bear didn't just run off, which is my experience with black bears. So as the bear standing there looking at me, I thought, oh, man, it's not taken off. I could turn and try riding away. Might have been taught that's not a good idea, because, If you're basically run from a bear, they're going to close in on you.

Best to just stay calm. But as Colin stands there, rooted to the spot, willing the bear to slink off into the trees, the animal doesn't seem at all frightened. It seems curious. Slowly the grizzly approaches, rolling its shoulders like a prize fighter as it walks, a slow, lolloping gait.

Its snout is lulling. low to the ground, twitching, inhaling human pheromones. When it comes within 30 feet of him, Colin tries a different approach. He steps off his bike and carefully slides a hiking pole out of his backpack. He bangs it against the handlebars, hoping to scare the animal off. And at that point, he skittered on all four paws and I could hear his claws scratching the dirt and he skittered nervously, and then he paused for a second or two and then slowly started approaching again. At this point, I'm going to suggest that I had lost

all confidence and bravado that I thought I had in nature and with wild animals. Now, the bear is close enough for Colin to make out the details, the small, amber eyes, the long, curled claws, scraping against the surface. of the road, the string of saliva dangling from its vast lower jaw. I remember thinking, man, I wish I was filming this because nobody's going to believe I was this close to a grizzly, and I honestly thought he was just going to walk right by. The grizzly is now within touching distance. You can smell it, a skunky, putrid odor, like a wet dog but far more intense. Colin holds his breath,

as the bear slopes past him. It lowered his head, and if I recall it correctly, he sort of flattened his ears too. It reminded me of a shy dog, like it didn't seem aggressive. It seemed, you know, timid. And he walked, he was almost all the way past me. And then when he was almost past my bike,

he did a 180-degree turn. Colin hurriedly repositioned his bike between himself and the animal. He can see the heat rising from its shaggy coat, the steam huffing from its open mouth, the wet shine on its pink gums, a flash of yellow teeth. He can fully take in its size too. The bear seems to take up the entire road. Its thick, brown fur gives it a rounded appearance, barrel-shaped.

Every sinew is primed and tensed, coiled. ready to spring. The grizzly eyes Colin with a primal hostility. It's as if the animal has mistaken the human for a rival, or maybe it's just hungry. Either way, Colin needs to do something to alter the course of this escalating situation. His heart galloping, he extends his hiking pole and presses the tip firmly against the flat of the bear's head just above the eyes. it, right? I didn't want to do anything aggressive because it just wanted to leave me alone and wanted to be angry. He rolled his head and bit the pole, and we tied a word for maybe a second, and he let go of the pole and started to focus on me again.

With trembling hands, Colin unclips his backpack and tosses it onto the ground. Maybe the food in there will distract the bear. But it doesn't. The grizzly only has eyes for Colin. prodding at me with his right claw, I guess, and it started to seem like it was just a prod, and I blocked it with my bike, and then, you know, another little swat, and I blocked it with my bike. And getting into the fourth or maybe six, when they were getting more aggressive. Colin flinches, as another powerful right hook narrowly misses his head. A single, clean impact from one of those bollard-sized forelimbs could crush his skull. He shields himself with his bike, the lightweight metallic frame, a pathetic defense against

this apex predator. But it's all he's got. He ducks again as the grizzly takes another swat. Now Colin watches in horror as the bear raises its hackles, the fur on the back of its wide neck, standing on end, bristling and shimmering. It's his final warning. There is only one direction this is headed. If he doesn't do something now to repel the grizzly, then he is done for.

I took my bike and I threw it out about a desperation and I remember seeing his arms through the A-frame of my bike and then he came down and he lunged at me. This was all super slow motion. It happens in a fraction of a second and yet everything seems to slow down. Through the frame of his bike, Colin sees the bear propel itself forward. Its head twisted slightly to one side, its jaw open, fangs bared. The bike disappears, flung aside like a twig. In the next instant, he is hit by an explosive, bone-shuddering force.

And suddenly he's on his back. His senses are overwhelmed by the violence of it. The grizzly's hard, muscular head rammed into his midriff, the overpowering stench of its hot breath, the soft, warm fur spilling around him. There is a sharp, popping sensation as the bear's teeth puncture his stomach. Then he feels himself being lifted off the ground. So I'm hanging upside down with bear's jaws, thinking to myself, oh man, like I am in trouble here. And my main thoughts were that if he drags me off in the bush, I would garner for sure. The bear carries Colin 40 feet down the road before dropping him.

He lands face down on the verge. As the animal goes in for another bite, in the chaos, Colin tries to gather his senses. Grizzlies often kill their prey by forcing them into submission, crushing them with the weight of their massive bodies, then biting and mauling until the fight is over before it's begun. Collins' assailant, however, appears to be taking its time, toying with its prey before finishing it off. But he isn't going to go down easily. I thought to myself, I'd have to start fighting back here, what are we going to do?

I thought I'd go for a double-eye gouge move, like in the movies. And it tried to double-eye gouge him, but his head was too wide for me to reach as far high. So I thought, well, I'll just go for one eye, I guess, under my mind. I was going to grip his ear and fur and stab in the eye and hold my thumb in there so hard that there was like no way I could be defeated or he could handle that pain. Colin moves fast. Still on his front, he twists his torso as far as he can and throws out his right hand, grabbing the bear's ear and jamming his thumb hard into its eye socket.

The bear thunders out a roar. Blood and saliva flying from its jaws. The next moment's blur. The next thing I know I've been spun 180, and I'm on my back and my shoulders, trying to bicycle kick this bear off me while he's corralled my legs with his paws. Now the grizzly rears up and throws its full weight down

on top of its victim. In the thrashing madness, Colin suddenly finds himself bizarrely trapped, his head squeezed between the bear's hindquarters. I'm pinned under his elbow, so picture his left elbow in my gut with his haunches wrapped up around near my head, and he's biting into my upper thigh near my groin. His face pressed into the warm fur of the bear's underbelly, Colin kicks, flails, and thrashes. But the grizzly is undeterred. He bit in, bite, and then let go fully and lift his head up. And then bite in again, let go fully and left his head up.

With each of these bites, he's doing a small shake to penetrate his teeth fully, I assume. And he did that maybe four or five times. and finally settled in. And this is the first moment that I felt sincere pain. As the adrenaline wears off, the pain becomes excruciating. In frantic desperation, he reaches up and tries to prize the bear's jaws apart with his fingers. He doesn't bugged him enough that he actually let go of my lap point, bit my hand, and then he moved down my leg a little ways, and now he's closer to my knee.

and continuing to dig him. I didn't realize it at the time, but at this point, and he's actually starting to eat me alive. And I remember, you know, yelling why and stop. And I was just beside myself, I couldn't think of anything else I could do. I remember feeling like really ashamed is probably the word, right? Because my wife definitely didn't want. want me to go on this trip.

You know, I'd never seen that level of concerned for her saying by to me before I went out of these missions. So I just felt bad that I was abandoned Jen and my family. And then I remember that I had a knife in my pocket. Maybe it's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it. Get over it. I can't help you with that.

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In the coastal forest of British Columbia, a near 400-pound grizzly bear is in the final stages of a kill as the life bleeds slowly out of its prey. But Colin Dowler isn't giving up. Inside his trouser pocket is a short two-inch hunting knife. It could be his last recourse, if only he could reach it. I didn't have the strength to pull my right arm through to get to my pocket with the weight of the bear on me. So I pulled with my right and pushed with my left and pushed my hand into my gut as far as I could to kind of get under the pressure of the bear laying on me. Colin wriggles the knife from his pocket, flicks out the blade, and pulls it across his body where he has more maneuverability with his left arm.

As he yanks the knife across the other way, he can feel the blade cutting into the bear's underbelly. but it barely penetrates through the fatty layer of flesh beneath the fur. If he's going to deliver a fatal blow, he's going to have to choose his spot. And I thought, man, I need to, like, line this up more precision. So for maybe 10 inches away, I lined up a stab with his neck. In my mind, I'm just going to stab him and, like, really rapid stabs. And, yeah, stab him as many times as possible. Try to kill the bear.

Colin has seen what happens when the bear gets angry. He won't get a second chance. He'll have to make this one opportunity count. He grips the knife tightly and holds out his left arm, lining up his shot. Then, with all the concentration he can muster, he slams his fist into the grizzly's neck, plunging the short blade as deep as it'll go. He pulls his hand away and brings it down again, hard,

repeatedly stabbing the same spot in a frenzy of adrenaline-fueled desperation. The bear jerks its head up. Colin goes to stab again, then hesitates. It's not clear if his attack has worked, or if the grizzly is just repositioning for another bite. Colin could lash out again, but there's a danger he wouldn't do any damage and simply make the bear more furious. And while I was thinking all these thoughts, giant gushell blood came spearing out of his neck. And I said aloud at that point, now you're bleeding too, bear.

So clearly I was charged with adrenaline. And then he got right up off me. And he walked around me. And each time I moved, he would turn and look at me. So I was trying to keep an eye on him, but move as little as possible. Colin keeps his eyes fixed on the bear as it staggers into the road. It walks over to his bike, sniffs, then starts slowly walking back towards him. An unbroken stream of blood pouring from the wound in its neck.

Colin lies still, playing dead. I'm seeing now that the blood is starting to slow down and laying out. And I'm laying there, looking at him and thinking, oh, would you just die? And he wasn't falling over. And I thought, man, I think I'm dying here. So I need to forget about this bear and start worrying about myself. With the bear now off of him, Colin lifts his head and glances down at his own injuries. It's not a pretty sight.

Grimmerson, he takes his blood-stained knife and cuts off the sleeve. leaves of his hiking shirt. Then he fashions them into tourniquets for each thigh, trying to stem the bleeding. This done, he turns to check on the bear. But it's gone. A thin trickle of blood trails off into the trees. One part of the ordeal seems to be over, at least for now. So that was a relief. It took a moment. I laid back, and I thought, what are we going to do next? I thought, well, do I wait for a logging vehicle to be coming down the road? But what if nobody comes? What then? Colin has no cell phone service. And even if he did, would an air ambulance reach him in time?

He needs urgent medical attention. And for that, he needs to get himself down to the logging camp seven kilometers back down the road. His only hope. is his bike. Cycling in his condition is clearly ill-advised. Even with the tornicase, he's losing blood. The movement of peddling would only make him bleed out faster. But he can't stay here. I want to get away from this bear because I don't know where he is.

And last I'd seen him, he was still a lot. So I decided that I'd try to get on my bike and ride back in the Larden camp. If I didn't make it all the way, at least I'd be away from this bear, and I'd get found by one of the crew tracks. Colin drags himself across the gravel on his elbows. He picks up one of his hiking poles, tries to pull himself to his feet, but it immediately collapses under his weight.

Lying in the dust, he tries again all gritted teeth and grim-faced resolve. This time, he manages to get himself upright. He picks up his bike and throws one leg over the saddle. Went to paddle and take my first push off and immediately fell off the other side of my bike and face planted. And it was a pretty desperate moment. I mean, you know, I'm in trouble here.

So I just told myself you got to suck it up and dig deep. Colin gets back on the bike. Fighting to ignore the rolling bombardment of pain he pushes off and starts peddling as hard as he can, trying to gather momentum. His left leg is so severely damaged, he can barely feel it, let alone pedal with it. Using his hands, he hauls his left foot onto the pedal and just lets it rest there, motionless, while he powers the other one with his right. And in this way, peddling one-footed and lurching from side to side,

he makes slow, agonizing progress down the road. Here, the road is flat. At some stage the terrain should drop into a hill that he'll be able to coast down all the way to the bottom. That moment can't come soon enough. For now, he slogs on, dripping blood, sweat, stinging his eyes. After what feels like an eternity, he reaches a distance mark in the road.

But it's not what he wants to see. I look up and I see the five-kilometer sign, which meant I had only made it halfway to the hill that I needed to get to the coast town. And my spirit sank at that point. I'm going to know, man, like, probably halfway. If there's no way, I'm going to make it. Colin sits hunched forward over the handlebars of his bike, his skin as pale as a cadaver, dark, thick blood, saturating the fabric of his ripped clothes.

The gravel ground stretches out ahead of him. He needs to make it a few more kilometers to keep fighting. With his left leg no longer functioning, he relies entirely on his right. He pushes his foot onto the pedal once more and heaves off. My small man's complex is one thing that taught me he never give up so I just kept paddling I told myself calling

you need to focus on breathing and keeping your foot on the pedal If his foot slips off he puts it right back on again and keeps forging forwards Somehow, growing weaker by the second he reaches the hill just three kilometers from the logging

camp at the end of the road, almost there. He coasts down it, willing himself to stay awake, as the agony and the bloodloss tug at his consciousness, blurring his field of vision. Finally, Colin rounds a corner, and there, up ahead, is the logging camp. He speeds down the rest of the way, skidding into camp and careening into the side of a wooden loading platform. I rolled in and I crashed into the deck. It's about two, maybe four steps. And I crashed into that and it just went with my plan to help. Several loggers burst out of the door of the cabin.

When they see this mangled cyclist, they freeze, then issue a few shocked expletives. Colin manages to spit out a few words to explain the situation. The loggers snap out of their horrified days. They carefully lift him inside the cabin where they start tending to him as best they can with their basic first aid supplies. With shaky, panicked hands, somebody cuts Colin out of his clothes, revealing the full extent of the bite wounds to his abdomen. I knew they found something serious because they were trying to not let me know what they'd found. Didn't do a great job, but I didn't ask about it. I just knew that it was bad.

The logger's tie new tourniquetase and apply pressure to try and stop the bleeding. After assuring Colin that an air ambulance has been called, somebody hands him a cell phone and asks if there are any calls he'd like to make. I'm pretty sure they were having me call people because they didn't think they didn't say. They didn't say, hey, it's your last chance to say goodbye, but pretty certain that's what was going through their mind. So anyhow, I called my life, Jim. But there's no answer. He tries phoning his dad, but again no answer. Finally, Colin rings his elder brother. I got through to him and had the most awkward five or ten minute

conversation I had my life. I don't really remember the phone call much, but I tried to explain into him that like if I don't make it out of here alive, I think I killed a grizzly bear with my knife, right? So I just wanted him to know.

Anyhow, and then the guys are asking who else we could call. It's kind of out of, you know, out of ideas. So told them they could call my boss and tell them that I won't be in on Monday. The loggers are doing their best to keep Colin's spirits up,

reassuring him that everything will be okay and that help is coming. But at this point, he doesn't have much fight left. I felt myself slipping away into, I don't know, it was a pretty blissful place, to be honest. There was no fear or sorrow, remorse, anything. It just felt like all my problems in life were going away. And then I heard the helicopter off in the distance. As he slips into a foggy, semi-conscious state, Colin listens to the distant dream-like hum of the helicopter coming into land.

Then a team of paramedics rush in. They kneel down next to him in their Navy overalls and start expertly getting to work. They apply dressings to his wounds and insert needles into his clapped veins, administering an emergency blood transfusion. And remember as they were checking over me, he told me that I was lucky that they had the blood on board system because without it, I probably wouldn't make it back to the hospital alive. And I thought to myself, I'm going to live because you wouldn't save something like that to someone that was going to die. Later, Colin lies in a hospital bed, dosed up on painkillers, surrounded by the smiling, tearful faces of his family. Having been helicoptered over to Vancouver Island, medics quickly got to work to treat his

brutal injuries. Colin suffered over 50 puncture wounds to his legs and abdomen. But the emergency surgery was a success. His wounds have been stitched up, and now he can turn his attention to recovery. It's a long, long process But bit by bit, he will get better It was almost exactly four months later That my final wound completely healed over with skin

And January, I was walking with poles And I could walk probably three kilometers Fairly easily And I remember trying to run in January, and I couldn't run two steps, right? Like, my coordination wasn't there. Like, I would fall on my face if I tried. But his balance does come back.

Soon he is indeed running again, then hiking and climbing. As for his emotional recovery, that takes longer. Six months later, I went, you know, from crying daily to maybe only crying several times a week. So now I'm at a stage where... You know, I just only get really emotional about it when I'm talking about it. It's not as ever present today as it was two years ago, but it's constant, right? I am constantly reminded. Maybe not every step I take, but it's almost every step I take.

I'm reminded every mold by bear, right? And, you know, it doesn't take much of a movement for the wounds to act up. There's a lot of nerve damage and stuff. So, yeah, how do I reflect on it? I don't know. It's odd. Still sits with me. I don't even understand the depth of the trauma.

Honestly, it's a tough adjustment. In the aftermath of the attack, Colin is questioned by a conservation officer who takes down the details of the bear that almost killed him. The animal is later tracked and put down. Standard procedure following an attack. Turns out Colin was in many ways lucky. The grizzly was indeed a near 400-pound adolescent male. Had he run into it a few years later, the beast would have been a prime alpha, a six- or 700-pounder,

and he wouldn't have stood a chance. When he looks back on his ordeal, Colin's feelings are mixed. Has it made me stronger? I don't think so. Has it given me purpose in the present moment, for sure, because, well, for instance, I've summited 53 mountains since I was mulled, and, I mean, I only started four years ago because I had to recover for a couple of years. I know that my body's not going to last as long as I'd predicted, so it's like now is the time to climb mountains.

And as for his remarkable survival, Colin says it came to. down to a determination and perseverance that started from a young age. When I was being mauled by the bear, it was more about, you know, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth and about how I used to dig deep when I was competing in high school on endurance runs. And I even thought, maybe not at the moment, but after, how funny it was that in a survival moment like that. I was actually reflecting back on high school.

It was just focusing on, like, digging deep. To have the stamina to persevere, to survive. Next time. So many tales of survival end with a helicopter crew swooping in to bail out those in peril. But what happens when they're going to be able out those in peril? But what happens when that crew becomes the ones in need of rescue? In 1996, Sergeant Scott McCoy as part of a search and rescue team

called out to assist a fisherman in a critical condition. But as they approach the Arctic archipelago, their helicopter suddenly runs into trouble over the freezing waters of the Labrador Sea. As they careen towards the icy water, the men will have to face down a series of threats, crashing into the waves, drowning in the depths, freezing to death. They'll need to draw on all their training, resourcefulness and teamwork if they're to stay alive. That's next time on real survival stories.

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