Real Survival Stories - Transylvania Trek: Horror Story in the Wild

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

In 2003, a former special forces soldier journeys into the wilds of Romania. But here, in this land of myth and legend - of Bram Stoker’s Dracula - Ken Jones finds himself in a horror story of his own. After nature deals him a hammer blow, he’s left alone in the wilderness, battered and broken. Ken will have to summon every ounce of his resilience to escape… A Noiser production, written by Paul Olding. For more on this story read Ken’s book Darkness Descending. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, 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

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. It's Sunday, January 5, 2003, in Transylvania. The sun is low in the sky, and the early evening gloom spreads across the Fagaras Mountains of central Romania.

The angular peaks and ridges are gripped by midwinter frost and snow. All around, dark, dense forest spreads out for miles, growing on slopes and through valleys. This is a land of myth and legend, of ghost stories, of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And tonight, somewhere in the center of this sinister scenery, 26-year-old Ken Jones is facing a horror story of his own. Surrounded by tall, twisting trees, half buried in ice and snow, Ken lies on his back, unconscious. Suddenly his eyes flick open. He casts around, trying to get his bearings. Dizzy, he manages to sit up. The last few minutes are a blur. Stars were flying around my head and strange bursts of blue electric light were running into my eyes. I couldn't feel if my

tongue and my teeth were in my mouth. And you sit there for a while, not knowing what to do, just trying to take in everything that happened. Ken removes a glove and wipes the snow and dirt from his eyes. His face feels sticky. He looks down at his hand. It's covered in blood. As he becomes more lucid, intense pain begins to rip through his body. One of my first courses of action was to try and stand, but I fell to greater bone and I collapsed onto the floor. It's obvious he is seriously injured and unable to walk. Not only that, but it seems he has lost his backpack too.

All his food, his extra clothing and his sleeping bag, they're gone. The nearest village is over 13 kilometers away. He has no satellite phone, no flares and no way to signal for help. He calls out into the darkness, but there is no one to hear him. He is alone in the belly of the Transylvanian wilderness. I realized I'm separated from all my supplies, and I was aware enough to realize my chances of survival were extremely remote. 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. 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 to fight for their lives in this episode we meet ken jones a former british paratrooper and Special Forces soldier, Ken loves a physical challenge. And so, in 2003, he takes himself off on a solo adventure into the atmospheric and awe-inspiring environs of Transylvania. The outdoorsy 26-year-old is in his element. But then, quite suddenly, nature deals him a crushing blow. And I realized if I fell asleep, there was a chance I would die.

I can just remember feeling pure, naked terror. I've never felt so alone in my entire life. Over four grueling days, Ken will fight his way across snow, rocks, and even water. You'll need to rely on all his military training and all his inner resilience if he is to escape these dire straits. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. It's the morning of Sunday, January 5, 2003, in the Transylvanian Alps of central Romania, also known as the Southern Carpathian Mountains. An old beaten up green taxi hurtles along an icy mountain

road. The radio is blaring, and the local driver pops some cooked sunflower seeds into his mouth, munching away to the beat. He laughs as he ticks the tight cornice at high speed. Sat in the passenger seat is Ken Jones. He tightens his seatbelt and holds on for dear life. It's a clear, mild day, offering perfect views of the surrounding peaks. This is a stretch known as the Fagaras Range, home to Romania's tallest mountain, Moldavano.

Ken looks out of the window at the intimidating landscape as it whizzes past. Something is making him a little uneasy, and it isn't just his cabbie's reckless driving. I got this sense of foreboding. I dismissed it and didn't quite pay attention to it. And I thought, well, I've dismissed these feelings before and nothing's ever happened. I thought, I'm not going to turn back now just for a bad feeling. And there you go, I ignored it. The route into the Thagarash foothills takes the pair off the tarmac road and onto a frost-bitten

dirt track. The car skids, slips and slides as it ventures further into the remote countryside. With Mount Moldavano now looming overhead, the taxi comes to an abrupt halt. The driver spits out a sunflower seed, points up at the steep slopes beyond, and nods to his passenger. Ken retrieves his backpack from the boot of the car and shakes the driver's hand. This is the last person he'll see for some time. The taxi U-turns and belts it back along the road at perilous speed. Now alone in the frozen, untamed wild, Ken gazes up at the summit.

Before him lies a winter wonderland, sprawling beach and spruce woodland dusted with sugary snow. And beyond the trees, there is a backdrop of sharp peaks, giant spearheads puncturing the sky. With the hum of the taxi disappearing in the distance, Ken stands in silence. I'd had this lengthy disconnect from nature and the outdoor world being in the city for many months. And I just really wanted to reconnect. More than anything, I wanted uncertainty and excitement and a challenge.

Consulting his map, Ken steps off the road onto a narrow, snow-covered footpath and begins his solo ascent of Romania's highest peak. Back in the UK, Ken is a student at the University of Manchester, where he studies politics. But before starting this degree, Ken served four years as a British paratrooper, then two years as a special services soldier. He's no stranger to the great outdoors, nor to pushing his body to its limits. I had an idyllic upbringing in the Shropshire countryside. It was a very Tolkien-esque landscape. Every time we had a winter or a summer holiday, I'd make sure I'd travel and go backpacking, go off, climb some mountains.

I love the mountains. I love the great outdoors. I love a physical challenge. While the university is closed for the Christmas break, Ken is using his time off to explore a part of the world that's long been on his bucket list. Romania always had summer law. Romania was one of Europe's last great wilderness areas. It had some of the largest unfragmented forests in Europe. It was a land still full of myth and legend, incredible flora and fauna, especially bears, wolves, lynx, and that really captured my imagination.

During the summer, these hills and forests are teeming with walkers. But now, at the height of winter, few venture into this unforgiving terrain. Ken is all alone. He's packed for a wide range of eventualities, but he's also decided to leave behind a potentially life-saving bit of kit. I didn't want to take a sat phone with me. I didn't want to have to call someone for assistance. I didn't want help and my mindset was with strong, fierce independence. The mountain provided adventure, opportunity, physical challenge, a spiritual and a physical escape for me that I really yearned for.

And with that comes risks. And there were risks I was quite willing to take for my own sanity, peace of mind and just to live. Heading off at a steady run, legs pumping through the powder, Ken makes light work of the lower slopes. The crunch of his boots is the only sound in this eerily quiet world. He powers on up a steeply winding mountain path. The weather is fair and he's making good progress, eating up the miles. You're so immersed in the climb, the physicality of it, but earlier negative thoughts and concerns just get eclipsed.

I never felt so alive. Ahead, the trapezoid shape of Vista Mare comes into view. Before ascending Moldavano, Ken will first need to conquer this smaller summit. High winds at the top of the mountain blow light snow off the ridge, creating vortices of silver particles glinting in the winter sun. Opting to take a more direct route, Ken steps off the meandering trail path and heads up a wide man-made parting cut through the forest. During the warm summer months, this gap acts as a firebreak to stop the spread of forest fires.

Now, during winter, it appears as a large, snowy white streak running up the slope through the dark trees. Ken sets off, ascending with speed. But as he treks higher, the wind begins to pick up. Then the incline becomes steeper and the snow thicker. Soon he's clambering on all fours, with perspiration dripping down his spine and chilling his back. His progress slows until he's almost at a standstill. I was on a steep, even slope, and I was floundering in pockets of deep snow,

first up to my knees, then in places up to my waist, and I was utterly exhausted. I realized that I wasn't going to be able to summit safely, not at my current speed of going. I'm exhausted. I'm going to run out of daylight. I thought I'm better off going down. Ken pauses to assess the lay of the land. The temperature is noticeably dropping. He needs a sheltered spot to rest up for the night, somewhere back down the slope where the terrain is flatter seems like a good bet. With the stove and ample rations in his backpack, he can make camp, refuel and sleep, before tackling the summit first thing tomorrow.

Decision made, he turns and starts descending. But as he trudges back down the open firebreak that splits the forest, Ken suddenly hears something. An ominous sound from above. First I wondered what on earth it was. I thought it was a very strange, eerie sound that flooded across the open slope. I thought it might be an animal at first. And then, obviously, common sense prevailed, and I thought, this sounds like movements from the snowpack.

And I thought, I've got to get down. So I started to descend. I heard the same noise again, even louder, and so I was panicked. Just 500 metres above Ken, a large chunk of the thick, snow-covered ridge has fractured. It starts moving en masse and in an instant becomes a vast, tumbling maelstrom of snow, rock and ice, which hurtles down the mountainside. The avalanche is heading straight for Ken. All of a sudden, the noise was everywhere and right on top of me at the same time. I was momentarily transfixed, unable to take my eyes away from it. I was just staring like an imbecile at it, just in awe of this freak incident of Mother Nature.

It's an experience of pure naked fear. As the avalanche rapidly advances, the sky is blotted out with a white mist. It's hard to see where the mountain ends and the sky begins. The ground shakes, the noise builds, and there's only one thing to do. Run. I just abandoned sand mountain practice and just tobogganed down, slid down on my backside as fast as possible to get into the shelter and protection of the trees. Sprinting, stumbling and sliding, Ken barrels towards the relative safety of the forest. Ploughing headlong through the trees, he is whipped and snagged by branches. My feet kicked into deadfall logs and rocks on the forest floor, and I was sprayed in a

whiteout mist of snow particles. I could hear the machine gun rattle of branches off the trees snapping. It was an intense experience. experience deeper and deeper into the forest he goes before finally he stops glancing back the fierce avalanche passes him by continuing its destructive charge down the open ground of the firebreak. Ken pulls up to catch his breath. I burst into a fit of giggles. It was just a release of a shock and tension once I realized the avalanche had thundered its way down the firebreak and I'd managed to escape it.

Ken has picked up a few scrapes and scratches, but otherwise all is well. With his breathing now under control, he continues his descent. But the bumpy ground and steep slope of the forest make movement difficult. He slips on the shifting scree and collides with sharp branches and thick trunks. After a bruising few minutes, his route down thankfully opens into a wide clearing. The open hillside is much easier to traverse, but it's also a gamble. Without the

protection of the trees, he's more vulnerable. Ken's luck is about to be tested again. Before long, another loud crack echoes across the landscape, followed by a low, growling rumble. Ken's stomach drops. Clearly today isn't his day. A second avalanche, just as ferocious as the first, is shooting down the slope towards him. Once again, it's move or die.

As soon as it was triggered, I turned around, run as fast as I could down the mountain. I was so terrified I could feel like my head was cracking. I tumbled, fell over, my rucksack come over my head, picked myself up, and then I was caught by the avalanche. The chaos of the ice and snow sweeps Ken off his feet. He's buffeted and battered, thrown this way and that. Desperately, he tries to keep his head above the frenzy, thrashing his arms and legs like he's swimming in a rough ocean. He can barely breathe. The flurry is unrelenting and unforgiving,

pounding his body from all sides. And then the ground beneath Ken seems to disappear entirely. I became aware of an even more terrifying sensation, and I was falling. I can just remember being aware of huge lumps of snow flying past my head as I was mid-flight. The avalanche sends Ken flying off the ledge of a steep cliff. Now, in freefall, he bullets towards the ground. With a colossal whack, he meets solid earth and is knocked unconscious. Minutes pass. Ken lies motionless, partially entombed in snow and ice.

Slowly, he comes to and opens his eyes. When I regained consciousness, I was kind of caught in a shock trance that mercifully follows trauma. Stars were flying around my head and strange bursts of blue electric light were running into my eyes. I couldn't feel if my tongue and my teeth were in my mouth. And you sit there for a while, not knowing what to do, just trying to take in everything that happened. Reaching up, Ken discovers a significant gash across his forehead, dribbling warm blood down his twitching face. He's dizzy, he confused, and everything hurts.

Woozy, Ken tries to stand, but immediately there is a vicious punch of pain, and his left leg gives way. Clearly it's badly broken, and it seems his hip is too. When he moves, he can hear bone fragments grating on each other. It was major, major trauma. There was no way I'd been able to walk. I had a couple more attempts and ended up writhing in agony on the ground, incapable of bearing any weight on my injured leg.

Reaching down under the waistband of his trousers, Ken feels more blood oozing from a second large gash. His training kicks in. Opening his coat pocket, he extracts an army field dressing and applies it to his leg to try and stem the flow. He needs urgent medical attention. And now the night is drawing in. Darkness and cold start smothering his already shaking body. Ken carefully sits up and takes stock, trying to remain analytical.

His rucksack is missing, and with it, all his food rations, stove, extra clothes, and sleeping bag. Things he desperately needs is to stand any chance out here. Perhaps worst of all, he has no satellite phone, no way of calling for help. He starts checking his pockets. All he has is a penknife, some battered sausage rolls, and broken sugar-coated cakes. Not much, but it's better than nothing. And then, looking around in the dusky twilight, Ken notices something.

A strange light glowing out of the snow at the base of the cliff, a little way uphill. Could it be his head torch? And if his torch is there, could his rucksack be nearby? I'm determined to try and get to the base of the cliff and try and recover some of my essential lost items, particularly my emergency rations and my sleeping bag. So I begin dragging myself up a mountain just so I can preserve myself and survive the night.

Pushing with his right leg and dragging his broken left leg behind, Ken coaxes himself forward up the slope. It takes every ounce of strength just to move a few centimetres, but he battles on. Along the way, he finds a woolen hat knitted for him by his mom and a waterproof bag. When he finally reaches his torch, it has taken almost two hours to cover just 30 meters. Ken pauses to catch his breath. The chill of the ground is creeping up through his clothes.

Remaining still is a death sentence. Aware that I need to formulate a plan, I can't just sit there and do nothing. I realized I couldn't get up a cliff. I couldn't find my items. There's no way I could retrieve them. I was wasting energy. Do I stay up here and search for my items. There's no way I could retrieve them. I was wasting energy. Do I stay up here and search for my items in daylight, or do I try and get down? Travelling any further uphill would be far too slow and torturous.

It's clear that Ken is never going to be able to reach his sleeping bag, wherever it may be. A new plan is needed. If Ken can make it back down to the road where the taxi driver dropped him off, there is a chance he could find help, from a passing car or even a fellow intrepid adventurer. But he can't do anything until tomorrow. With a frigid, stabbing wind whistling across the icy landscape and the temperature dropping to minus 15 degrees Celsius, right now Ken just needs to hunker down and try to survive the night.

Shimmying his way down the incline, he heads towards a fallen tree, a partial shelter. As he inches forwards, he finds other scattered supplies, some spare socks, his water bottle. Gathering what he can, he finally comes to a stop and wedges himself next to the fallen trunk. But even here, laying still on the ground, the ordeal continues. Although there was no physical effort in terms of crawling, the coldness was mind-numbing. It was just so painful, it felt like you're constantly being stabbed. Spent from the day's exertions,

he hungrily consumes the last of the sausage rolls and broken cakes, unable to restrain himself. He does what he can to make himself comfortable and tries to rest. But at the same time, he can't relax too much, because if he falls asleep, he'll stop shivering and die. I retreated into a turtle shell motion. I pulled my arms inside from out from my sleeves, tucked them into my body and tried to turtle shell my head into my jacket too and just sat there shivering and waiting.

It was an horrific experience because when you lose purpose, you've got no actions. I realized how fatal sleep could be and I like it. So I just desperately tried to stay awake. And it was a real, a real mental ordeal to just try and stay awake. At one point, I had to physically hold my eyelids open with my fingers. I was literally winching them open. I can't quite articulate how slowly a night in the open in the winter months moves. Time washes over you so slowly. Every minute seems like many hours.

It's utterly torturous. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. It's Monday, January the 6th, day two. The dawn glow makes the frozen branches of the forest sparkle like shards of glass. Ken watches the glittering light through exhausted, sleep-deprived eyes.

He has made it through the night. But the pain in his left leg is almost unbearable he begins to shout through the trees and i've never called for help before in my life and it's it's a very unusual thing to hear yourself calling for help especially in the countryside where your voice echoes it reverberates across the mountain. Inevitably, Ken's cries are met by nothing but an intense silence. Nobody is here to help. No one knows where he is or what has happened to him.

If he is going to survive, he will have to do it alone. Perched halfway up the mountainside, it's not just hypothermia that could kill him. He's now at risk of dehydration. His water bottle is already drained. You know, I think I'm bloody thirsty as well with a loss of blood and my physical effort. My mouth is so dry, my tongue is almost stuck to the roof of my mouth. I feel like I've got sand in my mouth. Eating snow is no good.

It would lower his core body temperature and cause further dehydration. By this point, survival had been relegated into a distant second place, and I just had this desperate urge. My focus was on water and hydration. With visibility fairly good this morning, Ken looks down into the valley. Squinting into the distance,

he can see a small stream below, a lifeline. It's time to set off. Pushing with his uninjured right leg and using all his upper body strength to pull with his arms, Ken crawls down the mountain. Progress is slow and clumsy. The terrain varies from snow to bare rock to layers of frost and dirt covered in ice. Every movement was extremely painful. It was trying to improvise and adapt ways of moving to mitigate the pain and negotiate otherwise insignificant obstacles was extremely, extremely taxing. If the slope allows, Ken points his legs downhill, hooks his damaged left leg onto his right, and slides down on his backside.

The effort just to move a short distance, whether crawling or sliding, is enormous. Cairn tries to keep psyching himself up, his mind helping to carry his body onwards. I'm physically capable of moving. I have to issue my body the order to keep moving, to keep going. And then you have these little Braveheart moments where you psych yourself up. It's as if a Rocky training montage is on. And you have these incredible surges of energy and adrenaline. A real surge of purpose.

Finally, the ground started to level out. Ken has reached the lower slopes. But this provides an even tougher challenge. Without gravity's assistance, it's just brute strength that will keep up the momentum now. Dragging himself on his belly, Ken forces his way meter by meter towards the life-saving water. After hours of effort, he's nearing the very edge of what he can endure. You can only ever rely on these manic surges of physical effort for so long until utter exhaustion and extreme pain just overtake you and then after that something dark takes over something else was consuming me and taking charge and had taken over me independent of my own thoughts and i didn't like it i didn't like it

at all because i like to have some sort of control. The trickle of running water becomes louder, beckoning him towards it. After several more hours, Ken manages to haul himself to the edge of the stream. But there is a problem. The sides are so steep that he can't reach the water. Ken will have to improvise a solution. Taking out one of his bootlaces,

he ties it around the top of his canteen. Slowly, carefully, he dangles his bottle over the bank into the flowing stream. He watches with delight as it fills, and then he winches it up. Gulping down the cool, crisp mountain water, Ken is recharged for the time being. But now there is another significant challenge. The stream is in his way.

If he's going to make it to the road, Ken has no choice but to cross. It's quite alarming what the human body will do to survive, as long as you tell it to keep moving. Some hidden, inaccessible part of my mind, some recess, was issuing orders that weren't really strength of character or determination. It was very outside of himself, very odd, very obscure, very dark. Shimmying himself along the side of the stream, Ken searches for the best place to try to make it across. A bend in the stream offers a narrower crossing point, the shortest distance between the banks. He heads that way, rolling and shuffling and scrambling towards it.

When he reaches the spot, he stops and takes stock. The banks are fairly shallow, but if he's going to make it across, he will need to stand up. And the last time he tried that, he crumpled in agony. Finding a branch to use as a crutch, Ken gently, gradually pushes himself up. The pain is formidable, but he grits his teeth and takes a step. Entering the water, the immense cold instantly invades his bones I realised if I did fall and submerge my upper body

Clothing would get drenched and I would absolutely perish So I'd take my jacket off, my gloves Throw them to the other side of a stream Forcing myself to go after them One hop at a time, forcing myself to go after them. One hop at a time, he slowly fords the stream. One stumble, and that could be it. Over an hour later, he throws himself onto the opposite bank, reclaiming his dry jackets and collapsing with relief.

As he tries to warm himself up, Ken takes stock of the journey he has made so far. Looking back up the slope, he's probably only covered a kilometer today, maybe two. There's still a long way to go to reach anyone who might be able to help him. Night is drawing in again, but as darkness creeps across the woodland, a new fear starts to take hold. I was so utterly exhausted that I wanted to sleep so badly, but I became extremely paranoid that wolves were honing in on me with the smell of my blood. The paranoia was immense. I was utterly petrified that wolves were essentially going to eat me alive

and I just thought, what a terrible way to go. Transylvania is thought to be home to around 3,500 grey wolves. The scent of Ken's blood-soaked body certainly could attract any predators lurking in the trees. With a severely broken leg and totally exhausted, he's easy prey. Finding a spot to settle down for a second night in the frozen wilderness, Ken tries to keep calm.

But now the hunger, the pain, and lack of sleep all start to take their toll. In the blackness all around him, he starts to see shapes. He can't be sure if what he's seeing is real or a hallucination. It's incredible the tricks that your mind can play on you when you're so vulnerable and exposed to the elements. I was convinced I could see the eyes of wolves, of packs of wolves staring at me through the trees. I grabbed a nearby rock and I was just sat there, shaking, terrified, exhausted, waiting to bludgeon any animal that come anywhere near me.

I just felt, bloody hell, this is some ordeal. It's Tuesday, January the 7th, day three. Ken has managed to make it through another night without food or sleep, and he hasn't been eaten alive. Despite everything he's been through, he's still a long way from safety. And now the weather is closing in. A shrieking wind morphs into a punishing blizzard. But he must push on.

By now I'd abandoned Hope of Rescue and I thought, I've got to rely absolutely on myself, otherwise I'm not going to make this. It was entering into the extreme limits of absolute human endurance as well as, more profoundly, utter psychological warfare. Blinded by the snowstorm, Ken relies on his compass to guide him. In tiny increments, he continues to drag himself through the frozen vastness. The wind pushes against him. His broken leg stabs and throbs relentlessly.

But Ken is hard on himself, employing some military-style tough love to keep up his momentum. I remember in the army, all these guys would just quit. On selection, you'd come back and there'd be loads of empty beds. And I thought, I know I'm not going to quit. So if I don't issue it, the command to keep moving, I'm committing suicide. And I was very matter of fact and clinical about it. I've kind of got a very stubborn, ruthless attitude when I find people quitting in life.

And I don't buy excuses easily. And I was applying this to myself, this same harshness. I was assessing myself by the same metrics, the same standard, and the same cruelness. I really told myself I would be a coward and weak if I didn't tell myself to keep moving. For several hours, Ken berates and bullies himself forwards.

Eventually, he arrives at an area of felled trees. It's a good sign, a sign of human activity. But unfortunately, there are no loggers out working today. Navigating through the tree stumps provides extra obstacles to overcome. His clothing and his broken leg keep getting snagged on the woody debris. He's now running on fumes. Even his mental fortitude is starting to wane. Is this all just hopeless? Night comes again.

With nothing left to give, Ken lies on his back and stares upwards. I was completely at war with myself and I was really psychoanalyzing myself. I was getting to some point where I thought, just die, just die. So all this was over and I was resenting my body. I just think, why are you still moving and doing this? My head started to feel heavy. My vision started to fade and it was appalling to feel all one possesses drain away. I've got absolutely nothing left. I think I said goodbye to my family, had this conversation,

and I just lay there contemplating, staring up at the Milky Way, abandoned, just resigned to my fate, just patiently waiting death. It's Wednesday, the 8th of January. Day four, and incredibly, Ken is still alive. A cocoon of snow has covered him in the night, miraculously providing just enough insulation from the freezing air to keep him alive. There's no doubt when I wake up for the fourth day

that it is today or nothing. I'm utterly convinced I will die if I don't make it back today. It's not even a consideration. I feel I know it as an absolute fact. I know my body can't sustain another night. So I just give it everything I have. Once more, Ken sets off, groping his way forwards, forcing his broken body over snow, ice, rock and dirt. In the distance, against a ceiling of heavy white clouds, he can now see wisps of black chimney smoke. The first evidence of some kind of human habitation.

It's still a long way off, but it's something. An image of hope. But a wide river now blocks his path. It cuts through the bedrock, creating a deep ravine. The sides of the rocky gully are steep, making entry and exit an additional challenge. Again, Ken will have to find a way to cross the water. Trying to replicate his previously successful technique, Ken finds a stick to act as a crutch and lowers himself into the agonizingly cold river.

It's the shock of submerging that takes my breath away. I do these pivots, so I place my weight through the toe of my boot and I pivot round so my heel touches the ground. Then I lift my toes and I keep pivoting in a motion like that. So a very small distance takes a painfully long time to cover even a metre. With the crystal clear water lapping at his belt, Ken is able to hobble along the river's edge, leaning against the vertical grey rock of the ravine.

Long, glistening icicles hang over him like daggers. A frosty vapour rises off the water's surface. After an hour of wading along the river's edge, he finally spots a potential crossing point. There's a shallow bank on the other side, but the water here is too deep to wade across. He'll have to swim. Ken can't allow his jacket and undershirts to get wet. Otherwise, hypothermia will kill him within hours.

Gingerly, he takes them off. His bare skin prickles in the frigid air. I'm shirtless in the water and a filthy mixture of snow and ice rain is coming at me, hitting me like razors. But I can see on the other side of a stream there's a bank where I can actually get out.

So I hold my jacket above my head and I do a one-handed swim. Ken is submerged up to his neck. The current is strong. One false move and he could be swept away. Slowly, steadily, he crosses the river and with a final flail of limbs, he reaches the other side. Pulling on reeds, Ken hauls himself out, utterly exhausted, his body wracked with uncontrollable shivers. Then, as he clambers further up the bank, his right boot falls off.

And I turn around and I watch my boot tumble down the slope and land on the surface of water. It submerges for a second, floats back to the top, and I can see it being carried off downstream. That is for, that's it. I'm now gonna lose my foot. High winds now start whipping up the snow and sleet, reducing visibility. The ice strikes Ken's face like frozen shotgun pellets.

He keeps his head down and doggedly plows on. Soon, the wet sock on his exposed right foot freezes solid. But then, just ahead, through the trees, he spots something. It's faint, almost invisible, but unmistakably there. It is the vehicle track where the taxi driver dropped him three days earlier. He has found it. After being exposed to nature and the elements for so many days, this was a solid sign of human life.

Hope was revived. It was the most convinced I'd been throughout the entire ordeal that I got a fair chance of making it back. Hit by a wave of pure adrenaline, Ken finds yet another level. He's done with crawling. He's walking out of here. Grabbing a sturdy branch to steady himself, he slowly stands. Now able to hobble along the road, he heads off.

There could be a village around the next bend, or he could still be miles away. With only an hour left of daylight, time is running out. As Ken shovels along, the pain in his leg and hip is incredible, but he is now gripped by a brand new agony, intense stomach pains. I realized I was in serious trouble. I'd been unaware, but the stress of my ordeal had leaked excess stomach acid that perforated my stomach lining so I was effectively bleeding to death. I had a few spasms of violent pain which was a perforation of my stomach lining and as my parachute regimen instructors told me they always said don't get shot in the stomach it's the most painful way to die. I'd got the equivalent of five bullet holes in my stomach. Bent double, with night falling around him, Ken sucks up the pain.

There's nothing else he can do. He just keeps going. And then, just after 8pm, he sees something in the distance. The vague point of a roof, the outline of walls, the glow through a window. Eventually I saw an old hut and a TV flashed shadows across a forest floor outside. It was a really profound moment just to see civilization, a real sign of actual human life. Using the last vestiges of his strength and willpower, Ken manages to limp up to the hut and bangs on the door. A few seconds later, an elderly Romanian man answers. He must have been horrified at the sight of the snow and blood-covered man with torn clothings knocking on the door at some late hour at night, coming out of the woods. Ken collapses into the arms of the baffled old man.

After four days, three nights, two avalanches and countless injuries, he has finally escaped the wilds of Transylvania. Ken is taken in, given food, dry clothes and vodka to warm him up and numb the pain. The man rouses his neighbors, who call an ambulance. Ken is rushed to hospital. I had an agonizing two and a half, three hour journey to a hospital in an ambulance that looked like a Ghostbusters van. Got to a hospital and one of the surgeons told me, do I give permission to operate? Because if I don't, I'm going to die. I fractured my skull, shattered my femur, shattered my acetabulum, the hip socket, snapped the head off my femur, perforated my stomachs. They told me I'd never walk again. Even after life-saving surgery, Ken is barely hanging on. Between the frostbite in his foot,

the broken bones, and the fact that he's lost a huge amount of his body weight, things are looking bleak. A day later, his parents fly out to be at his bedside. My mother was looking at watching the bottom of her bed as I could feel my life force fade away. My mum asking a surgeon if i was going to survive one of the doctors hugging my mom and said no he's not going to make it so that was that was pretty harrowing there are further emergency surgeries weeks of clinging on in

a hospital bed and yet day by day the doctor's efforts begin to bear fruit. Gradually, Ken's condition improves. Eventually, he is told he can fly home with his parents. Over the coming months, Ken submits himself to various reconstructive surgeries, and then a grueling daily recovery program. Steadily, bit by bit, he regains his mobility, or at least a portion of it. Looking back, while his body will never be the same again, the extent of his recovery is remarkable, and his perspective is changed forever. Two years later I was able to walk

again and regain some of my physical capabilities. Unfortunately my military career was sabotaged from that. I never recovered my former powers but I was able to climb again and I lived a good physical and healthy life again. So I'm very lucky to have got to know myself so intimately, almost consider it a privilege. I take ownership of responsibility for all my decisions and actions and all the kit in the world wouldn't have saved me. I still maintain that I was sufficiently prepared. Military training just provides a reinforcement that you can do these things and it also provides a strong sense of belief and I think there's a lot to be said for optimism and having a positive outlook on life, a will to live and things worth living for.

In the next episode, we meet Karen Klein and her son Izzy. In 2016, the Kleins are on their way to the Grand Canyon as part of a busy trip around the American Southwest. But a small slice of misfortune will send their fun, relaxing vacation into a tailspin. Forced to split up in the middle of nowhere, the family will part ways with no idea how close they'll come to never seeing each other again.

That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noisa Plus.