22-01-08, 14:23
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Oh ... here's an updated story about our paramedic survivor ... might put off your appetite though ....................
Quote:
January 22, 2008
Trapped man survived on rotten meat
By CP
CROWSNEST PASS -- The paramedic forced to endure the southern Alberta wilderness for four frosty days, subsisting on rotting beaver meat, says he may not have been found had fate not intervened.
Ken Hildebrand, who is recovering in a Lethbridge hospital after being trapped under his crashed ATV for nearly 96 hours, said he had begun to accept he might die when a hiker and his dog from Pincher Creek came upon him.
"He was hiking and he came there because he told me he had this funny intuition and urge to go hiking there, even though he'd never been there before," Hildebrand said from his hospital bed.
Hildebrand had been out Jan. 8 collecting animal traps, about 130 km southwest of Calgary, when his quad hit a rock and rolled, landing on his leg and pinning him.
As the cold set in, he began to use those same animals to help keep him alive.
"It was time to get ready for survival mode," Hildebrand said.
As a paramedic, he knew people start losing heat quickly from their upper body, so he took a beaver carcass and set it by his groin to help keep his body warm.
He used another beaver as a bit of a windbreak and part of its skin as a makeshift pillow.
"I knew I had some (orange) surveyor's tape -- I took it and tied one end around my wrist," he said.
"I threw it at different angles to make an X.
"If someone flew over they would see me, no problem."
With no water or food with him, no snow close by and nothing but dirt around him, he quickly became dehydrated.
He pulled some surveyor's tape through his teeth to get a little bit of the dew that dropped onto it.
"I ate a lot of dirt to get a little moisture," he said.
By the second night he was so hungry he started to pick at the beaver bones an hour after the sun went down.
"I tried to eat pieces of that, but it made me sick and I threw up," he said.
Hildebrand, who works teaching first aid and heavy equipment at Keyano College in Fort McMurray, said he still has property in the Crowsnest Pass and was there seeing if he could help ranchers with problem-wolves preying on their cattle.
Hildebrand's wife, Lil, who was at the couple's home in Fort McMurray, said she was unaware her husband was even missing until receiving a call from relatives saying he had been found.
"He let friends know he was going out and when he didn't come back, they assumed he changed his mind and decided to stay out there," she said.
Lil added doctors have told her Hildebrand faces months of rehabilitation and could lose part of his right foot due to severe frostbite.
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