The Climber Who Survived His Own Death

Today's stories are all about people who went into the wilderness and then came back changed, hidden, or not at all. First, a climber falls into one of the deadliest places on earth, and what happens next is almost impossible to believe. Then, a legendary park ranger vanishes in the mountains that he knew better than anyone else on earth. And finally, a man disappears from normal life, only to resurface years later on the Appalachian Trail under very suspicious circumstances. Now, our first story today starts with a video, but if you're listening audio only don't worry, the video's brief, and honestly, the audio is chilling enough on its own that you're gonna want to hear it. And before we get into that, if you haven't done so, please leave us a five star review. My goal is to hit 1,000 five star reviews, and we're actually getting really close to that goal, so I would appreciate it very much, and without further ado, I'm Kyle Hayte-Hiking. Listen on, if you dare. This climbing footage messed me up so bad, and it only got worse when I learned the full story behind it. That footage was recorded in April of 2023 somewhere around 19,000 feet in elevation on Mount Anaperna, which is the most dangerous peak on Earth, statistically speaking. The menu here in the video is 34 year old Anorag Maloo, and he's trapped at the bottom of a deep glacier. He knows his only chance at survival is if someone rescues him, but what he doesn't know is that the men he was climbing with just left him for dead. And so, with no other option but to just wait, Anorag pressed record on his GoPro. He was alive and he was conscious, at least for the time being, and so he would continue recording messages for his family, for his own sanity, and for whoever eventually would recover his body. But after some time, his GoPro died, and essentially, Anorag did too. But what happened next is almost too unbelievable to be true, and I have even more footage to prove that it's all real. Anorag Maloo is a name that most of you probably haven't heard before, but I promise you that by the end of this video, you are going to remember his name for a very, very long time. So Anorag Maloo was born on June 13th, 1989 in Kashangar, Rajasthan, India. And just a side note, I'm going to do my best with these pronunciations that I really apologize if I mess them up. Now this was a small city, and his family was quite traditional. No one in his family had ever climbed mountains before. No one had even traveled the world. And so for Anorag, going to college, and getting a degree in engineering, would have been more than enough, right? And he did do that, but instead of taking some corporate job, he joined Teach for India, a nonprofit that sends young professionals to teach in low-income schools across the country. Anorag wanted to make a difference. And while teaching, he realized that the kids he was teaching, who were mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds, will say, well, he realized that they needed a lot more than just textbooks. They needed to see what was possible, what you could achieve. They needed someone to show them that the world was bigger than the circumstances they were trapped in. And so Anorag started dreaming big, like really big. In 2011, he participated in the Jagriti Yatra, which was a 15-day train journey across India, designed to inspire young entrepreneurs. He met change makers, social innovators, people who were trying to solve, like, like, real problems. You know what I mean? And in 2013, Anorag got invited on an expedition that would ultimately change his life. The inspire, international, and artica expedition with Surra Robert Swan, who was the first person to walk both the north and south poles. He found a new purpose. And from then on, he committed his life to climate studies at the world's highest peaks and in the world's coldest regions. So as you can imagine, this would require him to begin training as a mountaineer. By 2022, Anorag had climbed over 10 peaks and passes and had been to over 60 countries across all seven continents. And at every single summit he reached, he would talk with the people around him about the mountain communities that depend on these ecosystems. However, despite all of this experience, both in the mountains and professionally, he still hadn't climbed any of the 8,000ers, the 14 mountains whose peaks cross above 8,000 meters. And of course, some of these include K2 or Makaloo. And who could forget probably the most famous one Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the entire world. And so in 2023, Anorag decided that he would start his quest to conquer all 14 of these peaks. And the first one he would take on would be Anna Perna. And listen, I'm no mountaineer, but I still think it's a little crazy that he chose Anna Perna as his like first choice for these peaks. Because let's just say that this particular mountain has earned a nickname, the killer mountain. Oh, and it's earned it for good reason. For my understanding, even Mount Everest is is like a cakewalk compared to Anna Perna. And Anorag was about to learn this the hard way. Nepal's Anna Perna sits at 26,545 feet in elevation or about 8,091 meters. And even though it's only, or only the 10th highest peak in the world, Anna Perna has the highest fatality rate of all the 8,000ers, almost one in three climbers who attempt Anna Perna don't make it back one in three. Compare that to Mount Everest, for instance, whose fatality rate is around one to two percent or even K2, the second highest mountain in the world whose death rate is closer to 25%. So you can see that Anna Perna is on a whole nother level basically. And there are three reasons for this. And the first is the avalanche danger. Anna Perna's south face is notorious for these massive unpredictable avalanches. The route between camp two and camp three is swept by avalanches like constantly. And so climbers try to move through this section as fast as they can because I mean, it's basically a shooting gallery. Anna Perna also gets hit with sudden, violent storms that can trap climbers high up on the mountain. The weather can turn from clear skies all the way to white out conditions in just minutes and with pretty much zero warning. And on top of all the environmental risks, the mountain makes climbers perform some of the most technically difficult maneuvers that exist in the sport, right? There are these giant Siraks that hang over climbers heads. There's deep crevasses that appear out of nowhere and narrow ridges that require perfect balance. That is, unless you don't mind falling to your death. During the weekend, that onerog would attempt his summit and a Perna would claim another victim. And that was no Hannah, a 56 year old Irish climber who had summited Everest 10 times in the past. He died in his tent at camp four after successfully summiting without supplemental oxygen, which just goes to show that that no one is safe on Anna Perna unless you're, you know, back at base camp, which happens to be where onerog found himself in late March of 2023. Now, here's something important. Onerog decided to attempt Anna Perna without supplemental oxygen, just like the previous, now deceased climber that I mentioned a second ago. And this is a huge deal. Climbing above 8,000 meters without oxygen is incredibly rare and incredibly dangerous. Once you're up there, your brain starts losing oxygen at a rapid pace. Your organ starts shutting down. I mean, spending over 12 hours in the death zone without supplemental oxygen, well, that means that you're essentially tempting fate. If you get stuck up there for any longer than that, you can, you can pretty much forget it. On the night of April 15th, 2023, onerog and his Sherpa dola started their summit push. They made relatively good time climbing up the mountain with weather patterns holding out for the most part. They left camp four in the middle of the night, heading for the summit right as the clock struck midnight now on April 16th. But as they climbed higher, onerog started feeling sick. The beginning signs of altitude sickness were starting to kick in fatigue. A terrible cough that he had been nursing for a few days was getting worse by the second. Every breath felt just so heavy. Every step was agony and around camp five, which was still well below the summit. By the way, onerog radioed down telling his team that he was not going to summit. He had made his choice. He was going to turn around and the team radioed back telling him that the weather was turning very bad. Anyways, and so, onerog and his Sherpa, they made this very smart decision and they started going back down the mountain. And I have to note that in most of the mountaineering stories that I cover on this channel, we hear about someone ignoring their better judgment or not paying attention to early warning signs of trouble and, you know, continuing up the mountain when they should have turned around. But none of that was true in Onerog's story. He and his Sherpa made the kind of decision that usually saves lives on mountains like Everest K2 and of course Anna Perna. And so how is it possible then that just a few moments later, everyone thought that onerog was dead. You heard that right. By now, it was April 17th, 2023. Right around 2.30 p.m., Onerog and his Sherpa were descending between Camp 3 and Camp 2. And despite now being out of the death zone just out of it, they were now approaching the most dangerous section of the climb or the descent. A steep icy coolar with crevasses and Syrac's looming above. Now just two weeks earlier, a major avalanche had swept through this exact area, and luckily no one was buried at the time, but everyone knew that this section was a death trap. A ticking time bomb, if you will, and it was even more perilous going down than it was going up. Oh and plus, the weather was getting worse and worse, visibility was becoming a problem just because they had turned around did not mean that they were anywhere close to safety yet. Moving at the same time as Onerog, a Brazilian climber who had also turned back before reaching the summit. He was now in front of Onerog, moving very, very carefully. Moez was the more experienced climber and Onerog once again made a very smart decision to let him go first. They reached a section that required a short repel about 25 feet down a steep icy wall. There was a snow anchor there with two ropes hanging from it, one for people and one for gear. The one for the people had a giant knot at the bottom of it, you know, to stop people from repelling any further past that point. So Moez went first thinking that he would kind of show Onerog the ropes, literally. He clipped into the rope that had the knot at the end and he repelled down safely, stopping at that giant knot. Then it was Onerog's turn. He clipped in and he started repelling, but unlike Moez, Onerog didn't see a knot at the bottom of his rope because it turns out he had grabbed the wrong rope. He was on the cargo rope used for hauling gear and equipment, not the one used for repelling people. It was too short and again, it had no knot at the end, absolutely nothing to stop all the momentum he was picking up as he repelled down. So he began gaining more and more speed, which, you know, if you're repelling down an icy slope, well, that's not exactly what you want. And eventually Onerog dropped right off the rope, hitting the hard ice below and then sliding down and down. Moez and Dawa Sharpa watched in horror as he just tumbled uncontrollably down the steep icy slope, picking up even more speed, unable to self arrest until after several hundred feet of sliding, he disappeared into a massive crevasse. Moez and Dawa Sharpa hustled to the mouth of the crevasse and they started like shouting down to him and they didn't hear anything back. The weather was getting worse, the avalanche danger was increasing by the second. And so Moez and the Sharpa basically had to keep moving or risk dying themselves. And that sounds harsh, but again, they were shouting to him and he wasn't responding. I mean, every logical sign was telling them that Onerog was gone. And so they left him behind. And again, that sounds cruel, but like you have to really think here, what else could they have done? This is the harsh truth of mountaineering when something goes wrong on one of the world's most dangerous mountains, it's essentially everyone for themselves. If you expend valuable time and energy and resources on an unplanned rescue, it's very likely that you too will end up dying. And so they did what mountaineering forces you to do in these situations. And they would have to live with that. When Moez and Dawa Sharpa reached camp two, they radioed all the way down to base camp basically saying that Onerog had fallen into a crevasse and well, we think he's dead. And for those of you that have never fallen into a crevasse, let me tell you what it's like, or at least what it's like from what I've researched. I haven't either. A crevasse is a deep crack in a glacier with walls made of solid ice. The bottom is often filled with snow and debris from previous avalanches. And when you fall into one, which is basically like my worst nightmare, by the way, the impact is most likely going to kill you. But if you're lucky or perhaps unlucky enough to survive, then you're most likely going to break bones, experience extreme trauma and internal bleeding and external bleeding. And then you're going to die. But if you survive the fall and somehow you're still conscious, well, you're faced with a brand new nightmare, which is your trapped, like how are you going to get out? That was the reality that Onerog faced when he came to moments after he was left behind. He didn't die. He spoke in the crevasse after being unconscious for quite some time and immediately recognized the situation that he had quite literally landed in. He began assessing the walls surrounding him and they were way too slippery and icy for him to climb out of. And then he assessed his injuries. Now he was hurt, obviously, but he wasn't hurt like critically. His best chances were to stay put and then just pray that rescue would come, which sounds like a simple plan, but of course, when you're stuck down there, that is way easier said than done. He didn't have much in terms of rations. He didn't have a radio. He barely had anything, but he did have a GoPro will come back to that. And even though the crevasse was slightly warmer than like the outside face of the mountain, you know, since it was protected from the wind, well, it was still well below freezing, which meant that hypothermia and frostbite were not just a possibility, but pretty much inevitable at some point. Honorog knew that he would be in for the fight of his life, essentially. Most people who fall into crevasse and don't die right away will still die within hours. All that honorog could do was just try to outlast the mountain, which almost always is a losing proposition. Meanwhile back in India, honorog's family was in hell. His brothers Ashish Maloo and Suthir Maloo, well, they got the call on April 17th. It was assumed that their brother was dead, though the Maloo family did hold on to a sliver of hope because there had been no official confirmation yet, which is great and all, but I do want to stress that this was just a sliver, right? Everyone on the mountain was already privately mourning the loss of honorog. Initial search efforts were being crushed by the continued terrible weather, helicopters couldn't fly anywhere near the area where he fell, and ground teams couldn't even safely approach the area because of the avalanche risk. After 24 hours, pretty much everyone had given up hope. However back in India, there were two people that refused to accept this reality. And that of course was honorog's brothers. Ashish would end up launching an online petition on Change.org, desperately urging the Nepalese and Indian governments to continue the search and continue trying to rescue their brother. The petition read, quote, "We know that honorog is out there somewhere waiting for us. Help us find him by signing and sharing this petition." And that's super admirable, but the reality is that the brothers didn't actually know if he was alive or dead at this point. All they knew is that there was a chance he was still alive, and no matter how small that chance was, it was worth fighting for. What the brothers couldn't have known at this time was that, well, their hunch was right, honorog was not only alive, but he was actually conscious. And that's when he pressed record for the first time on his GoPro. honorog would continue recording videos for his family videos that to my knowledge have never surfaced publicly. But we know that in these videos, he was telling his family he loved them, that he would miss them, and he was just praying that someone would rescue him somehow. He was lying on his right side in like a fetal position, you know, the body's natural response to extreme cold. His body was trying to conserve heat and essentially keep his core organs alive. The Kervas did protect him from the wind, which was good, and don't get me wrong. It was still well below freezing in that Kervas, but all this meant was that honorog wouldn't freeze to death quickly, you know, it would still happen, but it would happen a lot slower. However, there were two more things that honorog had going for him. First of all, his location, not the Kervas part, that was obviously not a benefit, but rather the altitude. Like I said earlier, he wasn't in the death zone anymore. He was actually about 2,000 meters lower, and remember, he didn't bring any supplemental oxygen with him. If he had fallen even just like a thousand meters higher, he would have passed out from the lack of oxygen within just a few hours, and almost certainly would have died within the first 24 hours. You also have to remember that honorog was in peak physical condition from all of the months of training he had put in. His body could last way longer than just like your average person, and so as the situation got more extreme, his body would respond kind of in the way that like a wild animal would. His body temperature would drop, his metabolism slowed, and his heart rate slowly decreased. He was experiencing hypothermia, and weirdly this put his body into sort of like a hibernation mode. You know, hypothermia is not good, but what was happening did kind of protect his organs by requiring less oxygen. All of that stuff basically prolonged his life in that Kervas by a couple days, but But that was pretty cool. much it. I mean, humans aren't built to hibernate after all, and so with each passing hour, his odds of survival dramatically decreased. And even if he was somehow able to survive, it was almost guaranteed that he would be like seriously and permanently injured, right? On the third day of being stuck in the crevasse, Honorog's GoPro battery died, not that he was really in any shape to make videos at this point, he was exhausted, he was starving, hydrated, and shortly after his GoPro lost battery, well, so did Honorog's brain. He fully lost consciousness, and fresh snow falling into the crevasse started to bury his body. This blanket of snow all but sealed his fates, and again, this is the reality of Anaperna, it's nicknamed the killer mountain. But in this case, it wasn't just going to kill Honorog, it was going to erase him entirely. However, there was one factor that Anaperna wasn't accounting for, and that was the petition on Change.org. His brothers had made that petition out of pure desperation, you know, almost like this probably won't work, but what do we really have to lose? But what they didn't expect was that thousands of people would sign it, and not just like every day random people or like Facebook moms, you know, but like very powerful people, people who even had governmental connections. Even the CEO of Apple, you have to remember that Honorog was not a thrill-seeker. He built his life around helping people, and now people really wanted to help him. Within a day of Honorog's disappearance, the Indian government got word of the petition and became involved helping the Nepalese government authorize and organize a rescue operation. Seven summits, Trex, the expedition company who took Honorog up the mountain, would be coordinating rescue efforts from base camp. However, this is way easier on paper than it actually is in reality. They needed specialists to assist with this rescue. They needed expert climbers who knew how to perform a Kervos rescue at high altitude in an active avalanche zone, and this was a talent pool that was very few and far between, and plus whoever they ended up getting had to be available during the peak climbing season. But pretty quickly, things started to come together, and then fate had one more card to play, and it came in the form of one name. Adam Bilesky, and let me tell you about this dude. Adam Bilesky is a Polish mountaineer, and he's known for being one of the best high altitude climbers in the entire world. He's summited multiple 8,000 meter peaks. He's done first a sense up routes that had never been climbed before. He's even climbed some of these mountains in the winter when the conditions are at their most brutal. And he's also a rescuer with experience saving lives on mountains like K2, climbing through blizzards to rescue people in complete darkness. And luckily, guess who happened to be at Annapurna base camp already when all this was going down. That's right. Adam, as well as his climbing partner, Mariusz Hattala, they were already there hoping to attempt a new route on the mountain's northwest face. And for weeks, they had just been kind of waiting for the perfect weather window to do this. They waited so long that by April 19, 2023, they were among the very few climbers that were even left at base camp. And so they were kind of just waiting around and resting when all of the sudden the founder of seven summit treks unzipped their tent and started pleading with them to help with Onorog's rescue, or perhaps his body recovery. And Adam and Mariusz did not hesitate. There was a chance that Onorog was still alive after all, and even just that small chance was enough to convince them to leap into action. And so on the early morning of April 20th, the rescue team assembled at base camp, led by Adam and Mariusz with the help of several Sherpas and a helicopter pilot, they had one mission. And that was to retrieve Onorog dead or alive. But even with the best talent in the world at something like this, the rescue was a lot easier said than done. Kervos rescues at high altitude are extremely rare and they're obviously extremely dangerous. Most climbing teams don't have the technical expertise to pull them off and also add in the fact that they're doing this in an active avalanche zone. Well, the truth is that most rescuers wouldn't even attempt this, especially given how unlikely it was that Onorog was still alive. I mean, most rescuers would just assume that they're recovering a body at this point. And so, you know, why not wait until the weather and the conditions are much safer. However, again, Onorog's family was convinced that he could still be alive up there. And so that put a sense of urgency into all of these rescuers. They flew from base camp up to camp two in helicopters. And then from that point, the helicopter could only carry one or two people at a time because of the altitude. Finding landing spots in these conditions was nearly impossible. The pilot would like barely touch the ground and then yell jump out and the climbers would kind of just leap onto the slope. Ultimately, it took about three flights to even just get everyone up there. From the helicopter, landing zone, it took about 20 to 30 minutes of careful and highly technical climbing to reach the crevasse. Remember, this was the most dangerous and difficult area of the route, steep ice, loose snow, falling rocks. And in case you forgot what you probably have enough said it like seven times now, this whole section is an extremely active avalanche zone. But miraculously, they all safely reached the mouth of the crevasse. And that's when reality set in. They kind of looked down into it. And maybe they had underestimated how deep the crack went. But at this point, they were now realizing that it was over 250 feet deep. They're like straining their eyes, looking down as far as they can. And then they finally made out what looked like a dark yellow shape covered in white snow. And of course, they knew that this was Onerog's body. They called down to him, hoping to hear something in response, something to indicate he was still alive down there, but they did not hear anything back. Onerog was now unconscious and no sounds that they could make, no yelling down to him. None of that was going to be enough to have him come to. And so, understandably, the rescuers probably assumed that it was too late. I mean, losing consciousness while stuck in a crevasse on one of the world's most dangerous mountains. I mean, that's probably one of the surest signs that you're done for, right? But still, they had come all this way. And Mariusch instructed the Sherpa team to set up a complex rope system, a pulley contraption with multiple anchors and safety lines. Adam and a Sherpa prepared to repel down and they were prepared for body recovery, you know, essentially meaning they were going to be hauling up dead weight as bad as that sounds. Adam clipped into the rope and then slowly started descending into the crevasse. The slick walls of the crevasse were closing in on him as the further he got jagged ice on both sides, narrow passages. It's like claustrophobia on steroids. And so he had to maneuver carefully to avoid getting stuck himself. And of course, if his rope somehow severed, well, then he was almost certainly done for after what felt like hours, but was most likely only a couple minutes. Adam reached the bottom of the crevasse. They were far from celebrating it because there at the bottom was honorog maloo lying on his right side in like a fetal position. There's no other way to say it, it looked like a corpse. There was no body movement whatsoever. He was also buried in snow because you know, it had been days since he had had the strength to even uncover the snow off of himself. None of this indicates that he was going to be alive. So Adam approached honorog's body and he brushed away the snow from his face to check for breathing. But before he could even hear a breath, Adam noticed something else. Honorog's eyes reacted to the light. His body shivered. A single low shallow breath emerged. Folks, it turns out that honorog's brothers were right. Everyone who had signed the petition was right. Honorog maloo somehow was alive. Adam shouted the news up to the crew who obviously rejoiced, but any celebration had to be cut short pretty much immediately because even though he was alive, honorog was still in bad bad shape. He was basically unconscious, hypothermic and severely frostbitten. His lips had turned blue. I mean, his body was basically on the verge of shutting down for good. He was laying there on death's door and frankly, he was about to pass right through it. There was literally no time to wait. They had to get him out of the crevasse right now. And folks, I know that this almost sounds like an action movie. I promise I'm trying not to over dramatize it. This is all true. And I know it's all true because, well, we have the footage. This is a clip, an actual clip from Adam's GoPro of the rescue. You can literally see them repelling honorog up the crevasse. And I don't know about you, but honorog basically looks like, you know, just dead weight here. However, I guess there was enough proof of life that they really believed he had a chance of surviving this. And so they used the pulley system to hoist him up, while Adam used himself as a counterweight. It took over an hour for them to slowly pull honorog out of there. And when Adam finally reached the surface with honorog's almost lifeless body, the team of Shaman. Sherpas worked fast. They strapped Onerog into a rescue harness, and they loaded him onto the helicopter, which fast-tracked him back down to base camp for a bit more prep work, and then ultimately onto the hospital. Chang Dawa Sherpa, who was up there helping the entire time, would later call this a one in a million rescue. However, the story is not over yet, because getting Onerog out of the Kervas was only step two. We may have escaped the mountain, but it wasn't done trying to kill him yet. And as if this story wasn't already insane enough, step three proved to be the most hellish of all, and it started with three words, dead on arrival. Imagine pulling off this miraculous one in a million rescue just to hear those three words once Onerog gets to the hospital. And by the way, this wasn't just like a normal hospital, they actually ended up bringing him to a smaller hospital, like not the one in Kathmandu, where you know, you would hope someone needing urgent medical care would go, because Onerog was pretty much on his last breaths. They basically had no choice but to bring him to the closest hospital. And as soon as doctors took a look at him, he was declared dead on arrival. He didn't have a pulse. He wasn't breathing anymore, and his body temperature was critically low. He had severe hypothermia, frostbite all over his hands and arms and feet. He was, by all definitions, gone. And look, this would have probably been a rational ending to the story, a sad one, but it would make sense someone who fought against the elements and stayed alive for as long as he possibly could before eventually succumbing to injury and the bitter cold and dying. All of that heroism from the petition to Adam's rescue, well, as honorable as that stuff was, it was going to be for nothing. But at least they tried, right? Remember, this is the killer mountain, after all, one in three people don't make it. But Onerog's brother, Ashish, who had flown to Nepal from India, was sitting there at the hospital, and he refused to accept that his brother was now just going to be another statistic. Adam's team had pulled Onerog out from the Kervas, and he was alive back then. So surely he still had a chance of being brought back to life now. So Ashish begged the attending physician, Dr. Asim Subhadi, to start performing CPR on Onerog. And to his credit, Dr. Subhadi agreed. And so he started CPR. He did it for an hour, and there was still no pulse, but he kept going two hours, still no pulse. Let's try three hours, three hours of CPR, and still nothing. Most medical protocols say that if CPR doesn't work after like 30 to 60 minutes, then the patient is essentially gone, but Dr. Subhadi kept going. They hit four hours of CPR. And at this point, Dr. Subhadi basically told Onerog's family that even if he did somehow come out of this with a pulse, he would most likely be like severely impaired for the rest of his life. Maybe he would never walk again or speak again, or even have no brain function. However, Onerog's family asked to continue CPR for just one more hour. After this fifth hour passed, well, at that point, they would call it. And I'm no doctor, but my understanding is that this is pretty unusual. Like CPR rarely goes beyond a couple of hours, let alone four or five. Dr. Subhadi was kind of risking a lot here. He was going against medical norms, exhausting his staff, and maybe most heartbreakingly providing a lot of false hope to Onerog's family. But speaking of them, apparently a psychic had told Onerog's family that he would awake within five hours. And in a later interview, Dr. Subhadi said, quote, "Though I am a student of science, I believe in miracles." And so he told the family that he would give Onerog one more hour of CPR, but after that, it would be over for good. And somehow, five minutes into the fifth hour, Dr. Subhadi returned to chest compressions and as he began, he suddenly froze, something, something had changed. He felt the slightest heartbeat in Onerog's chest and for the first time in over four hours of doing CPR, Onerog was starting to respond. Now, it was a very faint heartbeat and it was very irregular, but it was a heartbeat nonetheless, which is just insane. They literally brought him back from the dead. But of course, now they had to keep him from going back and do whatever they could to bring Onerog back to normal health. He would remain in a coma for 12 days, breathing through a ventilator. But then, on May 2nd, 2023, he opened his eyes. Onerog doesn't remember falling into the carvas. He doesn't remember the three days that he spent inside of it. He doesn't remember being rescued. All he could say about the whole experience was, it felt like a rebirth. And of course, that statement came later because, get this, Onerog was actually voiceless for five months after this ordeal. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Severe frostbite had destroyed the fingertips on his right hand, forcing doctors to have to amputate them, large skin grafts covered much of his right side. And when he finally stood up for the first time, his legs didn't remember what standing even was. However, step by step, Onerog fought his way back until eventually he was talking and walking again. On October of 2023, six months after the accident, Onerog was able to actually meet Adam Bialesky in person. Like I guess technically they met before, but like a proper meet. And they hugged, and they cried, and they talked for hours. Today, Onerog Maloo is not only alive, but from everything I can see, he's thriving. And even though his climbing days are over, who could blame him for that, he's still finding ways to make impacts. Onerog founded the Voice of Glacier's Foundation, which is a platform focused on protecting glaciers and mountain ecosystems. He travels the world, speaking at universities, corporations, and other forums. He's received all sorts of awards and accolades and recognition for the work that he's done and for his incredible story. And folks, this was never supposed to happen. Onerog was supposed to have been lost in that crevasse on Anaperna. That's what all logic would say, anyways. And Onerog's perspective on the incidents is actually very surprising. He said, quote, "I am very grateful that Anaperna protected me, took care of me during those three days, and sent me back." He also says, quote, "And I am grateful to her for letting me experience how close life and death are." I'm going to contradict myself a little bit here. This is a miracle story, obviously. But at the same time, it goes deeper than that. It's not even the story of a man against a mountain, right? It's the story of community. Onerog was, as invested, a member of the global climbing community as anyone could possibly beat. He had devoted his life to protecting their habitats and improving the lives of people who work on the world's highest mountains or live near them. Community is what put Onerog on the mountain and community is what saved him when he made the error that sent him sliding into what should have been his icy coffin. Adam and Mariusch didn't hesitate to help with Onerog's rescue because that's what you do for your fellow climber, no matter what the odds are. The Sherpa team definitely did not have to enter an avalanche zone to help him, but they felt like Onerog was one of their own. And Dr. Subati didn't have to perform CPR for four hours, but he knew that he had to do everything he could before he gave up. Onerog's brothers didn't have to fight for the rescue operation, but their petition is basically what opened the door for all of these miracles to come true. This is what people do in a crisis. They act with optimism until the very last moment. Anaperna rarely gives people second chances, but Onerog is living proof that when you have a one and a million opportunity to be reborn, you do something with it. Our story is terrifying because he fell into a place that almost no one comes back from. But our next story is even more terrifying for pretty much the opposite reason, because our next subject knew the wilderness better than almost anyone else, and yet still, one day, it took him. Few people were more experienced in the remote backcountry of the Sierra Nevada Mountains than James Randall Morganson, also known as Randy. I say this because Randy Morganson spent 27 seasons as a park ranger in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks. For 27 years, he patrolled these harsh mountains, helping out hikers along the way, and working to protect the environment of the pristine national parks. Now 27 seasons is a lot, but the truth is, it should have been 28. Honestly, it should have been even more than that, because one day, while on a routine patrol of the backcountry, Randy Morganson vanished. At first, his disappearance seemed likely to be an accident, because after all, the terrain that he was working in was very, very tough. But after troubling details of Randy's personal life became known, the possibility that his disappearance might have been intentional became more and more real. This is the tragic story of Randy Morganson. Randy Morganson spent more than half of his life working as a backcountry ranger in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks. In 1996, Randy was 54 years old and began his 28th season with the park service. I hiked through Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks for the first time last year in 2022. And so after witnessing this terrain firsthand, I can tell you straight up, it's crazy there. I've like thousands of my- miles in my life, and the terrain in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park is right up there at the top, in terms of just the most like out of this world stuff I've ever done. You're surrounded by rugged mountains as tall as 14,000 feet above sea level, there's tons of freezing cold alpine lakes, and there's also an endless amount of fast-flowing rivers. The fact that Randy Morganson had so many years of experience in such a harsh environment puts him at an elite level of backcountry skill. It should be no surprise to hear that with all that experience, he was the most senior ranger that was patrolling in the High Sierra. In 1996, Randy Morganson was working at the Benchlake Ranger Station, which is just off of the John Mayor Trail/Pacific Crest Trail. On July 20th, he reported his position via park radio as being at "Mather Pass" on the PCT. The next day, on July 21st, he departed from the Benchlake Ranger Station and left a note saying that he was going to be going on patrol for just a few days. At some point during this day, a few hikers allegedly spoke with Randy somewhere along the John Mayor/Pacific Crest Trail, and they reported that during this interaction, Randy was in good spirits, but in very tragic fashion, this would be the last contact that anybody ever had with Randy Morganson. And his radio contact from the previous day would be the last time that the park service ever heard from him. It wouldn't be long before a desperate search for him began, and questions about his personal life began being raised. While spending time in nature is certainly a positive for a lot of people's mental health, it's not a cure all, and unfortunately, Randy's case proves this. Going into the 1996 season, it's been reported that Randy Morganson was suffering from depression. He even had a conversation with another park ranger in which he basically questioned the one thing that he had dedicated his entire adult life to, which was his service as a park ranger. That was definitely not a good sign, because once again, he had dedicated his life to this. He was the most senior ranger in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks. And while the reasons for his depression aren't explicitly clear, it does seem likely that it had something to do with his strained relationship with his wife, Judy. I can definitely see how challenging it must be to have a successful marriage, when one of the spouses is spending months and months away working in the remote backcountry. I'm assuming here, but I think it's a fair assumption to imagine that this might've had an impact on Randy and his wife's marriage. I did find one report that said his wife had frequently joined him in the mountains, but in the years before his disappearance, she had stopped doing this. I'm not sure how true this is, but either way, it's clear that things were not okay in Randy and Judy's marriage. And to make matters even worse, it's been reported that Randy had recently had an affair with another ranger. And at the start of the 1996 season, Randy had received divorce papers from his wife. Randy Morganson had reportedly told close friend and fellow ranger George Durkey that he had occasionally felt like ending his own life. In fact, the day before Randy went missing, he had had some radio contact with Durkey and Durkey's wife. And the couple reported that it was a little bit weird. Like Randy was asking them some questions that he didn't really need the answers to. And it kind of just seemed like he was asking the questions over the radio because he wanted somebody to talk to. And it got even stranger because at the end of the radio conversation, Randy was quoted as saying, "I won't be bothering you to anymore." Because of this depressed state that Randy was known to have been in, after he went missing, there was a lot of speculation about whether or not it had been an accident and he was still out there somewhere, or if he had intentionally wandered off to potentially take his own life. There was even some other theories as well, such as the suggestion that maybe Randy had been met with foul play. Investigators feared that this might have been a possibility when they learned that on two separate occasions, Randy had been threatened with violence from individuals within the park. However, they determined that both of these suspects had alibis, and therefore the foul play theory was eliminated pretty quickly. There was also the theory that perhaps Randy Morgensen had just simply fled the park in order to star a new life somewhere. At first, this seemed plausible. However, Randy's car was found parked in its usual spot for when he was going on patrol. And in addition to that, there was never any withdrawals from his bank accounts and his credit cards were never used either. Thus, it seemed like the only two remaining possibilities were that Randy either got lost, or he intentionally took his life. And in order to find out which one of these scenarios was true, they needed to search. Randy Morgensen was reported missing on July 24th, 1996, and shortly afterwards, the search for him was on. Patrick Ranger Randy Kaufman was in charge of the search, and since many of the searchers were also Randy Morgensen's colleagues and friends, he found himself in a unique position. Kaufman wanted to take advantage of the fact that the searchers for Randy were also people that had a personal relationship with him as colleagues. And in order to do this, he conducted a secret ballot with all of the Rangers. The searchers agreed on a zone that was roughly 80 square miles, which represented the limits of where Randy Morgensen could have traveled on a four-day patrol. Kaufman then divided this zone into 16 segments and assigned each segment a letter A through P. Kaufman then interviewed each Ranger individually and had them assign a number value to each segment based on the likelihood that they thought Randy was there. And the Rangers were also required to assign a number value to a "rest of world" option, which represented how likely they thought it was that Randy was not inside of the 80 square mile zone. After the secret ballot was completed, the areas with the highest scores were Lake Basin as seen right here and Mary and Lake, meaning these were the areas that the Rangers collectively believed that Randy had most likely gone to. These were fairly predictable results because Randy had not yet patrolled in either one of those areas in 1996, meaning that they would be good areas for Randy to hit on his next patrol. The "rest of world" option was voted as the least likely option, indicating that most Rangers believed that Randy was still inside the park and still inside that 80 square mile zone. However, there was one Ranger that gave the "rest of world" option an alarmingly high score. And this was Ranger George Durkey, who just a few minutes ago I mentioned was one of Randy's close friends. Durkey knew about a lot of the turmoil that was going on in Randy's marriage and his personal life. And because of this, he believed that Randy might have run off somewhere outside of the park to either start a new life or hopefully not, but still possibly end his life. With all of this input from the Rangers, a massive search was conducted. By July 30th, 94 people were on the ground searching, 5 helicopters were scoping out the area from the sky, and 8 dog teams were attempting to pick up cents. A few random pieces of gear were found, but none of it was able to be traced to Randy. Search dogs were able to follow a few cents, but all of them ended abruptly. And they even spotted a suspicious campfire from the helicopter, but they couldn't find anybody that was tending to it. By August 3rd, 1996, the active search for Randy Morganson was called off with no trace of a body and no evidence. Nothing whatsoever. For the next 5 years, nobody knew what happened to Randy. His missing person flyer remained up at trailheads around the national parks, and individual Rangers continued to search for him while they were on their patrols. However, in July of 2001, everything in Randy's case changed. On Sunday, July 15th, 2001, a group of off-duty trail crew members were bushwhacking in the area near window peak. This part of the national park has no trail access, and so it's rarely visited and extremely remote. While the group was making its way up a stream, north east of the aforementioned window peak, a discarded backpack caught their eye. This would have been very unusual to see in an area that gets so little foot traffic and is so remote. The backpack was found just below some pools of a waterfall, and upon closer investigation, the group discovered a few more items. And one of these items would go on to hunt them, because it was a hiking boot, and sticking out of it was a human leg bone. Investigators flew into the area the day after the discovery was made, and it wasn't long before they were able to conclude that the remains found were, in fact, Randy Morganson's. They knew this because the gear found matched what Randy had been known to be carrying shortly before his disappearance, and they also found his National Park Service name tag. Dental records were later able to confirm that it was, in fact, Randy Morganson's remains. So now that Randy had finally been discovered, the question is what could have possibly happened to him. A few times earlier in the video, I laid out the two most likely scenarios, the first being it was in accidents, and he died as a result of that, or he intentionally took his own life. Except that the discovery of his remains would clearly point to one of these circumstances being the truth. But unfortunately, this discovery didn't really give a super clear answer. Let's break down the evidence for each scenario, and let's start by assuming that Randy's death was, in fact, an accident. First of all, if Randy wanted to end his own life, it's It's pretty reasonable to assume that he would have done it with a firearm. And the reason this is a fair assumption is because Randy had one. He was a park ranger, park rangers have full law enforcement capabilities, and therefore they are armed when they are out patrolling. However, when they searched Randy's bench-lake ranger station, his firearm was found there, locked up, and tucked away. He did not take it with him when he went on patrol. The location that Randy's body was found in also makes the accident scenario very plausible. He was found at the bottom of a waterfall, and investigators believe he probably was crossing the stream on a snow bridge, took a step, and fell through breaking his leg. Unable to walk, and unable to call for help with his radio because of bad signal, Randy would have eventually died from exposure, or perhaps been swept over the waterfall. Once again, the terrain in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks is extremely rugged. It's very unforgiving, and therefore I think it's entirely possible that even a really experienced ranger like Randy Morganson could still have a fatal accident out there. Personally, I think that the accident scenario is the most likely thing that happened. However, there is also some circumstantial evidence that suggests that Randy may have gone out there and taken his own life. First of all, one of the very few benefits that park rangers received back in 1996 was a $100,000 payout to their families if they died in the line of duty. If a ranger were to take their own life, this payout would not be made. Therefore, it's possible that Randy may have ended his own life and then disguised it as an accident so that his wife would receive that $100,000 payout. This scenario is pretty far-fetched, I think it would be pretty difficult to disguise taking your own life like this, but then again, five years went by from the time that he disappeared and the time that he was discovered, and so my understanding is that the condition that Randy was found in wasn't really able to indicate exactly what happened. There's also another really weird circumstance that maybe points to Randy taking his own life or at the very least something bizarre going on, investigators discovered Randy's park-issued radio at the top of the waterfall, not at the bottom where his remains and the rest of his stuff was found, and the radio was switched to the on position, which suggests that at the time it was last used, Randy may have been using it in an effort to monitor conversations and perhaps elude the search parties. Roger Bob Keenan, who helped search for Randy, found this very suspicious. He recalled searching the exact gorge where Randy Morgensen was found and even recalled crossing the stream at the exact spot where Randy's radio was found. He specifically remembered that spot because he had used it on multiple occasions in the past to cross that creek, and he insists that if the radio was there when he was searching, he would have seen it. This suggests that maybe Randy had been somewhere else when the area was searched and he had come back at a later time while monitoring his radio. The National Park Service officially maintains that Randy Morgensen's death was an accident. When addressing the fact that the area Randy was found in had been searched multiple times, the park service was quoted saying, "It's likely that his body was not seen due to the high amount of runoff in the stream that summer." And this very well may be the case, like I said earlier, I think this probably is what happened. However, it's been 22 years since his remains were discovered, and we still don't really have any conclusive answers as to what happened to Randy Morgensen. May he rest in peace, and my heart goes out to his wife and the rest of his friends and family. Randy's story leaves you wondering how someone could vanish so completely and for so long, but our next story answers an even darker question. What if someone vanishes on purpose? What are they trying to hide? When I threw Hike to the Appalachian Trail in 2018, I met some of the kindest people of my entire life. The type of people who would just give you the shirt right off of their back for absolutely nothing in return. And I don't want to speak for the masses here, but I have a feeling that pretty much everybody who Hike to the AT has the same experience that I did. But imagine for a second that lurking among all those kind and generous people was a man that was on the run, not just from the police, but from the freaking FBI. For six years, James Hammers used the Appalachian Trail and his identity as a throughhiker to evade capture. For six years, he disguised himself as just another one of those kind and generous hikers. And he developed a pretty positive reputation within the trail community. But little did all the hikers around him know, James Hammers was a big time criminal. So big time, in fact, that his story was featured on TV shows such as American Greed in America's most wanted. This is one of the craziest stories in Appalachian Trail history. Prior to 1998, Hammers lived a pretty normal life. He had a wife, a family, and he was working a respectable job as a controller for a family-owned beverage bottling company. This company was called G&J Pepsi Cola Bottlers Inc. and they were a distributor of Pepsi products based in Cincinnati, Ohio. In February of 2009, Hammers was called to his employer's headquarters to answer some questions from the FBI about fraud within the company. During this interview, he maintained his innocence and denied knowing anything about the fraud. But his actions after the interview tell a much different story because after he walked out that door, he vanished. He left his family and his work behind and began a new life on the run from the law. When criminals on the run end up fleeing the country, or maybe laying low in a shady hotel or staying with friends, something like that, a Hammers had a different idea. He decided it was time to go for a hike. But what exactly was Hammers running from in the first place? Well, according to the FBI, between 1998 and early 2009, Hammers embezzled, are you ready for this, $8.7 million from his employer. $9 million over an 11 year period is just absolutely insane. Hammers' position made him responsible for the financial accounting and internal controls for his company's division. This allowed him to set up phantom bank accounts for an existing vendor to posit large sums of money into those bank accounts and then transfer all that money into his personal accounts. He also invested much of the money into the stock market and even made tax payments on it. And eventually, the IRS did catch on because while he did pay nearly $3 million in taxes, he still failed to file tax returns for multiple years during this stint. And the IRS wasn't the only organization that was catching on to James Hammers either. Eventually, bank employees working for his employer and the vendor he was taking advantage of discovered cancelled checks being returned from a bank they were unfamiliar with. In this March, the beginning of the end of James Hammers' scheme, it's at this point that he was interviewed by the FBI and promptly fled to where else but America's most well-known footpath, the Appalachian Trail. James Hammers spent the next six years, six years basically living on the Appalachian Trail. I wasn't really able to find information about whether he was literally hiking the entire time or maybe he was spending time on the trail and then also spending time in towns along the trail but it does seem like he was either doing one of those two things the entire six years. He even adopted a trail name which was Bismarck and honestly, it pains me to say this but hanging out among through hikers on a long distance trail like this is actually a pretty clever way to blend in. It's easy to hide your true identity because everyone's going by a trail name or a nickname and it's definitely not unheard of to spend a lot of time with other hikers and never learn their actual real names. In addition to that, as someone who spent a lot of time through hiking, life on the trail is just different. People don't always share all the details about their life back home, about their family, about their jobs and history and these things and when they do talk about these things, it's very common to keep things pretty vague and so I don't think this would have arisen any suspicion about Hammers whatsoever and in fact, it didn't. By all personal accounts and there's a lot of them because Hammers was pretty well known along the trail by the time he was caught, he was a really kind and generous person just like the vast majority of other hikers on the Appalachian Trail. In fact, when I was researching for this video, I was watching some of the news videos on YouTube about when he was caught and on these videos, I saw multiple comments from people who said they personally got to know and hiked with Bismarck and they all said he was a great guy. He got him and hiked with him and his girlfriend in 2014 on the AT. He was the nicest guy you would want to meet, I was so shocked when he was arrested the following year. Bismarck and Hopper, which I think is that girlfriend that was referred to in the previous comment, saved me in the 100 mile wilderness in early October 2012, running super low on food, dealing with the weather from Hurricane Sandy, it was brutal, they saved me and got me back into town, we took a zero and headed out the next day. There's a lot of accounts like this online from people that got to know Bismarck. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone watching this video right now that hiked with him on the AT at some point, turning his stint out there. And if that's the case, and you're comfortable doing so, of course, leave a comment and let us all know what he was like. Of course, the fact that I'm telling you all these details of James Hammond's story means that he did eventually get caught. And the way it went down is gonna sound pretty good. pretty crazy to anyone who's familiar with the Appalachian Trail or the culture that surrounds it. Because of how much money James Hamis embezzled, almost $9 million, his case was very high-profile. So much so that it was actually featured on TV shows about missing fugitives. One of these shows was American Greed, which aired an episode about Hamis in 2012. And a few years later, an Appalachian Trail through Hiker happened to catch a rerun of that episode. Ultimately, this is what led to his downfall. This Hiker had met Hamis for the first time shortly into their through hike in March of 2014. And they ended up spending a pretty decent amount of time with him over the next few months. And in early 2015, after this Hiker had gotten home from the trail, they just happened to catch this rerun episode of American Greed, and they recognized their friend that they had known as Bismarck. This person contacted the FBI pretty soon after and even let the FBI know that Hamis was planning on attending the Trail Days Festival later that year. You could probably see where this is going. On May 16, 2015, the FBI came a knock-in on the door of the Montgomery's Inn in Damascus, Virginia. Damascus is a small but popular town that the Appalachian Trail runs directly through, which also hosts the Trail Days Festival every year. Hamis had frequently stayed at this Inn over the years, so often that he actually got to know the owner of the Inn, and she said that he was one of her favorite guests. After they arrived, the agents showed the Inn's owner a picture of Hamis, and she confirmed that he was staying there right now. The agents went into his room, and they arrested him. By all accounts, it was peaceful. There were no guns drawn. There was no violence. He just got caught, and the gig was finally up for Bismarck. But this isn't the end of the story. In fact, there's actually a whole nother event for a lack of a better word that potentially involves James Hamis and his shady behavior. Hamis's fraud was definitely illegal, and I don't want to downplay that. I really think that he should be held accountable for his crimes. However, embezzlement is a nonviolent offense, and also given the victim of his offense was a company, not even like an individual person. I think it's reasonable to assume that some people might have sympathy for him, maybe even actually be rooting for him. I did see some of this in the comments of the other videos I was talking about earlier. So if you're finding yourself in that category, you might want to listen up a little bit closer. In 2003, so while Hamis was in the middle of this whole fraud scheme, his wife died in a mysterious fire at their home. Hamis was allegedly out jogging at the time, which is kind of bizarre to me because the fire happened after 10.30 pm. It happened at night. Not really like a normal time you would go jogging, but I guess it's not unheard of either. With all that said, I very strongly believe in innocence until guilt is proven. And James Hamis was never proven guilty in his wife's death. He was never proven to have started that fire. In fact, when the fire was investigated, the authorities didn't find any evidence of excellence used, and they ultimately ruled the fire and accident. And I really doubt that anybody questioned this at the time. That is until 2009, when James Hamis disappeared, and his fraud became known to the public. Still, to this day, there's no evidence that James Hamis purposefully set the fire and killed his wife. All I'm saying is that it's a little bit suspicious given his actions a few years later. At the very least, I just want you to keep in mind that James Hamis and his wife had a daughter together. And that daughter lost her mother in the fire, and then a few years later, at age 22, she was essentially abandoned by her one remaining parent when Hamis vanished and went on the run. So even if you don't think that he started the fire that killed his wife, and even if you can look past the nonviolent crime of embezzlement, at the very least, he abandoned his daughter, and I just don't think there's any way that you can justify that. In addition to that, although this is much less serious, Hamis's story caused a lot of drama within the Appalachian Trail community. Yes, it's a fascinating story, and no, he never hurt anybody on the trail. But I still don't see any benefit to the trail or its culture that came out of this whole fiasco. It's just such a bizarre story, and honestly, I think it's kind of an insult to all of the great people that love the Appalachian Trail, that hike along the Appalachian Trail, that are not using it to hide some very, very shady behavior. In October of 2015, James Hamis pled guilty to wire fraud charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison.