The story of Marco Soffredi, a 23-year-old French snowboarder, centers on his two attempts to descend Mount Everest, culminating in a mysterious disappearance. In 2001, he became the first to snowboard down the mountain via the Norton Couloir, establishing a record and earning fame as "L'Anse Blonde." The following year, he returned with a plan to descend the far more dangerous and technically demanding Hornbein Couloir, a route never before attempted. Despite Sherpa warnings about extreme conditions and exhaustion, Marco reached the summit and began his descent. Shortly after, he vanished, with no body or trace found. The three Sherpas who accompanied him reported seeing a shadowy figure on the mountain, only to later find no physical evidence. Multiple theories emerge: he may have simply run out of energy and passed out, been caught in an avalanche, or suffered an edge catch; or he may have voluntarily disappeared to escape the pressures of fame and grief after losing both his brother and a close friend. The Hornbein Couloir remains uncompleted, and to this day, no one has successfully snowboarded it. A poignant final detail is the discovery of Marco’s snowboard tracks preserved at the couloir’s entrance nearly a month later, symbolizing his enduring attempt and the mountain’s haunting silence. The narrative is framed as part of a broader exploration of unexplained hiker disappearances, emphasizing how isolation, trauma, and human ambition intersect with the natural world to create enduring mysteries.
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Today we're starting on Mt. Everest, where a 23-year-old snowboarder ignored his Sherpa's final warning,
disappeared into the clouds, and then was never seen again.
Then I'll tell you about three hikers who vanished in completely different circumstances,
but in every case, the clues they left behind only made their disappearances harder to explain.
And finally, I'll tell you the story of a 17-year-old girl who fell thousands of feet from an airplane
and then woke up alone in the Amazon with no idea if anyone was coming to save her.
and then woke up alone in the ambulance.
And finally, I'll tell you the story of a 17-year-old girl who fell thousands of feet from an airplane
One quick note, our first story mentioned some photos and some video footage,
but if you're listening audio only, I will describe everything you need to know,
so don't worry about it.
Please hit that follow button, it really helps our standing with Spotify.
I'm Kyle, listen on if you dare.
This is the last photograph ever taken of Marco Soffredi.
He's standing at the summit of Mount Everest, over 29,000 feet above sea level,
while his Sherpa, Porba Tashi, helps strap a snowboard to his feet.
But just before this photograph was taken, Marco had been given a warning.
You see, by this point, he had already spent 13 hours climbing in order to reach the summit.
He was exhausted, heavy clouds had swallowed the mountain beneath him,
and Porba and the other two Sherpas told him not to attempt the descent on his snowboard.
They begged him to just climb down with them the normal way, to rest, to wait for better conditions, to come back another day.
to come back another day. But Marco ignored them. And to understand why, you need to see what he had done on this very same mountain just one year earlier.
This is footage of Marco in May of 2001, carving down Everest and flying past exhausted climbers that are still struggling towards the summit.
At just 22 years old, Marco had become the very first person ever to snowboard down Mount Everest.
This should have been the end of his story. Like, that should have been it. He did the thing.
But instead, Marco returned again one year later, climbed back to the summit, and prepared to snowboard down one more time.
Only this time, conditions were way, way worse. Marco was so exhausted, in fact, that his first words upon reaching the summit were, quote,
tired, too much snow, too much climbing. And so the Sherpas gave him one final warning.
One final warning not to do it. This wasn't the time. But Marco strapped into his snowboard anyway, and then he pushed away from the summit and dropped into the clouds beneath them.
And folks, what happened next remains one of the strangest mysteries in Mount Everest history.
And because of something the Sherpas would witness later that day, as well as a theory eventually developed by one of the people closest to Marco,
there is still controversy over what happened after he left that summit.
And whether Marco's final descent ended the way that almost everybody assumes that it did.
It's August 14th, 2002. Marco is arriving at Mount Everest Base Camp for the second time in his young life, and he's looking through a telescope on that first clear morning.
He's looking at the summit. A summit, again, that he had conquered just one year earlier.
And just below the summit, he could see the Hornbein Kulor covered in thick snow.
It's actually a really good sign. It meant that the line that Marco had hoped to snowboard down from the summit was ready for him.
But with every good sign on Mount Everest comes an omen, because through that telescope, Marco could also see avalanches coming off of the North Face.
Multiple avalanches daily, the entire mountain shedding the accumulated summer snow load in an ongoing series of slides.
And Marco described the North Face.
As a quote, festival of avalanches, which, uh, that sounds fun, doesn't it?
But actually that's the thing.
Uh, this was fun for Marco and to understand what could possibly inspire someone to want to snowboard down Mount Everest, not once, but twice.
You need to understand how Marco came to be.
And to do that, we're going to have to travel away from Tibet for just a minute and go to Shimoni, France, where Marco Soffredi was born, tucked into the French Alps at the foot of Mount Everest.
Mount Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe, this town is the spiritual capital of extreme mountain sports, a place that breeds alpinists, ski mountaineers, and free riders.
It even hosted the first ever Winter Olympics in 1924.
Growing up in Shimoni, at least from my understanding, you don't look to comic books for heroes.
The heroes are your neighbors, and they go up into the mountains, and most of the time they come back, but every now and again, they don't.
And as an example, so Marco was the fourth child of Felipe and Michelle Soffredi.
I think that's how you say it, Felipe.
There's a lot of difficult pronunciations in this video for me, so just bear with me, please.
Felipe Soffredi had been a mountain guide for years.
And the family ran a campground and general store to make a living and support their children's love of mountain sports.
But when Marco was just 18 months old, his family was dealt with just about the worst tragedy that any family at all could imagine.
Marco's older brother, Pierre, died in an avalanche while traversing somewhere in the French Alps.
And there's very little information out there about what happened and about even how old.
Pierre exactly was.
And my understanding is that's mainly because his family never really talked about it publicly, which I completely understand.
But it matters because Marco's childhood was shrouded by the shadow of that loss.
And yet, despite this, Marco pursued winter sports anyways.
He grew up a skier first, but he got curious about snowboarding in 1995 around the age of 16.
And only one year after picking up a snowboard.
Just one.
One year.
He completed the Mallory route on the north face of the Eguidimidi, hopefully I pronounced that right.
A descent that the most experienced extreme skiers in the valley treated as like a serious undertaking.
Let alone one for a teenager who had like just started snowboarding basically.
And that same season, Marco became the very first snowboarder ever to descend the Chardonnay, which is one of the most iconic and terrifying lines in the valley.
And he did it alongside his friend, Felipe Forte, another young Shimoni rider.
However, just a year after that incredible accomplishment, another tragedy struck.
And this time, Marco was old enough to like actually grasp the gravity of it.
Just like Marco's older brother, Pierre, Felipe also died in an avalanche.
And these two omens would, for most of us, serve as. Maybe clues from the universe that basically say, quit while you're ahead.
But Marco kept going.
Obviously.
And not in spite of these losses, by the way.
But with a kind of acceptance that the mountains are exactly what they are.
And that the only honest response to that is to go back into them with your eyes wide open.
And so back at Everest Base Camp in 2002, Marco put his telescope down and decided to wait out all of these avalanches that he had been seeing.
Which is respectable.
For all of his restlessness, he knew when it was time to be patient.
And while he waited, he wrote in his diary and read The Little Prince in his tent at high camp.
Marco carried a copy of The Little Prince on every expedition that he did,
tucking it in his tent at high camps and reading it in the evenings.
His mother, Michelle, had actually read it to him as a child.
And for whatever reason, Marco just never really let it go.
He would tell his mother all the time that he wanted to look like and be exactly. Exactly like The Little Prince.
A small, fair-haired figure from somewhere else, moving through a world that most people just couldn't reach.
And to Marco's credit, even though he was moving at truly superhuman speed on those downhill lines,
he was never reckless in any of his rides.
He was a meticulous, analytical pattern reader.
A student of snow science and terrain and weather.
Someone who was able to make calculations at speed that would paralyze most climbers.
If they even had time to, like, think them through.
He had all the makings of a prodigy of this sport.
And that all came true when he was only 20 years old.
The event that put Marco, like, firmly on the map in the eyes of the international snowboarding community
came in June of 1999.
Marco rode the non-blanc face of the Aguiavert, I think is how you pronounce that,
a steep downhill route that had been skied exactly. once before, in 1995, by Jehan-Marc Boivin,
one of the legends of French extreme skiing.
But if you notice what I said there, you might recall that I said "skied."
I didn't say "snowboarded." It had never been snowboarded before.
That is, until Marco showed up,
and decided to set a record. Photographs of Marco on this mountain took the snowboarding
world by absolute storm, and it stopped people cold. I mean, this was not a young athlete pushing
at the edges of acceptable risk. This was something else entirely. I mean, just look at this dude.
Professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones said it best. Quote, he was a young punk rock kid going
and tagging the most serious lines in the Shimoni Valley and doing it real freeride style,
full-on bombing lines that traditional people were hop turning down. Nobody was doing that yet.
It wasn't long until Marco went like whatever the 1999 version of Viral was. Followers of his story
were looking for a nickname for him, a title that lived up to his epicness and his abilities,
and it just so happened that all around Shimoni,
Marco was back.
Being called L'Anse Blonde, which translates in English to the blonde angel. You're going to hear
me say that nickname a number of times throughout this video. The English version, not my terrible
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And so needless to say, that nickname really fit the bill for Marco. And so after the Nantes
Blanc, the blonde angel's ambitions expanded beyond the Alps. He was knocking on the door
of becoming a worldwide phenomenon. And so that very same autumn of 1999, he traveled to
Nepal and made the very first snowboard descent of Dorje Lakpa, a 23,000-foot Himalayan peak
on sections of slope up to like 55 degrees without supplemental oxygen, I might add.
And from that summit, for the first time ever, he had a clear view of none other than Mount
Everest rising off in the distance. You could say that the seed was planted. Marco contacted
a man named Russell Bryce, who is a respected New Zealand expedition operator. He said,
who ran himalayan experience and they began planning for the ultimate objective bryce who
had seen a lot of young climbers kind of overestimate themselves asked marco to be patient
you know to see how his body handled altitude like maybe he didn't want to shoot for the highest peak
quite yet and so in 2000 marco made his first ascent of an 8 000 meter peak cho o you which is
the sixth highest mountain on earth which marco summited again without supplemental oxygen and
partly descended on snowboard folks this was the proof of concept that he needed his body could in
fact adapt to extreme altitude he could keep his balance on his snowboard while descending from
some of the world's highest peaks and so the obvious next stop was the highest mountain
on earth but here's the thing about marco he wasn't interested in just simply reaching the
summit of mount everest and taking a couple turns on his snowboard marco had chosen a line down mount
everest that no skier or snowboarder had ever completed a route so steep so narrow so unforgiving
that once he entered it there would be no safe way to bail and understanding why marco wanted
that route so badly is the key to understanding everything that happened next on the north face
of mount everest there are
two great couloirs these steep narrow shoots of snow and ice that cut down the face from near the
summit and understanding the difference between these two is is the key to understanding marco's
entire story right so the norton couloir sits on the east side of the north face it's very wide
by the standards of high altitude couloirs and while still challenging by any standard measure
it is the more forgiving of the two routes reinhold messner used it in
1980 for his legendary first solo ascend of everest without supplemental oxygen it is in the world of
extreme skiing and snowboarding at least the achievable objective the one that a rider has
the best chance of surviving on a snowboard that is of course if the conditions were right and
everything went perfectly but the hornbine couloir well that one is a bit different it sits to the
west of the summit narrower and significantly steeper first climbed by a
few Americans tom hornbine and willie unsold in 1963 as a kind of inspired improvisation during
their attempt on everest's west ridge the couloir narrows at its most serious section to approximately
the width of a standing human body for the first 1000 feet of vert the average incline runs about
47 degrees and then the final stretch averages 60 degrees fewer than a dozen climbers have ever
ascended it on foot and it has claimed the lives of many people who have tried to a skier or a
snowboarder in 2001 it was not only the most technically demanding line on mount everest
but it was the most technically demanding line on earth at that altitude like straight up
shimone writer trey cook described its most serious section this way one blown edge one
miscalculated turn or even just a momentary lapse of concentration and the rider might as well have
jumped from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain to the
top of the mountain to the top of the mountain to the top of the mountain to the top of the mountain
from an airplane without a parachute but marco so freddy described hornbine a little differently
he called it the holy grail in the culture of extreme snowboarding it was seen as the most
important unridden line on earth the one that if ever descended would represent the limit
of what the sport could ask of a human body and not just technically but in terms of like the
total commitment required as well i mean you literally cannot abort a descent of the
hornbine without a parachute but marco so freddy described hornbine a little differently
midway through the terrain just doesn't allow it you commit to the line and then you ride it to
the bottom or you're toast i mean those are the only two options when marco set his mind on the
hornbine he wasn't just being carelessly ambitious he was being completely clear-eyed about what he
was targeting and what it would take to get there and so in the spring of 2001 when marco arrived at
everest base camp with russell bryce's expedition his plan was to summit the hornbine and then
descend via the hornbine couloir but when marco reached the upper part of the mountain and kind
of assessed the hornbine in person it was concerningly bare of snow in a bunch of critical
sections like not enough snow to be rideable and as a result the holy grail would have to wait and
so marco switched to plan b which was the norton couloir the achievable objective right the the
consolation prize and uh here's the thing this is the plan b which was the norton couloir which was
still one of the greatest snowboard descents ever attempted and i happened to find the footage to
prove it on may 22nd 2001 marco turned 22 years old in a tent at camp 3 on mount everest and then
the following morning he woke up he strapped his snowboard to his back which was like a custom
designed board by the way engineered for stability in thin high altitude air and variable terrain
and then he climbed to the summit all alone at the highest point on earth
he watched the sunrise and then the blonde angel strapped his board to his feet
he took a deep breath and he rode he made turns past the
long line of exhausted climbers still ascending towards the summit, and he descended the entire
length of the Norton Couloir, eventually arriving at Advanced Base Camp roughly 8,000 vertical feet
below the summit, and he did it all in approximately two hours. This descent made him the first person
in history to make a complete, uninterrupted snowboard descent of Mount Everest. And while
we have this incredible footage, I want you to try to picture what Marco looked like to the climbers
that he passed on the way down. I mean, these climbers had spent days, possibly weeks, working
their way up the world's highest mountain. They're at altitude, they're exhausted, maybe moving a few
hundred feet per hour on a good stretch. They're in this zone of maximum suffering on one of the
most demanding ascents available to a human being. And then comes this 22-year-old French kid flying
past you on a snowboard, carving turns through the snow that you had just spent two hours fighting
through on foot. And then comes this 22-year-old French kid flying past you on a snowboard, carving
And then he just disappears down the mountain below you all in the time that it takes you to just like stop and catch your breath.
It's the kind of story that that makes you believe in in like real life superheroes, right?
A record being broken right in front of your own eyes.
However, there is a footnote to this record that's worth exploring.
So an Austrian climber named Stefan Gatz had summited Everest actually one day earlier, May 22nd, Marco's actual birthday.
Also with the intention of snowboarding the Norton Couloir.
However, Gatz encountered extremely hard packed snow on the steepest section of his descent.
And so he removed his snowboard and descended on foot for roughly 3000 feet before eventually strapping back in.
And so he reached the summit first and descended first, but he didn't stay on his board for the entire thing.
And then Marco came one day later and never took his board off at all.
And all props to Gatz for still accomplishing something.
That I would never even dream of trying.
But this story is about Marco Soffredi for a reason.
He did technically break that record.
Once he arrived back at base camp, Marco was celebrated, right?
Calls came in from all around the world.
The story spread through the snowboarding community, like a current of electricity.
The blonde angel was now solidly a worldwide phenomenon.
But as soon as Marco returned back to Shimoni that summer, he wasn't really in the mood to celebrate.
He could only think about one thing, which was the hornbine, the line that he had passed up, the Holy Grail.
And with all of this, this fame and momentum, Marco still wasn't satisfied.
In fact, he was actually hungrier than he had even been before.
And now the world was following the legendary resume that he was building.
And frankly, the pressure was on to rise to the occasion.
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I'm a hero.
It's like I'm losing my. You sure about that?
Why am I losing my. Throughout the winter of 2001 to 2002, Marco, Russell, Bryce,
and his Sherpa friend, Porba Tashi, began planning their return to Everest.
And for this second attempt, critically, the timing would need to be very different.
You see, spring on Everest means lighter snow and better climbing conditions,
you know, which is exactly why it's peak season for normal climbers.
But that's also exactly why the Hornbine had been unrideable when Marco first ascended Everest in 2001.
And so the group's solution was to go in autumn, specifically in September,
when accumulated snowfall would have filled the couloir properly.
However, the trade-off was that September is very late in the climbing season.
Conditions are way more unpredictable, and the mountain is considerably more dangerous
to ascend through the deep snow that builds up during the course of the summer.
However, Marco was happy to accept those terms,
knowing that it was the best way of achieving his holy grail.
He still held on to that same philosophy that,
you know, he had developed as a child, you know, in the shadow of the loss of his brother,
and then as a teenager, you know, devastated by the loss of his best friend.
The mountains will do what they must do, and he has to be okay with whatever comes.
But of course, that's a lot easier to say when it's about someone else's life, right?
Marco left Shimoni for Kathmandu on August 8, 2002, with three Sherpas.
And I'm going to do my best with these names.
They're Batashi, Panuru, and Da Tenzing.
And they all arrived at base camp in Tibet on August 14th.
Marco would spend the next number of days tracking the daily pattern of the mountain,
you know, snow in the afternoons, and then clearing at dawn.
He began to notice that the holy grail opened in very specific conditions,
which would make things even more difficult.
But again, he had come too far two different times now to miss this window.
And so over the following weeks, the team of climbers
slowly worked their way up the mountain through deteriorating weather, I might add,
fighting through snow that only got deeper as they climbed higher and higher.
And one thing I don't want you to lose track of, it might sound obvious, but
they were still climbing Mount Everest.
They're climbing Mount Everest with this insane goal for Marco to snowboard down.
It's not like any of this was easy.
They were fighting all the same elements that every Everest climber fights.
You know, the cold, the thinning air, the icy sections of the mountains, dodging avalanches,
in fact, reaching their high camp required plowing through snow
that was, in the worst sections, literally, like, chest deep.
And I don't want you to skim over that, like, we're talking up to here.
The entire ascent from Camp 2 up to Camp 3,
which was still at a relatively low 25,000 feet above sea level,
consumed 22 bottles of supplemental oxygen across the entire team,
which is like an enormous amount of oxygen. That's crazy.
But then finally, early in the morning on September 8th,
2002, Marco Soffredi and his three Sherpa companions began their summit push.
And once again, they climbed through chest deep snow,
burning through oxygen at nearly three times the rate that a typical summit push requires.
And they finally reached the summit of Mount Everest at 2:10 PM.
Their ascent took like 13 hours.
And by the way, with this feat,
they became the only people who had summited Everest on the north side that entire season,
up to this point.
Out of five teams who had attempted it,
only Marco's group made it to the top.
At 2:10 PM, it was already kind of late to begin a descent that needed to be completed before dark.
And I guess the thinking was that Marco, you know, wouldn't be doing a normal descent.
Remember, he was climbing with a snowboard on his back after all,
and his plan was to just zoom back down the mountain to the safety of a lower camp,
say around 6:00 PM, you know, just as the sun would crest under the horizon.
But conditions,
had been deteriorating since the morning.
And Marco's only route down was on, again,
a technical line that had never been ridden before.
And so at the summit,
Porbah Tashi,
Marco's closest Sherpa companion,
and his trusted friend across multiple expeditions,
asked Marco,
in the slightly disoriented way of someone who had just completed a 13 hour push through chest deep snow to the top of the world,
"Where are we?"
And he probably meant like,
Like, how are we?
Or maybe he literally had no idea where they were.
really know but marco's answer back to his friend has been reported with a couple slight variations
across different sources but the core of it is pretty consistent it went something like this
marco said roughly quotes at the summit but tired tired tired too much snow too much climbing and
sometime shortly after this strange conversation this photograph was taken it shows marco at the
summit of everest with poor batashi helping him strap his snowboard to his feet clouds gathering
in the valley thousands of feet below them the afternoon light going golden marco looks tired
he looks happy he looks like someone who has done an impossible thing and is about to do something
more impossible still and while conditions at the summit were clear heavy clouds had rolled in below
obscuring the face of the mountain the weather
again
was deteriorating and poor batashi as well as the other two sherpas kind of reading those clouds
urged marco not to snowboard down not today just just come down the way that they come up
rest and then try again another day if the season allowed but marco had not come all this way two
different times to wait for another day right it was as if he didn't care about the first time he
summited everest or the record he had broken the first time when he snowboarded
down it
now this was the only thing that mattered he had not climbed 13 hours through chest deep snow at
the top of the world to just turn around you know he wasn't gonna break his promise to to media
outlets as well as friends and family members and most importantly to himself the hornbine was right
there just below him filled with snow the exact conditions as he had planned for and marco had
one oxygen tank left so he had to do something else he had to do something else he had to do something
so after roughly an hour at the summit you know sitting there catching his breath marco quietly
made his decision he pointed his snowboard towards the couloir and he pushed off the three sherpas
watched him go gliding down the mountain to their left making a few turns and then disappearing into
the clouds below those three sherpas went back down the way they had came the northeast ridge
moving quickly trying to beat the weather trying to get to the top of the mountain and then
they finally got to the top of the mountain and they made their way down to the top of the mountain
and by the time that they were gathering gear at camp three a good four thousand feet below the
summit the face below them had become visible again through breaks in the clouds and that was
when they saw a shadowy figure at the north coal and folks this is like haunting stuff so below them
past camp three near the north coal at approximately 23 000 feet in elevation they could make out what
appeared to be a long way from the top of the mountain to the top of the mountain and they
saw a lone person on the slope and this of course was presumably marco like it had to be the figure
was moving as if he was on a snowboard you know way too fast to just be on human legs but then
out of nowhere and without warning the figure came to a stop it stood there frozen on the
mountainside almost as if it saw something that paralyzed it and after a long silent moment
the figure thudded onto the ground and started to slowly slide down the mountain
all three sherpas witnessed this and instantly rushed towards this spot where the figure was
but when they reached the north coal themselves it was as if they had imagined the whole thing
because the snow where they thought they saw the shadowy figure presumably marco
was completely undisturbed there were no tracks no marks nothing to indicate that any person had
passed through there they searched for hours until eventually night fell you know maybe they had
just seen a mirage maybe it was just mind tricks you know everest mind tricks being played on them
i don't know around 10 p.m that night the three sherpas finally made it back to advanced base
camp which was the planned rendezvous point with marco they were still confused you know trying to
piece together what they had seen or perhaps hadn't seen and they assumed that they were about to walk
into their tents and see marco sitting right there you know maybe with a cup of tea exhausted but try
umphant ready to laugh off whatever those sherpas were talking about with disappearing tracks and
falling shadows and whatever but marco wasn't there no one at any camp on everest had even
caught a glimpse of him snowboarding on the mountain that day you know save those three
sherpas who had summited with him no one saw marco return to camp marco so freddy the blonde angel
was simply gone without a trace and to this day nobody has ever seen him again
found him or his body but that's not for a lack of trying folks marco's snowboard tracks when
investigators later tried to reconstruct what had happened ended at approximately 28 000 feet
somewhere on the upper section of the hornbine couloir around a thousand feet below where he
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this episode is brought to you by txu energy if you're looking for a better way to save on
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rep number one zero zero zero four from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but
i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy
that family
wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible
don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest
nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus
elizabeth holly the legendary chronicler of himalayan climbing noted in her report
in the american alpine journal that at the point where the tracks ended there were no crevasses no
hole or gap in the terrain for marco to have fallen into and so what the hell happened to him
and what happened to his snowboard tracks the most probable theory aligns with what the three
sherpas say they saw and it's fairly straightforward this theory goes that marco was exhausted after 13
hours of extreme effort through chest deep snow at altitude and he simply and quietly ran out of
energy and with one oxygen tank and deteriorated
weather with the physical reserves of someone who should probably have rested for a day before
attempting a technical descent he may have just laid down to rest or even passed out momentarily
and then just never got up and on a 60 degree slope in the death zone of mount everest this
would not have been a peaceful way to go but it is a fairly realistic one and then a second theory
involves an avalanche again the north face had been shedding enormous loads of snow all season
and marco himself had described
it as a quote festival of avalanches from base camp a small avalanche in the upper hornbine could
have covered any remaining tracks that he left behind and also carried marco far below the
mountain where the terrain would just swallow evidence of what happened including his body and
then the third theory involves a simple edge catch which is like a snowboarding term for what happens
when the board's edge catches unexpectedly invariable snow or ice and then the rider is just
tossed to the ground and sent off
tumbling down the slope and on mount everest an edge catch is not something that even like a world
renowned pro like marco would necessarily be able to recover from however knowing how exhausted he
was marco wouldn't have been moving at a speed where an edge catch would have like definitely
killed him now some of you might recall that at the beginning of this video i mentioned that there
was one theory about marco's disappearance that was so crazy that it possibly could be
And so there's a belief held by Marvel
own sister, at least at one point, which is that Marco successfully made it down the mountain
and then decided that he had had enough of the pressures of professional extreme sports
and all the expectations that came with being the blonde angel. And then he went to live quietly in
the mountains with yak herders somewhere that no one would find him. And as crazy as that sounds,
it would explain the lack of evidence. Or maybe it's just a way for his friends and family
to cope with yet another loss, another awful loss like this, especially given what happened
to his brother and his friend. I don't know. Most likely, Marco Soffredi died at 23 years old.
He had been snowboarding seriously for seven years. And in those seven years, he had redefined
what was possible on a snowboard in the mountains.
As far as I know, Marco Soffredi died at 23 years old.
As far as we know, he never did make that Hornbein descent or finish it, at least.
In fact, no one did for years. The first complete ski descent of the Hornbein couloir
was made by American Jim Morrison on October 15th, 2025, like more than 23 years after Marco's
disappearance. And it took him four hours and five minutes covering 12,000 vertical feet.
And the first snowboard descent of the Hornbein remains, at least as of the recording of this video,
uncompleted.
At Everest Base Camp, about a month after Marco disappeared,
his family and friends gathered for a memorial service.
His mother and father were there, who had, again, suffered another loss of one of their sons
in the mountains. His girlfriend Stephanie was there. His friends were there.
Russell Bryce was there. An enormous amount of Sherpas were there as well.
The clouds hung low on that morning, kind of reflecting the mood of the service.
And Buddhist priests chanted,
but then, as the chanting faded, the clouds began to lift. And I swear to you,
visible just below the summit, still perfectly preserved in the early autumn cold,
were Marco's final snowboard tracks. Tracks from the summit all the way to the entrance
of the Hornbein couloir. Still there, nearly a month later, as if the mountain wanted them to
know that he had at the very least tried. And so may Marco rest in peace, presumably,
and I hope that one day this mystery is solved and his friends and family can get some answers.
Marco Soffredi disappeared on the highest mountain on earth, a place where vanishing
almost makes sense. But our next stories are harder to explain, because these hikers
disappeared from places where searchers should have found something. If you're enjoying the show,
please leave me a five-star review. It really helps, and it's totally free.
And so now, let's get into these crazy stories.
What Possibly Happened to These Hikers
I've hiked thousands of miles over the years, and I'm not going to lie, I've had a few brushes
with death in the process. I've dodged falling boulders, I've encountered bears, wild animals,
and I've battled through raging storms. And yet, despite all of those dangers,
well, obviously, I always made it out of the woods alive.
But not every hiker is so lucky. In this video, I'm going to
be telling you three chilling, true stories of hikers who walked into the wilderness and were
never seen again afterwards. No bodies, no final messages, just eerie clues and, quite frankly,
a lot of unanswered questions. Oh, and trust me, you're going to want to stick around until the
very end of each story, because that's when I'm going to be revealing the most unsettling theories
about what might happen next. So, let's get started.
So, with that said, let's take a virtual trip together right now to one of my favorite places
in the entire world. That would be the White Mountains of New Hampshire. So, welcome to the
White Mountains. It's here on September 9th, 2007, that our very first mystery begins. So,
on that very day, 46-year-old Kevin Race scribbled down a few words on a piece of paper. He then left
that note in his home in the town of White Mountains. And he said,
And then, he drove his car back over that border into New Hampshire and drove for several hours
until he finally reached the base of the infamous Mount Washington. Now, those of you from New
England or even just the Northeast in general, you probably know what Mount Washington is. Maybe
you even have one of those famous bumper stickers. If you know what I'm talking about, you know what
I'm talking about. But if you don't know, Mount Washington is the highest mountain in the
Northeast. It's one of the most dangerous mountains, not just in the Northeast, but in the
entire country. It's really, really crazy. And on this particular day, September 9th, 2007, Kevin Race
was about to become the mountain's very next victim. Or was he? Was he really? Is that actually
what happened? Let's explore. So, Kevin drove all the way to the Pinkham Notch Visitor Center,
which is probably the most popular trailhead for Mount Washington. It's a place, a trailhead I've
been to countless times before. He drives there and then he began hiking up the mountain. When
he was a few miles into his hike, Kevin briefly stopped and chatted with the caretaker at Hermit
Lake Shelter. And little did that caretaker know, that would end up being the last time that Kevin
on Mount Washington. And the truth is that at first, at the very beginning, we'll say his
disappearance kind of seemed like a typical missing hiker case. And I obviously don't take
any pleasure in saying that. I mean, there's really nothing normal about a hiker going missing,
but it does happen. And at first it really did seem like it was a pretty normal case. However,
it didn't last like that. It very quickly turned into something much more sinister and frankly,
something much more suspicious. And the reason I say that is because of the note that Kevin had
left for his friends and family back at his home. Remember that note I told you about at the very
beginning of this story? Well, that note indicated that Kevin was obviously going to Mount Washington
and that his disappearance was actually no accident after all. You see, the note said
that Kevin went to Mount Washington, quote,
looking for his final resting place. Now, this obviously implies that Kevin went to the mountain
in order to take his own life. And of course, that begs the question, why? Why would he do this?
What was his motive? This was the question on everyone's mind, including the minds of the
authorities. And as it would turn out, there was a glaringly obvious reason why Kevin might want to
take his own life.
Or perhaps why he might want to fake his own death and then kind of just start over new somewhere
else. You see, 10 years prior to his disappearance, Kevin had started a company in Maine called Custom
Cordage. And he started this company with his business partner, whose name was David. I'm going
to leave the rest of his identity out of this. And so everything was normal with the business
at first. It was your classic small business, your classic partnership. But
at some point, a few years in, Kevin allegedly got greedy. According to the Lincoln County
Sheriff's Office, Kevin began to embezzle company funds by writing checks and using
credit cards. And as usually happens in embezzlement cases, this theft was not just
a one-off event. It went on for years. In total, investigators allege that Kevin stole around
$150,000 over a five-year period.
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energy all night every night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime use every summer
it's the only plan that lets you use free energy to get more savings so all nights are always free
summer days are now always discounted with savings like that you'll never look at a free
night's plan the same way again learn more at txu.com rep number one zero zero zero four
from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore
the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy
that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible
don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest
nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus
kevin was facing up to 10 years in prison and coincidentally he was scheduled to go to court
on september 11th 2007 and as you'll recall that is just two days after his disappearance and of
course because he disappeared he never showed up to court and because of this they put out
a warrant for his arrest and while they were drafting up that warrant literally at the exact
same time searchers from new hampshire fish and game were scouring the slopes of new hampshire
mount washington doing anything they could to try and locate the missing hiker but once again this
was not a normal missing hiker case again as much as it pains me to say that it wasn't even a typical
search effort and i say that because investigators weren't even sure if they were looking for a
missing hiker or if they were looking for a man who was intentionally evading law enforcement
a man on the run now one of the detectives that was looking for
kevin said quote he's not just a lost hiker he could be a hiker on the run because of his legal
problems in maine despite a massive search and manhunt for kevin race no sign of him has ever
been found to this day and of course this has left a lot of people speculating whether or not
he really did end his life on mount washington or if he used the the hike that day as a diversion
and successfully ran away and started a new life somewhere else
forever now kevin's car was found parked at pinkham notch and once again he was confirmed to
have been seen by that caretaker while he was hiking up the mountain and therefore we know
for sure that he was on mount washington that day and in addition to that two days before his
disappearance kevin apparently had a conversation with his brother where kevin stated that he had
recently visited some family property and also visited a relative doing both these things for
the first time in years that was a bit out of the ordinary and kevin's brother took those actions as
well as the note that kevin left at his house as signs that kevin was actually preparing to end his
own life now personally i do think that's the most likely scenario and obviously a very tragic
outcome but still the fact that kevin went missing in an area that is very popular with hikers again
i've been there a bunch like it's probably the most
trailer trailhead in all of new hampshire and the fact that no sign of him has ever been found
and of course combined with the fact that he had a very real motive to fake his own death
well all those things they just kind of make you wonder let me know in the comments what you think
happened in this very bizarre disappearance oh and uh speaking of bizarre this this next missing
hiker story is just as bizarre and honestly it's even a little bit scary so i get asked all the
time if covering all of these stories on my channel makes me like more scared to go hiking
and while i totally understand the question the truth is that covering these stories doesn't make
me more scared to go hiking because in almost every story that i cover there is an obvious
reason why the bad thing that happened happened does that make sense i mean someone usually made
an obvious mistake or a bad choice in gear or they were hiking in terrain that they weren't familiar
with or they were not familiar with or they were not familiar with or they were not familiar with
that they frankly didn't have any business hiking in in the first place but however despite all that
every now and again i will come across a story of an experienced hiker who by all reports did
everything right and yet still found themselves in a desperate situation this is one of those
stories and so that's why it's it's so scary for me to be honest so on august 14th 2016 50 year old
gordon sagoo and two of his friends were hiking a mountain called baby monday peak in british
columbia canada when something went horribly wrong now gordon was a very experienced hiker and a trail
runner he had picked up the hobby a little bit later in his life he was he was in his mid 40s at
the time but by august of 2016 this dude knew exactly what he was doing he had ran marathons
before and in addition to that he had hiked in the mountains and he had hiked in the mountains
in this particular area in british columbia multiple times before in his life he was
familiar with this kind of terrain and so at some point during the hike gordon decided to
separate from his hiking partners so that he could go and explore another peak and so the
plan essentially was for the other two hikers to continue going on down the trail towards this lake
and then everyone kind of agreed to meet up at a determined rendezvous point later in the
day gordon was equipped with all of his day hiking gear and even was carrying up to three liters of
water at the time and so these two other hikers didn't really think much of it they watched him
kind of just walk off into the distance and then a few minutes later they even spotted gordon a
little bit ahead of them on the trail you know kind of a black dot up ahead just kind of climbing
along going ahead as if you know nothing was wrong but the hikers did
eventually lose sight of gordon and when this happened of course they didn't realize it at the
time but it turns out that that would be the last time that gordon was ever seen the hikers
continued on to their rendezvous point they waited and waited but gordon never showed up and so
eventually they came to the chilling realization that something must have happened to him and so
they were left with no choice but to continue on back to the trailhead where their cars were
and of course they hoped that maybe gordon
would actually be there waiting for them instead of meeting at the rendezvous point it makes sense
you know maybe gordon took a wrong turn and maybe he decided it would be best just to return to his
car something like that but of course to their their horror gordon wasn't at the trailhead either
could you imagine the the sinking feeling that these hikers must have felt when they when they
realized this they must have known that something just awful had happened and so they began driving
back towards the nearby town of
chillawack and they called search and rescue as soon as they got cell reception and though the
situation was obviously very desperate i imagine that search and rescue probably felt some some
initial optimism when they first received that call that gordon was overdue and i say that
because once again gordon was familiar with the type of terrain that he was lost in he was fit
he was experienced and though he wasn't carrying any overnight like backpacking
gear i have no doubt that he was probably carrying the the bare essentials at the very least you know
things like a rain jacket good shoes you know we know he had a lot of water with him and so if he
if he had an injury and was just lost on the trail somewhere and that's why he couldn't you know make
it to their meeting point the chances were pretty high that he could at least keep himself alive
long enough for rescue to go find him however one point i need to make is that
at least in my understanding and i'm not a hundred percent on this but i'm pretty sure that one of the
things that gordon was not carrying was one of these right here which is a satellite gps with
an sos feature this right here is the garmin in reach mini it's a really popular one for hikers
because it's like the lightest one and stuff but there's other ones out there and of course if
gordon had had one of these and he hit this sos button on the side here perhaps he could have been
rescued now i will say back in 2016 these devices were not used to be used to be used to be used to be
these devices were not nearly as common as they are today i mean i never carried one back then
and for years afterwards and so i'm not judging gordon for this at all but there is a pretty good
chance that his rescue would have been a lot simpler if he had carried one of these but then
again i can't say that for sure because we just don't know what happened to gordon i mean there
have been circumstances where hikers went missing even though they were carrying these and so there
massive search trying to find gordon i'm talking a massive search i say that a lot but multiple
different search and rescue organizations government resources you know helicopters
drones dogs everything and yet no sign of gordon was ever found and to this day no sign of him has
ever been found and that of course raises a few very important questions i mean how is it possible
that a man as experienced knowledgeable
about the area he was in and physically capable as gordon could disappear into the
the wilderness without a trace i mean i could see him suffering an accident and then possibly dying
as a result of that that does happen on rare occasions but i would still think that his body
would have been found at some point i mean it's been it's been almost 10 years you know and i
already know what a lot of my very well-meaning viewers are going to be commenting right now which
is you know the fact that he was hiking alone he separated from his group intentionally people are
going to say that solo hiking like that is the reason why this happened and don't get me wrong
like i i get it solo hiking does raise the risk there's no question about that however i just
gotta say as someone who's hiked thousands of miles like i told you at the beginning of this
video if i was hiking in an area that i was familiar with i was carrying the proper gear
for a day hike like this and i was feeling good physically i wouldn't think twice about
separating from my friends to go explore a different area and i know that might
sound crazy to some of you but i mean i'm not going to sugarcoat it i'm telling you how it is
experienced hikers go solo all the time and disappearances like this very very rarely happen
this episode is brought to you by txu energy if you're looking for a better way to save on
electricity both night and day look no further than txu energy free nights and cool summer
it gives you free energy all night every night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime
use every summer it's the only plan that lets you save on electricity every night and day
use free energy to get more savings so all nights are always free summer days are now always
discounted with savings like that you'll never look at a free night's plan the same way again
learn more at txu.com rep number one zero zero zero four this holiday all plans even unlimited
are just 15 a month a holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive
holiday song like all i want right okay we can afford that you don't forget the music budget
we're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain give it a try at mint mobile.com slash
switch upfront payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 month plan required
15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra new customer offer for initial plan term only greater
than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms the real cost of a break-in isn't your
valuables it's the feeling that your home stopped being safe simply safe keeps danger away from your
family with three layers of protection one smart ai cameras and live us-based agents help stop
intruders before they break in two we sound the alarm at points of entry three our agents
request emergency response plan starting around a dollar a day right now get 70 off your new system
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49.99 a month visit simply safe.com slash licenses for alarm license information starting a business
can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like shopify they have the tools you need
to start and grow your business from designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond
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heintz and all birds continue to trust and use them with shopify on your side turn your big
business idea into sign up for your one dollar per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer
from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore
the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy
that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible
don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest
nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus
once again when hikers go missing or they get into trouble more often than not it's because
they didn't really know what they were doing but that clearly wasn't the case with gordon
and it almost makes you wonder if something extraordinary happened here like an animal attack
foul play with another human i don't know um and to be clear there's no evidence of those things
happening i mean it really is just a mystery in the truest sense and i guess just to play devil's
advocate a little bit while i've never hiked in british columbia before i have hiked in the
cascades of washington state which are just a little bit south of where gordon went missing
you know just over the border into the united states and i gotta say the terrain up there is
pretty gnarly and so i can see how even an experienced and fit hiker could potentially
take a fall and then maybe end up in an area where nobody will find them not to mention it's
possible that gordon actually went off trail either purposely or unintentionally and this
could have resulted in him having an accident or a medical event in an area maybe that nobody was
able to search i really don't know and so let me know what you think might have happened to
gordon in the comments and most importantly just keep him and his family in your hearts you know
my heart goes out to them and once again i just want to stress that if you're ever going to do
any solo hiking you've got to get one of these life-saving devices you know maybe it wouldn't
have saved gordon i don't know but there's a good chance it might have and so i've linked
a number of these you know of different price points in the description for you to check out
no sign of gordon was ever found but that was not the case for our next extreme
disturbing hiker disappearance in this story almost everything that the missing hiker had
with them was found except for the missing hiker themselves at 11 a.m on july 8 2014 69 year old
sylvia apps walked into the woods of british columbia's strathcona provincial park she was
supposed to emerge from the woods just a few days later on july 13th but sylvia was never seen
ever again this story is quite similar to the last story and that sylvia just like gordon was
a very experienced hiker i mean let's be honest you kind of have to be if you're still going on
multi-night backpacking trips by yourself when you're pushing 70 years old sylvia was known to
be carrying two cell phones navigational equipment and of course all of the standard
overnight hiking gear that every experienced hiker carries when she hadn't returned to
her hike by around 4 p.m on july 13th she was reported missing and very very quickly a massive
search was launched once again i don't use the word massive lightly i mean i'm talking almost
200 ground searchers being deployed many of them using search dogs they were using helicopters and
planes i mean they were throwing everything they could at this situation in order to try and find
the missing hiker but after searching and searching and searching for nearly two weeks
sylvia was still nowhere to be found and eventually they had no choice but to call
off the official search now once again as much as it pains me to say this everything that i've
told you so far is pretty standard when it comes to a missing hiker case and what i mean is that
you know it usually goes something like this the hikers reported missing a search is launched
they can't find the hiker and then the search is eventually called off however the search
for sylvia apps had a few strange discoveries that make it a very unique and in my opinion very
baffling search compared to many other stories that you're going to hear about missing hikers
so a short time into the search for sylvia her blue backpack containing almost all of her gear
was found it was found there just kind of sitting in the woods almost like it was abandoned and yet
sylvia was still nowhere to be found she wasn't with the backpacking gear and i want you to kind
of put yourself in the shoes of the searchers at this point and i want you to tell me how
how you would feel after discovering this backpack i mean on one hand finding the backpack probably
would be a good indication that sylvia herself was nearby somewhere i mean how far could she have
strayed away from her gear right it doesn't really make sense so so that would make me feel kind of
optimistic about finding her but on the other hand why would her gear be abandoned like that in the
first place the more i think about it discovering her gear might actually make me feel a little bit
worse i mean how high could her chances of survival be in the harsh british columbia wilderness without
any of her gear i mean obviously that's that's a very bad situation and so let me know how you
would feel about the discovery of the backpack if you were on the ground searching and then i
need to tell you something even stranger about the situation that happened after the discovery
so there were three things missing from the scene of sylvia's discarded backpacking gear number one
was sylvia herself of course and number two and three were her camera and her hiking poles
respectively and what's strange is that these two items would go on to be found but they were
found in a completely different area than her backpack and the rest of her gear was found so
why could sylvia be found in a completely different area than her backpack and the rest of her gear
could that be i mean that's very strange like wouldn't all the stuff be together i don't know
it just doesn't really make sense and the only other clue that i'm aware of in this case is that
on july 10th so that's two days after she started her backpacking trip sylvia signed the logbook
on the summit of castle crag mountain making that very summit her last known location now
once again i haven't hiked in bc before and so i really can't give a personal description of this
This was on Vancouver Island.
But I think that this particular quote from Paul Berry of Comox Valley Search and Rescue
sums things up pretty well.
It's highly technical.
Right now, we have a rope team descending into the area from above,
and we have a mountain rescue team climbing the snowfield below
to take a look at the small crevasse to take a look between the rock face and the snow face.
Now, it's not really my business, but I do wish there was more public information on this case.
Like, for instance, photos of Sylvia's gear,
or even the specific location of where her gear was found.
I mean, the best that I could find was this low-resolution photo,
which roughly points out where it was found.
But, I mean, this obviously isn't that useful.
And, quite frankly, it only leads me to speculate even more.
And so, with that said, let's just go full speculation.
What could have happened to Sylvia Apps? That's the question.
And my hunch, which could be totally wrong,
to be totally transparent here,
my hunch is that she might have dropped her gear off kind of at the base of Castle Crag Mountain
so that she could tackle the nearly 6,000-foot peak
without having to carry all that extra weight, right?
Like, she wanted to drop her pack, go tag the peak, come back down,
and pick up the rest of her gear, and then move on, right?
This is something that I've done countless times,
particularly in the Adirondack Mountains.
A lot of people do it there.
And it just makes sense that she would have kind of,
left everything except for her hiking poles and her camera,
you know, so she could take a picture at the summit.
Like, it makes sense that she would have left all that stuff behind
and only taken the poles and the camera.
We do know that she 100% reached the summit.
And so, maybe something happened to her while she was descending back down the mountain.
And that kind of explains why her camera and her hiking poles
were found in a different location from the rest of her gear.
I don't really know, guys.
That's just a gut feeling.
It's probably. Completely wrong.
The only thing I do know for sure,
and Sylvia's searchers would agree with this wholeheartedly, we'll say,
is that it's very, very strange
that pretty much all of her possessions were found, everything,
and yet, over a decade later,
no sign of Sylvia herself has been found.
How could that be?
And to be honest, that's a question I really don't have an answer for.
It's very unsettling,
especially as someone who has done a pretty good amount
of solo backpacking.
I don't know.
It's a scary one for sure.
And my heart goes out to Sylvia and her family and her friends, of course.
And also, I mean, I just got to say it again.
This story is another reminder to always carry a satellite messenger
with an SOS button on it.
Let me know what you think happened to Sylvia Apps.
Let me know if you think any of my assumptions were off here.
And one more time, don't forget to subscribe to the channel,
especially if you made it this far into the video.
I appreciate all of you very much.
My giveback call out today is going to be the aforementioned,
Comox Valley Search and Rescue.
Folks, this is an all-volunteer organization
that risks their lives to save hikers
and other folks who run into trouble in the backcountry.
And what you have to understand is that the bravery
and the generosity of groups like Comox Valley,
it's so, so incredible.
I mean, can you imagine heading into the mountains
at like 3 a.m. in the middle of the winter
to try and save a stranger,
someone you've never even met,
and not being paid a single penny in return for your trouble?
I mean, this is the kind of thing that these folks do.
They're heroes, and these groups always need funding.
And so I've made a small donation to them,
and I encourage you to click their link
that I have in the description and do the same.
Even if it's just a few bucks, you know,
it doesn't have to be anything crazy.
I would really appreciate that.
Those hikers all vanished
and left behind more questions than answers.
But our next story begins very differently.
A plane breaks apart thousands of feet above the Amazon,
and a 17-year-old girl wakes up
alone in the jungle.
What happens next is almost impossible to believe.
This 17-year-old girl woke up
in the middle of the Amazon rainforest
in excruciating pain.
Her last memory was being in free fall
with a dense jungle canopy thousands of feet below her
and getting closer very, very fast.
But the question of how a plane carrying 92 people
fell out of the sky, that was not on her mind.
The question now was how she was gonna survive.
Which for her meant navigating
the endless Amazon rainforest all by herself.
Folks, this is the story of a hike
I hope none of us will ever have to take.
Because even if you were in the best shape of your life,
no one would want to endure what Julianne Kopka had to.
We're talking about a teenage girl
who should have died a dozen different ways.
But in this moment, while she's laying on the ground,
of the Amazon rainforest all by herself,
the only thing that mattered was what she would do next.
It's Christmas Eve of 1971.
17-year-old Julianne Kopka, a German high school student,
was boarding Lands of Flight 508 with her mother Maria
from Lima to Pucallpa in Peru.
Their destination, well, that was a remote
Panguana research station where Julianna's father,
Franz Wilhelm Kopka, a zoologist,
was waiting for them to celebrate the holidays together as a family.
Julianna had just graduated from high school
and was excited to join her family in the jungle.
And this wasn't just because she missed her father.
Julianna also wanted to go into animal studies,
just like her dad.
And so what better place to observe wild animals
than in the Amazon jungle?
Well, little did she know,
she was about to have some very close animal encounters.
You could even say that
these encounters were too close.
Julianna and her mother were flying with the airline Lanza,
which, let's just say, didn't really have a great reputation.
I mean, there's budget airlines, right?
And then there's Lanza.
I mean, just a year before all of this happened,
a Lanza plane crashed due to engine failure.
And in that case, the plane was actually over capacity with passengers.
But Julianna and her mother's Christmas trip was pretty last minute.
And so this was probably the only affordable
option left for them.
I mean, surely just one short,
only an hour long flight on Lanza would be safe,
even if the airline was a little bit sketchy, right?
There was a thunderstorm brewing in the area right as they planned to take off.
But with the pressure of holiday travelers,
you know how that can be.
The flight crew decided to just risk it,
which they immediately regretted.
The turbulence on this plane was just unlike anything you can even imagine.
The airplane was being tossed around like a toy.
The overhead compartments were flying open.
Passengers were literally holding on to their seats for dear life.
And my apologies if you're watching this at the airport right now,
especially if you're about to board a flight, because I mean, yeah,
this obviously sounds like a total nightmare.
And then 20 minutes into the flight, the absolute worst case scenario happened.
A jolt of lightning struck the Lanza plane.
The right wing caught on fire.
And then the plane began to not just go down, but to straight up disintegrate.
Like, I don't know how else
to say this, the pilot's attempts to level the plane out only made things worse
as the left wing of the plane then snapped off.
And of course, it was now clear to everyone on board what was about to happen.
One of the last things that Juliana remembered was her mother sitting
in the seat next to her saying, quote, Now it's all over.
Juliana opened her eyes, her vision was blurry.
As her glasses were now gone.
But somehow, Juliana had defied the odds and the loss of gravity and survived
a 10,000 foot plunge from the sky all the way down to the ground.
And as she looked around, a very horrifying reality was setting in.
She was completely alone.
There was no one else around her.
None of the 92 souls on board were anywhere to be found, not even her mother, Maria,
who again had been sitting right next to her.
It occurred to Juliana that when the plane disintegrated midair,
people or bodies were basically just scattered across the dense jungle.
But I guess Lanza did at least one thing
right, because Juliana was still somehow strapped into her seat belt.
She was sitting in a window seat, which was attached to the two other seats in her row.
And this is a very important detail, because if you think about it, one person
in one chair would fall very fast, most likely, you know, not making it past impact.
But one person in a chair with two empty
seats spinning above them creates some drag, which slowed the fall.
But maybe I'm overthinking this because
the bottom line is that Juliana got extremely, extremely lucky.
So after she unbuckled herself,
the first thing she did, of course, was look around for her mother.
But with each little step that she took, she began to realize how much pain she was.
Her knee was badly sprained.
She had a deep cut on her arm.
She touched her collarbone and immediately crumbled to the ground.
It was broken.
And on top of all that, she was most definitely concussed, like severely
concussed, terrified, alone and badly injured.
Juliana decided to kind of just rest there in the crash site.
During that sleepless night, she came to the conclusion that she just
had to kind of put this tragedy out of her mind.
She had to block it.
it out. And also, despite how hard it was, she had to let go
of the idea that she could search and somehow save her mom because she knew that any extra minute
that she spent searching for her mom meant more time that she would have to spend in the unforgiving
jungle in her head her badly concussed head only one thought came through which was i need to get
the hell out of this jungle when juliana woke up the next morning which actually happened to be
christmas morning just to add insult to injury she began to prepare for this unknown treacherous
hike that she had ahead of her she started by checking where she was she recognized the sounds
of birds and bugs and she figured out that she was somewhere in the panguana jungle now for most of
us myself at least i can speak for myself here um this would feel like a death sentence right but
for juliana it actually gave her a little bit of comfort it almost felt like home if you can
believe that but
of course this home just happened to also be home to uh eight foot caimans riverbed stingrays
piranhas snake spiders and billions of the most dangerous animal in the world
mosquitoes the 17 year old girl grabbed what she could from the crash site which included a bag of
candy and she set out on the solo journey to safety whatever that was going to entail and
she promised herself that if she could she would also try to find her mom
right away juliana's survival instincts kicked in she knew that the jungle was a dangerous place
but she also knew a lot of its secrets her father having spent so much time in the jungle well he
taught her a lot of valuable lessons like for instance uh follow water downstream because
it probably will lead to civilization so she began to listen for water and soon enough she
found a creek and she knew the creek had to eventually feed into a stream and lo and behold
that's when she found a creek and she knew that the creek had to eventually feed into a stream
that's exactly what she found but there were still no signs of humans or civilization or any
sort of safety and so her only choice was to just follow this stream the days were absolutely brutal
and i don't use that word lightly uh juliana stumbled through the foliage battling dehydration
hunger and the onslaught of all these biting insects and to give her legs some rest she would
actually jump into the alligator infested stream and and just float around the lake
waist deep down it right she knew that piranhas only attacked in the shallow and so she stayed
calm even as the bloodthirsty fish swam by her legs i mean to me that's crazy but she was confident
enough in herself that she she just knew that this was what had to be done now juliana was facing a
number of issues but two of the biggest ones were um it was the wet season which meant that her food
options were extremely scrappy and she was able to eat a lot of food and she was able to eat a lot
garce not only did this make her trek super sloshy and just overall uncomfortable but her ripped
clothing started to fall apart and this exposed her to the elements during the night it would
absolutely dump rain and this would sting her skin even worse than a lot of the mosquitoes did
now the second thing so remember that gash on her arm i mentioned a few minutes ago when the plane
crashed um fair warning well that gash got a lot worse like
um
it's this is disgusting so you've been warned okay um i guess that because juliana was spending so
much time around swarms of bugs and then dipping into the water her arm wound became the perfect
environment for life to begin and by life i mean maggots that's right uh maggots began to live
inside of her open wound so that was a problem on her fourth day of the flight she was able to
get up on her first day of hiking juliana was basically just in full adrenaline mode right
uh pushing through to get a little bit further each day but all of a sudden a sound that she
hadn't heard before basically stopped her in her tracks um vultures she saw vultures circling above
she instantly knew that the vultures must have found something and so she followed them to a
part of the forest that looked like it had been raised down by something massive she then walked
up to a
horrible site um she she found three pairs of feet sticking out from the ground still wrapped inside
of their plane seats folks she was not hallucinating i mean she she quickly realized that the bodies
that were attached to these feet had been driven down into the soil and then half buried right and
she also noticed that one of the bodies was that of a woman she immediately began to assume the
body was the body of her mother and so heart pounding juliana took off the woman's shoes in
order to examine her nail polish i mean she knew exactly what her mother's toes her her nail polish
would look like right i mean can you just imagine how she probably felt in this moment like this is
the the morbid moment of truth you could say but thankfully this was not her mother which probably
brought her some fleeting comfort but still
i mean at this point she must have known that the odds of her mother's survival were extremely low
and there wasn't anything else she could do right she had to just keep moving the days grew longer
and juliana grew hungrier she had run out of candy long before this point and the dirty stream water
wasn't really safe enough to drink in large quantities or probably at all but what choice
did she have and to make things worse she could actually hear the search planes above the thick
canopy kind of hear the search planes and she could hear the search planes and she could hear
them humming around almost like they were taunting her she knew that she couldn't really do anything
to alert them right and even those planes didn't really last because after day seven things went
quiet at that point they had called off the search and juliana was truly now all on her own by day 10
she was really struggling she was starving she was getting sick and her bug infested arm was just
getting worse i mean it was in serious trouble now she was getting desperate she was getting
desperate for any relief but by her rough calculations she felt like she couldn't have
been too far from civilization and just as she was preparing for another night out in the cold rain
she stumbled into a very small sign of hope she found this tiny little human-made hut with a palm
leaf roof she cracked open the door hoping to find you know maybe a person in there or at the very
least some food but unfortunately neither one of those things was inside the hut but what she did
find was a small can of
petrol oil and a shelter for the night which is better than nothing right now some of you might
be thinking that she would have had no use for that oil right i mean maybe she could start a fire
but believe it or not there was actually something else that she realized she could do with this oil
so juliana remembered something that she had learned from her dad when their their family
dog's wound had become infested with maggots like hers now was and you might see where i'm going with
this you might not i'm just gonna say it
she poured the gasoline into her open wound and basically just suffocated as many of the bugs that
had taken up residency in there as she possibly could can you imagine how much that would sting
like so after doing this she decides it's time to try to fall asleep in the hut but at this point
her her living nightmare or her nightmares uh reached a breaking point we'll say she was in pain
once again she's she's starving and the gasoline that she had poured into that bug infested wound
hadn't quite finished off the job and of course all these factors combined making it pretty much
impossible to sleep the next morning as as she still sat in this hut she began to hear the sounds
of animals and i should specify these weren't just little you know chipmunks or frogs these were big
animals nearby and at this point she's basically ready to give up and so she was probably just
thinking whatever these animals were going to do to her and she was probably just thinking
whatever these animals are like they can just have me like i'm done i don't even care um but
as the animal sounds approached and got louder it actually hit her that these weren't actually
animals well i guess technically they were but um no they were humans juliana ran out of the
shelter and there right in front of her were three peruvian lumberjacks her albeit unintentional
rescuers the first living people that she had seen in 11 days
as soon as she saw these men she knew that her nightmare was finally over against all the odds
juliana had survived a plane crash and 11 days surviving in the jungle all by herself the men
put juliana in a canoe and then took her down the river to a small missionary where she would
eventually be airlifted to a hospital and as they went down the river the local villagers couldn't
help themselves but just to stare at her
right um let's just say that juliana was a pretty strange sight to them i mean she was this skinny
blonde girl with tattered clothes and dirt all over her um but more than that her eyes were so
bloodshot and swollen that the locals could have sworn that they had seen a forest demon later
as she began to recover at the hospital the only thing on juliana's mind was her mother um i'm sure
by now she realized the chances that her mother had survived were very slim
but nonetheless she was still holding on to some distant hope that maybe just maybe
her mother had survived the unsurvivable just like she did. But folks, it was worse than Juliana
could have ever imagined. She did finally learn the tragic fate of her mother and also learned
that every single other person aboard Lanza Flight 508 had perished. Juliana was the only survivor
of the crash. It is believed that 14 other people survived initially after landing in different
parts of the jungle, but we'll never know about what they experienced or how long they lived
before eventually giving in to the Amazon's will. Incredibly, just a week or so after she was
rescued, Juliana volunteered to go out with the search parties in order to find more bodies. But
she did quickly realize just how traumatized she was with survivors' guilts and of course with the
images that she had come across during the ordeal. I mean, I've said this before, but don't forget,
this is a 17-year-old girl who had just graduated from high school and was anticipating spending
Christmas with her parents doing what they all loved. And so Juliana returned to Germany to
figure things out and to try to put together a normal life after going through this just insane
experience. Now, to be the sole survivor of anything creates a lot of pressure for what to
do with the rest of your life. And I mentioned that because I think it's just worth celebrating
the fact that by all accounts, Juliana went on to become an amazing woman. She studied biology and
went on to be one of the world's leading experts on bats. Then later in life, she became the director
of the Panguana Research Station, taking over the role from her dad. And in 2011, she wrote an
award-winning book about her life. She's now around 70 years old and seemingly still doing great.
Now, there is one last thing I want to tell you about Juliana's story. And this is actually
pretty cool because I'm someone who's maybe like a little morbidly fascinated in the concept of like
visiting the sites where these kinds of stories happen, right? So in 1998, a documentary came out
directed by Werner Herzog called Wings of Hope. Now, Werner was actually supposed to be on the
very same flight that Juliana took, but he had some last minute change in plans. And thank God
he did because he would go on to direct some awesome movies. But this one is really cool.
This is really special because the director decided to follow Juliana back to Peru and
retrace her steps of survival. And so folks, this is all on film. And I've even got some stills to
show you from it right here. And this one, Juliana is sitting next to the row of airplane chairs that
she landed with at the first crash site. And here, Juliana is standing kind of just chilling in the
middle of the stream with piranhas all around her. And this last one is particularly amazing. This is
actually her meeting one of the lumberjacks who found her on the final day of her trek. I'd highly
recommend watching the documentary. It adds some cool details to what I told you about in this
video. And folks, let me know in the comments if there are other stories like Juliana's out there,
because to me, I don't know, it's different than a lot of the stories on this channel.
And it's one of the most epic life or death stories I've ever come across. I mean,
from 10,000 feet in the sky to 11 days of survival on Amazon. It's just incredible. Be
sure to give this video a five-star review. That would help us very, very much. I appreciate all
of you so much and I'll see you in the next one. Hi there. I am fully charged and here to tell you,
Toy Story 5 is now on Disney Plus. What? Holy butterscotch. You said it,
Jesse. So save your batteries and watch the global phenomenon at home. And the best part, it's perfect
for the whole family. Power up your movie night and watch Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5,
now streaming on Disney Plus. Rated PG.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Marco Soffredi, a young snowboarder, became the first to snowboard down Mount Everest in 2001, gaining fame as "L'Anse Blonde" or the "blonde angel" for his daring feats.
After a second attempt in 2002, Marco planned to descend the extremely dangerous Hornbein Couloir, a line never ridden before, despite Sherpa warnings about deteriorating conditions and risks.
Marco reached the summit, exhausted and with only one oxygen tank, and began his descent, but disappeared without a trace shortly after, leaving no body or tracks.
The three Sherpas who accompanied him saw a shadowy figure on the slope and later found no evidence—no tracks, no signs—leading to theories of exhaustion, an avalanche, or an edge catch.
A controversial theory suggests Marco chose to vanish quietly, escaping the pressures of fame and trauma from the loss of his brother and friend, possibly living in the mountains undetected.
The Hornbein Couloir descent remains uncompleted, with no one having successfully snowboarded it, making Marco’s disappearance one of the most enduring mysteries in mountaineering.
The story's eerie conclusion, including the preserved snowboard tracks at the entrance of the couloir months later, underscores the mountain’s power to preserve silent, unresolved truths.
The narrative parallels other hiker disappearances, highlighting how unexplained vanishings in remote areas often defy conventional logic and raise profound questions about reality and human limits.
Summary:
The story of Marco Soffredi, a 23-year-old French snowboarder, centers on his two attempts to descend Mount Everest, culminating in a mysterious disappearance. " The following year, he returned with a plan to descend the far more dangerous and technically demanding Hornbein Couloir, a route never before attempted. Despite Sherpa warnings about extreme conditions and exhaustion, Marco reached the summit and began his descent.
Shortly after, he vanished, with no body or trace found. The three Sherpas who accompanied him reported seeing a shadowy figure on the mountain, only to later find no physical evidence. Multiple theories emerge: he may have simply run out of energy and passed out, been caught in an avalanche, or suffered an edge catch; or he may have voluntarily disappeared to escape the pressures of fame and grief after losing both his brother and a close friend.
The Hornbein Couloir remains uncompleted, and to this day, no one has successfully snowboarded it. A poignant final detail is the discovery of Marco’s snowboard tracks preserved at the couloir’s entrance nearly a month later, symbolizing his enduring attempt and the mountain’s haunting silence. The narrative is framed as part of a broader exploration of unexplained hiker disappearances, emphasizing how isolation, trauma, and human ambition intersect with the natural world to create enduring mysteries.
FAQs
You can watch Toy Story 5 on Disney+.
The film follows Woody, Buzz, and Jesse on a new adventure featuring advanced technology, set in a world where the toys face new challenges and dangers.
Marco Soffredi, a snowboarder, disappeared on Mount Everest in 2002 after attempting a descent down the steep and unexplored Hornbein Couloir. His body was never found, and his disappearance remains a mystery.
No, Marco Soffredi never completed the descent of the Hornbein Couloir. The first snowboard descent of that route remains uncompleted as of the recording date.
Snowboard tracks were found at the summit leading to the Hornbein Couloir, and these were still visible months later. No body or other physical evidence was discovered.
Theories include exhaustion causing him to pass out, an avalanche covering his tracks and body, or an edge catch on the snowboard. A more speculative theory suggests he fled to live quietly in the mountains.
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