As McClish told it, the 34-year-old outdoors enthusiast from Boulder Creek, California, lost his bearings after beginning his hike the morning of 11 June. He had not informed anyone else of his plans, so it would not be until the afternoon of Thursday, 20 June, that the unkempt-looking hiker was found at the bottom of a remote canyon and rescued.
McClish spent much of the interim going up and down canyons, sitting by waterfalls and using his boot to collect water to drink and keep himself hydrated. He also sustained himself by collecting and eating berries, he said.
At one point, McClish said to KSBW, a mountain lion began following him – but the creature kept its distance and showed no interest in harming him. He said he would sleep on a bed of wet leaves, intermittently yell for help and think of what he would do to provide himself his next meal.
How do you end up getting lost hiking when you don’t even have a water container?
As we learned during COVID, ‘enthusiast’ is not the same as ‘expert’. This guy failed by-the-numbers and the only thing that saved him from being big-cat food was dumb luck. Good luck with the Lyme disease.
Fortunately for him, Lyme disease isn’t so common out west as it is back east.
I’m so glad not to be the only one to think that he was a moron.
I’m surprised they made it out their front door successfully.
There’s a shocking number of people who will just go off into the woods with their clothes and a phone.
I went hiking with a date once who expected to be fine walking a ten mile trail with no water bottle. Some people have no real world experience of how much water you need when you’re exerting yourself for hours on end.
When I was younger, we used to go out to that same area, smoke a ton of weed, and try to get lost. It was awesome. Sometimes we’d be turned around for hours.
Come on for 10 days you don’t need to eat anything and you will survive. You only need water that’s it. The mountain lion though …
10 days without food hits differently when you are hiking through mountains 16 hours a day vs sitting on your couch
Plus when you don’t know how long you’ll be going for
The better headline would have been:
Man survives being lost in California mountains for 10 days by drinking from his boot
Lol he doesn’t know the number until it’s over. In the meantime he’s just going day by day
Rule of 3’s. You can go 3min without oxygen, 3 hrs without shelter, 3 days without water, and 30 days without food. It is a bit of generalization, but its close enough to set priorities in survival situations.
Three hours without shelter? I don’t believe that’s correct.
Highly depends on the conditions outside. If it’s a blizzard or wet bulb heat, you won’t last 3 hours.
Very true. The rule of threes is meant to be a general rule. Some restrictions may apply.
3 hours in the cold, theee week without food, otherwise I have the same time table :-)
I have heard this before but not the shelter part.
What’s the longest you’ve gone without food?
I think I did 5 once. I wanted to see how long I could make myself go and that was when I had enough and l ate something.
He also sustained himself by collecting and eating berries, he said.
Wow, that’s so smart; sustaining himself by eating food.
I’m pretty convinced from watching every season of alone that catabolysis was likely the main factor rather than eating berries.
Well there was another “survivalist” that tried the same. He died.
I wouldn’t call Chris McCandless a “survivalist.” Heck one of the Alaskan truckers that picked him up and dropped him off told him he was gonna die.
Man survives being lost in California mountains for 10 days by eating berries
I doubt that very much. Anyone for whom 10 days of no food is going to be fatal isn’t going to be voluntarily going on hikes.
It’s a social convention for people to eat multiple times a day, but that’s it. You’ve got enough energy reserves to go for a far longer period of time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf
A 27-year-old male patient fasted under supervision for 382 days and has subsequently maintained his normal weight.
It’s not mentioned in the research paper above, but the guy’s name was Angus Barbieri.
Now, that guy had a lot of fat on him, which he wanted to lose – most people couldn’t go for over a year without food. He dropped 276 pounds over 382 days to get to 180 pounds. But unless someone is emaciated, they could do 10 days easily. I’ve fasted for over a week myself for the hell of it.
sitting by waterfalls and using his boot to collect water to drink and keep himself hydrated.
That may well have kept him alive, though. Can’t go for anything like as long as you can without food without water.
Loses 276 pounds, article claims he maintained his normal weight… Lolwut
It’s worded poorly, the article is saying that he maintained the “normal weight” of 180 pounds after he finished fasting and didn’t gain it all back again once he started eating.
I appreciate out-of-the-box thinking in a survival situation, but why the fuck did he drink out of his boot? Jesus bro, just cup your hands.
Sure you could cup your hands, but then you’re missing out on that delicious boot flavor.
I’m thinking either he used it as a canteen to carry more water further, or as a rain barrel to capture it, not just as a cup to drink from at places where water was readily available.
well you can’t piss in your own hands.
Not with that attitude.
How tf is an “outdoors enthusiast” not bring water bottle and have to resort to filling his boot for water. This is some bs
He’s enthusiastic, not experienced, about the outdoors. He told no one, had no bearing or equipment, and got lucky that he was found. The article was being gracious about his abilities to be outside - and he survived a week and a half with nothing so the article can’t say he’s bad at it.
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I think it makes more sense if you read “outdoors enthusiast” as outdoors “enthusiast.”
Im 99% sure the author is just engaging in some dry wit and being sarcastic about his outdoor prowess, seeing as he was so deeply unprepared that “boot cup” became his primary means of survival.
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Because he had done it before, and just like a worker does a singular job often or you drive the same route to work all the time, familiarity can breed complacency. That’s when accidents happen.
None of this is an accident though. He knows he’s going on a 3 hour hike, only brings a flashlight folding scissors, but no water?! This guy is a moron
He was complacent, believing because he’d done the route often enough he’d be safe.
I mean how could he get lost when he said he’d done it before? Because he was so familiar with it his mind wandered and he wasn’t paying attention.
The same thing has happened to me when I’ve been driving the same route home after a long day at work. All of a sudden I ‘wake up’ and realize I don’t remember the drive at all.
Do you not see an issue with driving and not paying attention?
Ofc I did. But I also didn’t realize I was doing it until it happened for the first time.
If it’s never happened to you, good. But it does happen to a lot of us.
There is a difference between not paying attention and not registering memories. Millions of people operate cars a little zoned out every day. With both hands on the wheel and a decent level of experience, your muscle memory and natural reactions will operate the vehicle adequately.
Zoning out a little on the road does not equal distracted driving like text messaging, loud kids, or fiddling with screen controls. Your mind is still focused on the task, even if you aren’t registering memories about it.
What hes describing above is common enough to have a term : highway hypnosis.
It’s well passed “zoned out.” I’ve personally experienced it. Youre on such autopilot that you dont even recall the drive. Its more likely to happen for routine or monotonous drives.
He was so enthusiastic that he forgot the bottle!
I’m guessing “enthusiast” really doesn’t mean “goes hiking all the time”, but rather “likes the idea of going hiking all the time”,
Bet he watched a lot of videos about it on YouTube though
Yeah, that’s insane. If he even set foot in Colorado, I think he’d be issued a mandatory water bottle…
Overconfidence, and hubris.
Something is not quite adding up in this story. People are saying he may have been complacent, but for some reason I feel like we’re not getting the full picture. Family or friends didn’t realize he was missing until father’s day? It’s 2024, even if you don’t have cell signal your gps signal stays on. You should be able to at the minimum gauge north, right? Why would you bring scissors on a hike-was he planning to cut snowflakes from leaves? What is going on???
Plus… this isn’t a remote area—you can walk across the whole range from Santa Cruz to Los Gatos in less than a day. Even if you were too panicked to think of an obvious strategy like “follow a stream” or “always walk downhill” and were essentially stumbling around blind, it seems like you’d be bound to run into a hiking trail or other landmark by chance alone within a day or two.
Good point. He was probably walking in circles.
Yes, you can just walk out in a day. Not only are there a ton of trails, there are roads and people living in the mountains. There’s all kinds of hippie retreats in those mountains. He must have been going in circles in one small area.
Just because he does this often, doesn’t mean he’s good at it. Not wanting to be connected doesn’t mean you can’t take your phone. Just turn it off. Loose your bearings? Just go downhill and follow streams. You’ll have water eventually, it will lead to a road. A canteen is super basic for anything more then a basic walk.
He lost his bearings.
Sounds like a mental issue.
No junk food, just earthly goods. I ate weird berries in the woods. Now I’m seeing colors; I’m getting higher. I think I’ll start a forest fire.
No phones, no distractions, just a man living in the moment, getting stalked by a large cat just like his ancestors.
At one point, McClish said to KSBW, a mountain lion began following him – but the creature kept its distance and showed no interest in harming him. He said he would sleep on a bed of wet leaves, intermittently yell for help and think of what he would do to provide himself his next meal.
“Damn I wish that mountain lion would show itself… I’m fucking hungry.”
I’m scrolling down so far into the comments hoping someone will explain the benefit of sleeping on wet leaves
This looks like the kind of dude that would eat some shrooms and go on a mystical journey off trail into the forest.
The ‘Santa Cruz Diet.’
On sale, this Christmas. Deluxe edition with boot-shaped mug.
The Santa Clarita diet would be better for humanity though
Big deal I eat berries all the time
And finishes off by hugging the cake
