As he tumbled down a steep cliff in Norway, Alec Luhn knew his life was in danger.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is really bad. This is the start of the disaster movie,’” Luhn said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “This is that moment where everything goes really, really wrong.”
Luhn, a 38-year-old climate journalist from Wisconsin, had set out in late July for a four-day hike in southwest Norway’s Folgefonna National Park — a massive stretch of land noted for its glaciers.
An experienced hiker who had completed several solo trips in challenging conditions, Luhn knew cell service would be spotty and warned his wife any communications from inside the park would be intermittent.
Things quickly went awry.
On the first day of his hike, the sole of his left boot began to detach, leading Luhn to patch the boot up with athletic tape. Despite the early trouble, Luhn pressed forward.
“I didn’t want to go back in. It was just the very start of the hike,” he said. “That was the first bad decision I made.”
Later that day, he reached his destination — the Buarbreen glacier, a tongue of the sprawling Folgefonna glacier, the third-largest in the country. He then hiked to a ridge that leads to a nearby valley.
“That’s when disaster struck,” Luhn said.
One wrong step sent Luhn hurtling down the side of the mountain.
“I just remember sliding down the mountain at first, and then spinning down the mountain, rolling down the mountain, and then just pinballing down the mountain,” he said.
When he finally came to a stop, Luhn realized his left femur had snapped.
“My left foot was just flopping around with no direction,” he said. “I was basically immobilized.”
His backpack had ripped open in the fall, and several belongings — including his cell phone and water canteen — were gone.
It was a Thursday and Luhn recognized that he would likely have to survive several days in the wilderness, with his wife not expecting to hear from him until Monday.
The first few days were “trial by drought,” Luhn said.
The sun bore down on Luhn, who had little protection from the heat.
He had several peanuts and granola bars but struggled to eat without water.
“My mouth was so dry, the food just kind of turned to concrete inside it, and I couldn’t swallow it,” he said.
Desperately hungry and dehydrated, Luhn eventually resorted to drinking his own urine to survive.
“The next time that I had to pee, I peed in my water pouch,” he said, “I drank my urine, basically to have a little bit of hydration, and to also get a little bit of food down.”
Back home in London, his wife, Veronika Silchenko, found out he’d failed to board his return flight to the UK on Monday. She began to panic and notified the Norwegian authorities, Silchenko told CNN.
By the time the search for Luhn began, weather conditions in the park had changed and heavy rain impeded the operation.
On the morning of Wednesday, August 6, Luhn finally saw a glimmer of hope.
Conditions had improved, and the Norwegian Red Cross mobilized a large team of volunteers, including specialized climbing teams and drones.
“I woke up in the morning. It’s very cold, very wet. There was a slight break in the weather where you can see a little bit of sunshine coming through all the valley, and the helicopter came,” he said.
But it had been six harsh days in the wild, and Luhn was experiencing hallucinations. He questioned whether the helicopter could be real.
Nevertheless, he waved and yelled at it, trying to grab the crew’s attention. The aircraft moved on, without detecting Luhn.
Determined not to miss a second chance at rescue, Luhn pulled out his tentpole and tied it with a bandanna to flag down the helicopter.
About 45 minutes later, it returned and began scanning the terrain.
“I was just waving and just crying out with all my might. And finally, the side door of the helicopter opens, and somebody waved back at me,” Luh said, “That’s when I knew that it was up. It was all going to finally be over.”
After his rescue, Luhn was treated in a hospital, where he was reunited with his wife.
“I said, ‘I love you.’ And she said, she said, ‘I’m gonna rip you a new one, but for now, I love you,’” Luhn said.
The experience gave Luhn a new lease on life, he said.
“It was very lonely up on that mountain. I didn’t see a single other person anywhere near,” he said. “The whole time I was up there, I was just thinking about how I might die on this hike that I was trying to do, and I would never see my wife or my parents or my brothers and sisters again.”
“That was the most painful thing I could possibly think of,” he said.
