George Brown of Tiburon, California, was looking forward to seeing the fantastic scenery and riding a horse after signing up for an eight-day trip through Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness with his brother-in-law, Al Ball.
“The Bob,” as it is known locally, almost killed Brown.
“I was in bad shape yesterday,” Brown said from his hospital bed last week at Benefis Health System in Great Falls where he was preparing to undergo surgery on his broken leg. “They found me none too soon.”
Brown came face-to-face with his own mortality but survived with lessons he’s now eager to share to prevent others from sharing his near-death experience — or worse.
And he’s convinced the miserable two days he spent enduring 30-degree temperatures at night, hallucinations and scooting around a dead tree-clogged forest on his backside occurred for a reason.
“I thank God for letting me live,” Brown said.
Brown and Ball, of Louisville, Kentucky, began the trip into the 1.1-million-acre wilderness at Benchmark Trailhead 70 miles west of Great Falls and spent the first two nights in the Pretty Prairie area, camping next to a river.
The first day, guests were offered a four-hour horseback ride. That’s what Al did.
But Brown decided to go on a trail run instead, by himself.
He hit the trail at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.
He was wearing running shorts and carrying a small pack with lunch, some water and a flashlight.
It was a beautiful sunny day but the trail became very rough as it climbed in elevation and Brown lost track of it.
Then it began to rain.
Brown found shelter under a log.
Then he made his first mistake.
As he attempted to find the trail he had lost, he moved too fast as he ran down a slope.
Sure enough, he stepped wrong and his foot slammed into a tree.
He had two broken bones, he would discover later, one 2 inches above his ankle and the second in the calf area, but he knew right then he was in deep trouble because he could not move his foot.
“They were either going to find me there alive or dead,” he said.
That Sunday night back at camp, with George out in the wild wearing nothing but running shorts, the temperature dropped to 38 degrees.
As he tried to sleep, Al Ball was worried sick about his brother-in-law.
“I was in a tent and in a sleeping bag, and I was freezing,” Ball said.
To manage the time, he broke the night into three-hour periods he needed to survive: 9 p.m. to midnight; midnight to 3 a.m.; and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. and daylight. He looked at his watch each hour.
“That’s the way I got through that night,” Brown said.
At 2 p.m. Monday, Brown decided he needed to make a move because of his location off the trail where it would be more difficult to be rescued.
“The turning point was when I decided to take action,” he said.
Bum leg and all, he began to move, painful inch by painful inch.
The way back to the trail was downhill.
Brown would grab his knee and pull his broken leg up and scoot forward on his butt.
Dead trees on the ground, easily stepped over on two legs, became major obstacles.
Six hours of scooting later, Brown saw the trail, but he still wasn’t out of the woods.
During his second day alone in the wilderness — back at the camp the decision had been made by then to call search and rescue — Brown saw a helicopter fly over, and he waved his arms. Buried in the forest, Brown didn’t figure he would be seen, and he wasn’t.
On his second night alone in the wilderness, Brown heard voices and imagined people around him. Dehydration was affecting his mind and causing hallucinations.
“During the night, I’d say, ‘I’m really cold here, anybody have a blanket?’”
Voices that came from inside him helped to keep him alive.
One voice told him to hold his backpack close to his chest.
Another said to lean his back up against an incline, a tip he would have appreciated on the first night. Having his back against something solid helped to keep him warmer, he said.
On Tuesday morning, Brown spent about two hours dragging himself closer to the trail. Then he spotted horseback riders with Lewis and Clark County Search and Rescue, who had found him “none too soon,” he said. “I couldn’t have lasted another day.”
Two days after his rescue, Brown clearly recounted his wilderness saga even organizing it into two distinct parts: Bad decisions and survival.
Ball sat in a chair near Brown’s hospital bed in Great Falls.
It was a long way from the Bob and Monday, when George had yet to return from his run and the situation looked gloomy, and Al made telephone calls to family members.
“I was shocked as you can imagine,” said George’s wife, Cindy Brown, who also was at George’s bedside Thursday.
Cindy learned at 5:30 p.m. Monday that her husband was missing and booked a 6 a.m. Tuesday flight to Great Falls. She received a text message while she was in the airport in Seattle.
The text said, “He’s alive, he’s alive.”
“I said, ‘Hallelujah! Thank God. My prayers came true because I was hoping he had a broken leg.”
Brown is a 68-year-old retired accountant who lives in Tiburon in Marin County, California, which is north of San Francisco. He was expecting to see great scenery on the trip.
The 1.1-million-acre wilderness, known in Montana as simply “The Bob,” is among the wildest wilderness areas in the Lower 48 and home to grizzly bear, lynx, wolverine, deer, elk, gray wolf, moose, black bear, mountain lion, mountain goat and mountain sheep, which roam its rugged ridge tops, gently sloping alpine meadows, thickly forested river bottoms and open grass parks.
“I was looking forward to a good trip,” he said.
Brown said he kept his cool and tried to stay positive after his initial mistakes. This helped save his life.
“Your attitude is extremely important when you get injured,” he said.
Brown says he’s learned some hard lessons that he hopes others can benefit from when they venture into the wilderness.
One mistake people make is thinking nothing can go wrong.
Another is hiking alone.
“A friend would have helped a lot in that situation,” Brown said.
Bringing enough clothes along on a trip to deal with changing weather is another essential, Brown said.
Even after everything he went through, Brown said he still wants to return to Montana.
“I want to see the Chinese Wall,” he said, referring to the spectacular 22-mile-long, 1,000-foot-high escarpment, one of the wilderness area’s marquees features.
“He’ll be by himself,” said Ball, who’s seen enough.
