Adrian Knopps – 7 days alone in the Alaskan wilderness

Alaska is by far the most sparsely populated US state and has the most remote, and dangerous wilderness. It’s also one of the best places to do some large game hunting and after seeing what it had to offer, Adrian Knopps decided to head up from Michigan to try his luck. The 51-year-old electrician met up with his hunting partner, a 24-year-old Native Alaskan called Garrett Hagen, and on September 14, 2013, they left the town of Ketchikan and headed out into the wild.

The plan was to take a boat to a small island near the Misty Fjords National Park and spend a few days there looking for large game to hunt. On the third day of their trip, the pair managed to kill a large bear and spent the next few hours butchering it. Their main boat was anchored about half a mile off the coast, and they came ashore using a small skiff and a kayak. The bear yielded several hundred pounds of meat and their small boats weren’t big enough to take it all back to their ship along with the pair of them, so the plan was that Hagen would take a load of meat and unload it on the boat before coming back to get knopps and whatever meat was left.

The skiff was heavily loaded with meat and the bear skin was so heavy it had to be put in the kayak which was towed behind. When their boats were loaded, Hagen climbed into the skiff and made for their main ship while Knopps stayed on the shore and waited. The wait should have been no longer than a couple of hours at the most, so when Hagen didn’t come back before dark Knopps knew something was terribly wrong. Unfortunately for him, there was no way of finding out since he didn’t have a boat and the water was far too cold to even think about swimming, so he did the only thing he could and stayed put.

Knopps only had four granola bars with him since there was plenty of food on the main boat, and getting stranded wasn’t really in his game plan. Even though he had been out there for three days already, access to their main supplies wasn’t a problem up until this point and it was only on the fourth day things started to get desperate. His water supply had run out, and he was forced to drink rainwater that had collected on trees and rocks, and his granola bars didn’t last longer than 24 hours. The area he was in was also home to wolves and bears that could stumble out of the trees at any time, and temperatures at night would average around 5 °C.

On the fifth day, a huge storm hit the island with winds of 70 mph lashing the trees and soaking Knopps to the bone. The storm lasted for the rest of the evening and into the next day, leaving Knopps suffering from hypothermia and completely drained of energy. He mentioned a number of times in later interviews how he never lost faith, and even though he knew he was in trouble he didn’t think he was going to die.

During the sixth night, he began to wonder if anyone was coming for him since he had been gone for much longer than planned and was hoping his wife had raised the alarm, but unfortunately, he didn’t tell anyone exactly where he would be. He scratched a goodbye note to his loved ones on the stock of his rifle and lay down to rest for the night, possibly for the last time.

After opening his eyes the next morning he lay still for a while, not only did he not have the energy to stand up but there was nowhere to go. Thinking this would be his last day on earth he lay there and waited for the inevitable, but surely enough in the distance a sound carried on the wind that wasn’t being made by a storm. Listening closer he recognized it to be the sound of a helicopter and gathered the strength to get into view. He was quickly spotted and the Coast Guard picked him up and took him straight to the local hospital where he was found to be suffering from extreme hypothermia and malnourishment, but no physical injuries and was otherwise fine.

After he recovered he put the situation down to an unfortunate accident and plans to get back out into the wild when he can. His partner Hagen wasn’t quite so lucky and was found 11 days later floating in the mouth of an estuary over 20 miles away. No one will ever know what exactly happened to him but the official speculation is the weight of the meat he was carrying caused the boat to capsize and drop Hagen in the icy waters where he would have quickly passed out.