Stranded On Norwegian Glacier, US Hiker Drinks His Urine To Stay Alive

An American hiker's adventure in Norway turned into a fight for survival after a devastating fall left him stranded and injured in the mountains.

Alec Luhm, a 38-year-old climate journalist from Wisconsin, set out in July for a four-day hike through the glaciers of Norway's Folgefonna National Park; it soon turned into a nightmare.

On the very first day of his hike, the bottom part of Luhm's left shoe started coming off. To fix it, he used athletic tape to hold the shoe together. "This is that moment where everything goes really, really wrong," he told CNN.

His first bad decision, he said, was to go on. 

Later that day, he reached the Buarbreen glacier, the third biggest such water body in Norway. While making his way along the ridge, he lost his balance and fell from the mountainside.

"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. 

The fall was so severe that it broke his left leg bone, immobilising him, he said.

During the fall, his backpack opened, which made him lose his mobile phone and water bottle. For food, he revealed that he had a few peanuts and granola bars, but his mouth was so dry that he couldn't swallow them. Feeling dehydrated, he resorted to drinking his own urine, he told The New York Times.

"The next time that I had to pee, I peed in my water pouch," he said, adding, "I drank my urine, basically to have a little bit of hydration, and to also get a little bit of food down."

"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," he said.

When he didn't board his UK flight on Monday, his wife contacted the Norwegian authorities and filed a missing report. The weather in the national park had turned bad by then, with heavy rains making the search difficult. Finally, on Wednesday, August 6, conditions improved, and the Norwegian Red Cross launched a large rescue operation.

Due to extremely harsh conditions, he was hallucinating and even doubted if the helicopter was real, he told CNN. He tried to signal by waving and shouting to attract attention. The helicopter initially missed him, but after 45 minutes, it returned, spotted him, and rescued him. He was then taken to a hospital for treatment.