Thursday, April 10, 2008

Christopher Traverse Survives Wilderness Thanks to Survivorman

survivorman


My husband is a Survivorman fan so that means I've watched Les Stroud mark his territory more than once myself. You know how it is, we women watch what our men watch. Its just a fact of life, men control the remote.

Interestingly, there is a story in the news right now about a guy who survived because of watching Survivorman. Twenty-four year old Christopher Traverse spent five days lost in the snowy wilderness and credits Survivorman with his survival. Seriously!

Mr. Traverse said he credits his survival to knowledge gleaned from an unlikely source.

"I watch a show called Survivorman," he said.

Survivorman is a reality-based show whose protagonist, Les Stroud, ventures out into the wilderness for a week at a time, with nothing but his wits to survive on.

It's from the show that Mr. Traverse said he learned how to eat snow to fend off dehydration, and how to make a shelter from the twigs and branches.

"I wanted that experience -- I got it and then some," Mr. Traverse said with a laugh.


Traverse had been on a fishing trip in the wilderness of northern Manitoba when he got lost on the way back to his uncles house. Fresh snow had covered up his tracks and while trying to find it way without having the tracks to follow his snowmobile ran out of gas.

He used the survival skills he learned from watching Survivorman and managed to not only survive in the frigid weather for five days but to eventually make his way to town and walk into a store to call his family.

Searchers are looking for his snowmobile, but he said his family won't let him go along to look for it. Ha!