Beef jerky, salted nuts and iodine tablets helped an 89-year-old hiker’s ‘very unlikely’ survival in Idaho wilderness

By Graham Hurley, CNN

(CNN) — Equipped with only 19 pounds of gear, 89-year-old Bing Olbum set off on what he intended to be a five–day hiking trip.

Instead, Olbum found himself stranded for nearly 10 days in over 4 million acres of Salmon-Challis National Forest. It’s home to some of the most rugged places in the country beyond Alaska, according to a local search and rescue coordinator.

Some of the peaks and saddles Olbum passed through reached over 8,000 feet as he cleared more than 20 miles while traversing the alpine forest.

“The odds of anybody surviving that period of time out in the wilderness area is very unlikely,” said Custer County Search and Rescue Coordinator Lincoln Zollinger.

Searching by horseback, helicopter and drones

On August 1, Olbum ventured from the Hunter Creek Trailhead in east-central Idaho on a backpacking trip. He was expected to arrive at his exit point in the McDonald Creek Area five days later, according to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office.

Olbum was reported as a missing person days later on August 6, the sheriff’s office said.

The Custer County Search and Rescue team began searching for him by land and air. Ground teams scanned the forest for traces of Olbum, lasering in on possible trails on which he could be found.

The next morning, the Idaho National Guard and a private pilot lent their helicopters to help with the search, and the Idaho National Laboratory manned drones to sweep through the forested mountains for signs of Olbum.

Despite the extensive effort, the Custer County Search and Rescue team “had zero traces of him for the five days” they had been looking, Zollinger said.

Local residents of Custer County and the surrounding area made up the ground search teams.

Locals left their jobs and commitments to help with the search for Olbum, as the Custer County Search and Rescue team is entirely made up of volunteers, according to Zollinger.

“We’re still a really small community,” Zollinger said, adding that he and others have spent their whole lives here. “They say, ‘stay off the mountain,’ well we’re going anyways.”

And it was these community members who finally brought Olbum home.

Locals save the day

“We were getting ready to discontinue our search and turn it back over to the family to let them look for (him),” Zollinger said, adding that the chances of survivability were low after being out there for so long.

Olbum’s daughter, Jennifer Olbum, posted his photo and trail map on Facebook Thursday asking for information and help from hikers familiar with the area.

“For two days search and rescue have been unable to locate him which tells me he is hurt or worse and unable to lay out a tarp for the choppers to see,” she wrote.

Two days later, on the final evening of the search, a group of local rescuers discovered Olbum’s camp, according to the sheriff’s office.

After searching for Olbum in the surrounding areas, local residents on horseback found him safe in the early morning hours of August 11.

According to Zollinger, Olbum was found virtually unscathed and was only mildly dehydrated and sore from the sheer distance he covered on foot.

CNN reached out to Olbum’s family, who confirmed he is doing well, but declined an interview.

The will to survive

That morning, the Custer County Sheriff’s Office praised Olbum, saying his “will to survive has resulted in an unbelievably good ending to this incident” in a post on Facebook.

Olbum had lightly packed for his backpacking trip. His only food for the excursion was beef jerky, salted nuts and iodine tablets to purify water, according to Zollinger. He also packed a one-man tent, a blanket and a pad to sleep on.

He did not have any tracking devices on him and only had a compass and a paper map for navigation.

Zollinger was amazed by Olbum’s will to survive, especially after learning he did so without making a fire. The temperatures in the forest fluctuate from the 40s at night to the 90s during the day.

“Just having so few supplies, five days worth of food, stretching it out that far is just amazing, in everybody’s eyes,” Zollinger said. “We dealt a lot with the Air Force rescue, and even they were amazed at the outcome of this.”

Zollinger spoke with Olbum this week a couple of days after he was found safe and asked him about what kept him going.

Olbum said he believed he could survive another three days out in the wild, which Zollinger described as “absolutely phenomenal.”

“The biggest thing I see in him is his mindset,” Zollinger said. “And he said, ‘Well it was mostly my mind to keep going, to keep setting goals and keep moving forward.’”

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