In short
Climate/environment reporting and survival after a hiking accident on Norway’s Fulgafana Glacier, including how gear failure, dehydration, storms, and delayed rescue nearly killed Alec Loon.
Guest backgrounds
Alec Loon is a 38-year-old environmental reporter and experienced backpacker (has hiked remote wilderness, including reporting in Alaska). He planned a four-night solo glacier trip near Fulgafana National Park.
Key claims
He believed the hike would be routine but slipped while bushwhacking between valleys; secondhand boots failed (sole detached) and athletic tape reduced traction. He was stranded six days after breaking his left femur and injuring his back, with no cell phone, no water at first, and worsening weather (rain, wind, then snow). He expected rescue after his wife noticed he was missing, but it took until Wednesday/Thursday for a helicopter to find him.
Notable examples
He drank urine attempts, slurped rainwater from a sleeping pad crease, rigged a sunshade, waved a red bandana flag for rescuers, and was airlifted to Bergen Hospital.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOAlec's Journey Begins
0:26 to 3:14
Alec Loon shares his excitement and planning for a solo hike in Norway's Fulgafana National Park, leading to unexpected challenges.
“Hiking around a glacier in Norway's Fulgafana National Park.”
Challenges on the Trail
4:39 to 14:03
Alec describes his hike into the national park and the unexpected challenges he faces with gear and terrain.
“He'd said goodbye to his wife Nika the night before and given her the general itinerary of his route along the glacier.”
A Terrifying Descent
14:03 to 18:08
Listen to Alec recount his shocking fall down a glacier and the injuries he sustained.
“So I was coming across this giant rock, the very top of it, and suddenly my foot slipped.”
Waking Up Alone and Injured
18:09 to 23:05
Alec describes awakening alone and injured, assessing his dire situation.
“In the waning hours of Thursday, July 31st, Alec Loon fell several dozen yards down a rock face in Norway's Fulgafana National Park.”
Struggling With Dehydration
23:06 to 27:34
Alec fights through dehydration and develops coping strategies to survive.
“Just trying to take it step by step and feel like I had a little bit of agency over what was going to happen to me.”
Contemplating Life and Despair
27:35 to 28:00
Alec reflects on his life and the importance of family while stranded.
Reflections on Family
28:00 to 28:30
Alec reflects on the impact of being away from his family while abroad.
“that I didn't spend more time with my wife and my family.”
Stranded on the Mountain
28:30 to 30:00
Alec describes his experience of being stranded and facing dehydration.
“And so that was something that I repeated to myself over and over ad nauseum.”
Shelter Struggles
30:00 to 31:23
Alec faces challenges while trying to find shelter from worsening weather.
“By Sunday evening, the slow trickle of rain started to pick up.”
A Dire Situation
31:23 to 34:00
Alec realizes the severity of his situation as conditions worsen.
“And the weather just kept getting worse and worse.”
Show all 17 chapters
The Fight for Survival
34:00 to 36:20
Alec recounts his physical and mental struggles to survive on the mountain.
“It was Thursday when Alec Loon slipped while hiking around a glacier in Norway's Fulgafana National Park, breaking his left femur and injuring his back.”
Hope in the Darkness
36:20 to 38:10
Alec glimpses a sign of hope as the weather begins to change.
“So Alec let his boots poke out, uncovered.”
The Helicopter Approach
38:10 to 40:20
Alec hears a helicopter and attempts to signal for rescue.
“He was in nearly constant pain and barely able to eat.”
Rescue at Last
40:20 to 42:03
Alec's rescue team arrives, providing a much-needed escape from danger.
“But as a journalist who traveled to far-flung places, he knew how often helicopters needed to refuel.”
Alec's Rescue and Hospital Experience
42:03 to 46:04
Alec recounts his emotional rescue from the glacier and subsequent hospital stay.
“One of the rescuers comes over to me and says, Hey, I'm Kristen.”
Reflections on Trauma and Recovery
46:04 to 47:54
Alec shares his physical and emotional struggles following his rescue and the lessons learned.
“More than six months after the fall, he's still raw with the physical and emotional trauma of the ordeal.”
Closing Remarks and Production Credits
47:54 to 49:10
The host thanks Alec and provides information about the podcast and its production team.
“Follow Against the Odds on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Against the Odds ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
0:11From Audible Originals, I'm Cassie DePeckel, and this is Against the Odds in Their Own Words.
0:25On the afternoon of July 31st, 2025, 38-year-old climate reporter Alec Loon was exactly where he wanted to be. Hiking around a glacier in Norway's Fulgafana National Park.
0:43Alec Luhn:a glacier is something that's so still and quiet but at the same time is full of this incredible motion and force we're talking about thousands of tons of ice that are literally sculpting the landscape carving out valleys in the middle of mountains traveling through deep time it started 10 ,000 years ago and this ice is moving toward me. To me, that's just, it's magical. You feel so small, but in a good way next to a glacier. And you feel like your life is just a blink of an eye compared to the tens of thousands of years this thing might have been going. Alec and his wife had just spent the week in Bergen in the southwest of Norway, visiting his sister, who had recently moved there.
1:32His parents flew out from the U.S. to join them. When planning the trip, Alex saw how close they'd be to the Fulgafana Glacier and knew he had to make a pilgrimage.
1:44Alec Luhn:It's this 60-square-mile hunk of ice on top of a mountain, just white, pure ice cap with that deep blue glacier ice underneath. I wasn't going to go to Norway and miss the opportunity to get out and see a glacier up close. So Alec and his wife made a plan. She would fly back to their flat outside of London. The next day, Alec would embark on a four-night solo backpacking trip in the national park and then fly home. An experienced backpacker, Alec always had his gear packed and ready to go. He'd climbed mountains at high altitudes, spent time in the remote wilderness, even reported a story deep in the Alaskan bush.
2:28So he had no reservations about heading into Fogafana alone. It was going to be a strenuous hike at most.
2:36Alec Luhn:I was not thinking this was going to be particularly challenging because it was only four nights and it was in a national park in Norway. It wasn't 50 miles from the nearest road. It was just a couple miles from the nearest road. But what Alec thought would be a routine excursion turned out much different. Hiking late into the evening on the first night, he slipped on a ridge. And I was just completely out of control, rolling, spinning, flying down this rock. And I remember thinking to myself, this is really bad. This is the moment in the movie where everything goes wrong. Today, Alec is here to share his six-day fight for survival in his own words.
3:20This is Slipped Off a Glacier.
3:52www.armandhammer.com Clean.
4:34On the morning of Thursday, July 31st, 2025, environmental reporter Alec Loon set out on a journey into Norway's Fulgafana National Park. He'd said goodbye to his wife Nika the night before and given her the general itinerary of his route along the glacier. They'd see each other again four days later, when he'd catch a flight back to London. Alec boarded a bus in Bergen bound for the park and started winding through the hills of the Norwegian countryside.
5:06Alec Luhn:You're going through these mountains, you're going along fjords. There's never a straight road. It's always curving around something or another. There's all these beautiful mountains around. I'm about to go on this backpacking adventure. And I just, yeah, I felt great. Eventually, the bus got to a town called Oda, which is my embarking point for this hike. Got off the bus, hike along this beautiful aquamarine lake that's fed by the glacier, melt water. Alec surveyed the landscape, consulting his map and taking stock of the route he'd planned. The whole thing there is these valleys. You have these mountains, you have the glacier on top of the mountains.
5:48Alec Luhn:And then there are all these valleys coming out around the glacier. And each one of those valleys is centered around a river that's being fed by the glacier. Looking at the map, I couldn't really see a way between the valleys. Everyone just does day hikes, essentially, it seems like there, where you hike up the valley, see the glacier, and then you hike back out. But I couldn't really see a path to do what I wanted to do, which was to go around the glacier. I wanted to go for a couple days. I wanted to see a couple different valleys, a couple different parts of the glacier. So I was basically going to bushwhack.
6:21Alec Luhn:I was going to go up one valley and then bushwhack over into the next valley and then bushwhack over into the valley after that. So I was connecting the dots between these established trails. That was where I was a bit naive and where I didn't have that on-the-ground knowledge that might have helped me a bit. Because I knew it was going to be steep and I knew there was going to be a ridge that I had to climb over. But I didn't know how it was going to be exactly getting from one valley to another. But Alec pushed on. It was summer in Norway. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and mild. And having spent time in the mountains where the weather can change on a dime, Alec had packed his three-season gear, including a warm sleeping bag, just to be safe.
7:02Alec Luhn:It was several miles up the road to where the actual trail up to the glacier starts. And I caught a ride with this French family in a camper van. I remember the husband telling me how he wanted to show his son the glacier before it melted away. And that really resonated with me because that's kind of what I was doing as well. And Folgafana Glacier, they say, is going to disappear within 150 years. So there is this sense of the glaciers are on borrowed time, and I want to see and experience them before they melt away. and then late morning we said goodbye and I just started hiking straight up the trail and you know it's it's a pretty well-worn trail a lot of people do that hike it was all easy to find plenty of people and then maybe about halfway up things started to go wrong.
7:57In the past Alec had trouble with hiking boots he tried different brands but it was hard to find the right fit for his narrow feet. So before the trip, he ordered a pair of lightly used boots off eBay that he thought would solve the problem.
8:12Alec Luhn:I didn't expect this to be a super challenging hike, so I thought that it wouldn't be a super big deal to have this secondhand pair of boots on that I didn't really know that well. But just about two hours into the hike, Alex started having trouble with his left boot. That hiking boot totally failed. The sole of the hiking boot started coming off. The rubber sole started coming off the rest of the boot. And I remember somebody coming along the trail and they said to me, oh, is that a feature? You know, just joking with me about like this boot that's clearly having this major malfunction with the sole coming off the boot.
8:51Alec considered heading back to town to buy a new pair of boots, But he'd made it all the way out to the trail and didn't want to turn around when he was just starting to make headway.
9:02Alec Luhn:I had some athletic tape with me. So I put the boot back on and kind of wrapped athletic tape around the entire boot to just strap the sole of the boot on. And then I did it to the other boot as well because I was afraid the same thing was going to happen with the sole of the other boot. So just to stop it from even starting, I wrapped that boot as well. So I didn't think it was going to be a problem, but looking back on it, it was a terrible idea, and I should have turned back right then and there. But I just really didn't want to go back into town. I really wanted to get out into the mountains, get out to the glacier, and I just told myself, well, you know, I'm going to go up this valley, and I'm going to cross over to the next valley, and that valley also goes out into the town.
9:44Alec Luhn:So I can just have a night on the mountain. Tomorrow I can go into town and deal with this boot situation. Basically making excuses why I didn't have to deal with it. So I jerry-rigged the boots, got them in more or less working order, and then kept up the trail. Alec forged ahead. His boot hack seemed to work. And a few hours later, he made it up to the glacier. Just this long funnel of blue ice cascading down into the valley. Lots of crevasses and cirrocks and cracked, jaggedy ice. that's this bright blue color, this just otherworldly blue glow to it. And that's one of the beautiful things about glaciers is that blue, blue ice.
10:28Alec Luhn:There were waterfalls coming down the valley on one side that this river of meltwater was just pouring out of. And so yeah, it was beautiful. It was great. And there was a lot of people up there taking pictures, people having a picnic. As stunning as it was, Alec knew from the map there was another spot further up the mountain where he could see more of the glacier and escape the crowds. So I just started climbing up, and there wasn't even really a trail. But every once in a while I was seeing a little blaze, a little X spray-painted on a rock, showing that people had gone this way before, even though there wasn't a really defined trail.
11:08Alec Luhn:But basically I was just kind of heading up the mountainside, through the bushes, kept climbing higher, and the bushes thinned out, and there were more and more rocks, more and more boulders. I was getting higher up in elevation and there was nobody around. I had the whole mountainside to myself. The whole way up, didn't see anyone. Got to this beautiful black lake of meltwater, no one around it, and then walked right up to the glacier, went right up and touched the ice. This bright electric blue ice saw the texture of it. It's like nothing else. It's got these dimples in it that just repeat endlessly.
11:45Alec Luhn:So it's this kind of shimmering surface and the blue ice. Just beautiful and all by myself right next to the glacier, next to this lake in the middle of these mountains. It was exactly what I was looking for. I had spent probably a little too much time taking in the glacier and, you know, it was already getting on towards the evening. Alec's goal that first day was to hike up to the glacier, then cross the ridge that led down into the next valley and find a place to camp. It was getting late, but because it was the middle of summer in Norway, he could hike until 10 or 11 p.m. before it got dark.
12:23The sunset bathed the sky in a lingering golden glow.
12:29Alec Luhn:And then I started to make my way over the ridge to the next valley. And I'm traversing this very steep slope, and there's no trail. And it was taking me a couple hours, basically, to make it over this ridge. It was already evening, and I started to think to myself, I probably should think about camping, but at the same time, my goal the next day is to enjoy the next valley and the next part of the glacier. So I kept going, and it sprinkled a little bit. It rained just a little bit, and the rocks were a little bit slippery. And I remember I slipped on a rock and fell onto one knee. The smooth athletic tape Alec had wrapped around the tread of his hiking boots left him with very little traction, especially on the wet rocks.
13:17Alec Luhn:But, you know, at that point I was already kind of committed to this, so I just kept going, which was a huge mistake in hindsight.
13:27Alec Luhn:So then I was coming across this gigantic rock that was very steep and fell away down the mountain for several dozen yards. This kind of sheet rock on the mountain. Just one big, gigantic rock. Alec needed to get beyond the rock to make it to the other side of the ridge, where he wanted to camp. Having tackled similar terrain countless times before, Alec didn't give it a second thought, even with his taped-together boots. So I was coming across this giant rock, the very top of it, and suddenly my foot slipped. and I started going down that steep face of the rock and I remember scratching with my hiking pole trying to get some purchase to stop me from sliding.
14:20Alec Luhn:The rock was just so slick. The hiking pole was just scratching at nothing and so just immediately just slipped straight down the rock. It's just like a slide going down the mountain basically. Immediately lost control, started picking up speed, cartwheeling, bouncing, rolling down this rock essentially because the backpack was a lot of weight hanging off my back so that kind of pulled me down the mountain and then started rolling me over and over. It was like being caught in the spin cycle of the washing machine. Everything was speeding up. I was flying really fast down the mountain. I was spinning faster and faster.
14:58Alec Luhn:I was completely out of control and I remember I was scared but it almost felt like it was happening to somebody else because I just had no control over myself at all. And I remember thinking to myself, this is really bad. This is the moment in the movie where everything goes wrong. I had these two emotions. One was the kind of weird detached fear, like, wow, this guy who's flying down the mountain is heading for a mess of trouble. But then also thinking, this guy is me and this is going to be a really bad situation. and I slid all the way down to the bottom of that giant rock and crashed into a boulder.
15:47Alec had been tossed several dozen yards down the mountain before the boulder broke his fall.
15:54Alec Luhn:I reached one hand up to my head and I felt just blood trickling down my hair. and somehow I knew right away that I'd broken my femur. So I reached down and I touched my thigh and the femur was just severed right in the middle of it. It was this weird feeling like holding a chicken breast or something where the muscle is all intact but there's nothing giving it form. There's nothing giving it structure. It's just kind of wobbling there because the two halves of my upper leg or not connected by bone anymore, so my femur had been completely severed. The femur on my left leg. My left foot was out at a really weird angle because it was just kind of like dangling there like a puppet on a string, basically.
16:42Despite the gash on his head and a broken leg, Alec didn't feel any pain. He was still in shock from the fall. But even in his dazed state, Alec knew it was only a matter of time before he'd be hurting bad. Then he remembered the bottle of Advil in his backpack.
17:03Alec Luhn:Somehow I was like, okay, got an injury, need to make sure I have my painkillers at hand. So I take off my backpack, get the painkillers, put them in my jacket pocket and zip it up. But then in doing that, I'd kind of shifted on the mountain a little bit. So then I start to slide down the mountain again. And I just remember being absolutely terrified because I was like, oh no, not again. In the scramble, Alec didn't have time to zip up his backpack. Gear and supplies spilled from his pack as he tumbled another 20 yards to the bottom of the slope. And then I remember I just hugged my backpack, put my head down on my backpack, and just passed out.
18:09In the waning hours of Thursday, July 31st, Alec Loon fell several dozen yards down a rock face in Norway's Fulgafana National Park. Alec awoke Friday morning badly injured and alone.
18:25Alec Luhn:So I woke up Friday morning and had that weird moment where you wake up and you're not sure where you are, what's going on. I remember just looking up at the sky and thinking what happened and then remembering what had happened the night before and thinking, oh God, I'm waking up into a nightmare basically. Alex started to take stock of his situation. First thing is, where's my cell phone? I feel in my pockets and stuff. no cell phone. Okay, crap, my cell phone must have fell out of my pocket. And so I look up the hill and I see my cooking pot, which had come out of my backpack. And this aluminum cooking pot had just been smashed in, in like a weird form, like an origami flower.
19:14Alec thought maybe his cell phone was up on the mountainside with the broken pot and several other items that had been scattered.
19:21Alec Luhn:So I started to try and push myself on my butt up the mountain. And that's when I kind of realized that I had more than just the femur broken. Alec's hands, elbows, and arms were scraped raw and bloody. And then there was his back, which ached every time he tried to turn his body. And I just could not get myself up the mountain because my broken leg was dragging and that was really painful because my foot would kind of catch on a rock and then that jolt of pain would shoot through my leg. My back was hurting a lot every time I moved. And I just couldn't get any force. It was like I was this weak, just limp, straw man that had none of my strength in me.
20:09Alec Luhn:When I just couldn't push myself up this steep hill, really, I got a couple feet and then just had to give it up. there was no way I could climb up that hill in the state I was in. So I started yelling, hey Siri, because I thought maybe my phone would be in yelling range and I could activate Siri, get Siri to call emergency services. So I was yelling, hey Siri, call 112. Hey Siri, call 911. Hey Siri, call emergency. And I just kept on yelling. and I just couldn't get a reaction. But Alex still had his tent and thought he could make a splint for his leg with the poles and some rope. He could then try the climb again.
20:55And even if he couldn't find his phone, maybe he'd be able to get down the mountain himself. Making a splint was easier said than done, though.
21:06Alec Luhn:Tent poles are very flimsy, flexible things. And they do not work well for a splint, unfortunately. They cannot replace a working femur. I couldn't figure out how to make a splint or get myself to the point where I could move around. I kept on yelling, but I couldn't get my phone to react. I just kind of didn't have any other options at that point. And so at that point, I just thought, okay, well, I'm just going to have to wait it out. and people are going to have to come get me. And then the next thought is, okay, well, that's going to take a while because I only just started the hike. My wife is expecting me to be off the grid for a couple days.
Read the full transcript
21:52Alec Luhn:She's not going to know for sure that anything has gone wrong until Monday, which is three days from now. And not even Monday day, but Monday evening, because I had an evening flight. so I'm like okay well I have to be ready to make it three more days on this mountain so Alex started to hunker down for the long haul he blew up his sleeping pad to try to make himself more comfortable but as the morning wore on he was confronted with yet another challenge it was getting very sunny and very hot actually on this mountain face you know I was facing south So I'm just sitting there right in the sun and I didn't have any water.
22:36Alec Luhn:One of the things that came out when I was sliding down the mountain was my water bottle. So I didn't have my water pouch with me, didn't have my filter, didn't have any sort of water. The sun is not making it any better. It's dehydrating me. So I remember thinking, OK, I need to like rig up some shade. so I took one of my tent poles snapped together stuck it through the arms of my raincoat and then bent it and pushed it up so that my raincoat was hanging over me and creating this sunshade and then you know it was like hours of just trying to keep that sunshade between me and the sun because it wasn't going to stay up on its own so I was kind of like holding it there and then I'd kind of doze off and the sunshade would fall and I'd wake up and then put it back up just trying to make myself comfortable I remember the panic starting to hit me that first day and it was like the panic was rising through me that oh my god you know this is really serious I might not make it out of this alive and just being terrified by that thought but then I also had the thought that okay this is panic this is the one thing that will definitely not help and I just had this instinct to just push that panic back down.
23:55Alec Luhn:Whenever it started to rise in my chest, I would just try to focus on little things that I could do, little things I could control, little things to make myself more comfortable, to help myself last over this time period I knew I was going to have to last. Just trying to take it step by step and feel like I had a little bit of agency over what was going to happen to me. Really, I didn't have much agency. I was basically relying on somebody to come rescue me. But being able to feel like I could at least improve my chances a little bit or do something was so important to keep going and not to give in to panic and not to give in to despair.
24:35Through the afternoon, Alec had no appetite. But he forced himself to eat one of the granola bars he'd packed for the trip. He took Advil to manage the pain in his leg and back as best he could. just anything to keep himself going.
24:51Alec Luhn:It's funny, you know, hope dies last. And I just had this, I had a little bit of optimism in me that somebody would come by or somebody would notice that I was missing. I had a couple thoughts that just kept running through my head repeatedly over those days. And one of them was just, you know, my wife's name is Nika. And I was just, you know, Nika, please call it in. I just remember repeating that to myself over and over again. Just kind of trying to will it into being that my wife would just somehow get a bad feeling and call me in missing early before I actually missed the flight. That was one of these mantras that I had.
25:31Alec Luhn:And I just needed something to keep telling myself to keep going. By nightfall, Alec was drained and exhausted. But the darkness gave him a welcome break from the hot sun. The night was super peaceful. I mean, I was in pain and I wasn't having a great time by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like I was alone on that entire mountain. I didn't see anything else. No people, no animals, no nothing. So it was very quiet up there. And at the end of the day, I just crawled into my sleeping bag and just slept out under the stars, basically.
26:17Alec Luhn:I woke up the next day on Saturday, and it's another sunny, hot day. And I started to get really concerned about getting dehydrated. I thought back to, like, summer camp when I was a kid and learning about first aid and survival at Boy Scout camp. And I remember hearing, you know, the human body can only go two or three days without water and just thinking, oh, crap, this is what's happening to me now. Alec now faced a second day without water. I knew I was getting dehydrated because I couldn't even eat the granola bar anymore. There wasn't any saliva, and I just couldn't swallow the granola bar down because I just had no lubrication at all.
27:00Alec Luhn:It was just like concrete in my mouth. I remember thinking, well, you know, I've heard survival stories where people drink their own urine. Maybe that's worth a try. So Alec found an empty pouch in his backpack and gave it a go. I remember lifting it to my lips and just the smell, retching at that smell. And if it smelled bad, it tasted even worse. He could only stomach a few sips here and there. But I was just trying to focus on what I could do to try and improve my chances to try to make it to Monday evening. as saturday wore on alec drifted in and out of consciousness i was sleeping a lot because my body was just struggling to kind of deal with it all i thought about my family a lot and i thought if this really is the end and i don't make it out of here what a shame what a huge waste that I didn't spend more time with my wife and my family.
28:09Alec Luhn:Because I'm from the U.S., I live in London, I've lived abroad for more than a decade. I see my family over Christmas, basically. And so just thinking back on that was really gutting because here I was gallivanting around the world and seeing my family once a year, maybe twice a year. and now I might never have a chance to see him again. And so that was something that I repeated to myself over and over ad nauseum. Just let me see my family again. I just want to see my family again.
28:47Alec awoke Sunday morning, having now spent three nights stranded on the mountain, facing severe dehydration. so Sunday Sunday was the day that the weather turned I woke up and it was kind of cloudy
29:04Alec Luhn:wasn't sunny anymore it's just a thick carpet of cloud all the way across the sky and then in the afternoon on Sunday it started to rain and it just felt amazing on my face after two days of being really hot, being really dehydrated, just felt so great. And I opened my mouth up to try and catch some rain in my mouth, but there were very small droplets of rain at first. So I remember I was like scrounging around trying to figure out how I'm going to be able to utilize some of this water that's falling down. Eventually, Alec noticed some rainwater collecting in a crease of his blow-up sleeping pad.
29:48Alec Luhn:And then I bent down and slurped up the water from the crease in the sleeping pad. I was so desperate for water. Nothing had ever tasted so good to me in my life. Hours were spent just slurping up this rainwater as it gradually gathered up in this crease, and I just couldn't get enough of it. By Sunday evening, the slow trickle of rain started to pick up. Alec could now fill his pouch with water streaming down the mountainside. But while the rainstorm solved one problem, Alec's dire need for water, it created another. It's getting really windy, getting really rainy. This cold wind was blowing down the mountain.
30:30Alec Luhn:I was getting soaked through and I just thought, okay, I need some shelter because it's getting really cold and wet. So I got my tent out, but because there was so much wind blowing down off the glacier, as soon as I set my tent up, it started getting blown down the mountain. Alec tried frantically to weigh the corners of the tent down with rocks he picked up off the ground around him, but to no avail. And I even got into the tent at one point, thinking that, okay, maybe my body can just weigh the tent down, and then the tent starts blowing down the hill when I'm in it. And so eventually I just popped the poles out, took them out of the tent, and just had this kind of mess of a tent, just this collapsed tent.
31:15Alec Luhn:And I thought, well, at least that'll be better than nothing if I'm under the nylon and went to sleep. And the weather just kept getting worse and worse.
31:31Alec Luhn:I remember waking up in the middle of the night and looking out of the tent. And it was pretty dark, but there was this kind of white stuff around. I put my hand out and it was snow. And that was obviously a shock. Because now I went from, you know, worrying about being too hot and dehydrated to worrying about, oh, crap, I'm going to get really cold if it's snowing. That was the first indication that this was a serious storm rolling in. This was a serious bout of weather coming my way. And it was going to be a whole new challenge. Thankfully, the snow was wet enough that not much accumulated on the tent or Alec.
32:12but the storm showed no sign of letting up.
32:21Alec Luhn:And so I woke up on Monday morning and it's raining harder than ever. It was so dark. The sky was just so dark. I remember looking up at those clouds and they were just angry black clouds. Lots of wind, lots of water. Just a miserable situation. I was super, super wet, super cold. and I was just in my sleeping bag in the tent, trying to stay as warm as possible from that point on. I had all my wet gear on, I had my water fruit pants on, my raincoat on, I was in the tent, but it just didn't help. There was just so much rain coming down that it eventually got through everything, and I was completely soaked.
33:01Alec Luhn:I felt like I was just barely holding on at that point, because the weather was just getting so bad.
33:09Alec Luhn:At that point, it was still Monday. I'm still like, okay, Nika, please just call it in. This is the day. My wife's going to notice that I'm missing. I just got to make it through to the evening. I don't know what's going to happen then, but I was so close to the goal, that was pushing me on. I was still motivated at that point, even though it was a really hard day. But then when I woke up on Tuesday, then it was like, what now? I've made it to the goal. I made it through Monday evening. That was when my wife was going to notice that I was missing, call this in to the authorities, and they were going to come rescue me.
33:47Alec Luhn:But that hadn't happened. It was the loneliest feeling in the world being up on that mountain in the middle of a storm with no one knowing where I was.
34:12It was Thursday when Alec Loon slipped while hiking around a glacier in Norway's Fulgafana National Park, breaking his left femur and injuring his back. It was now Tuesday, the day after his wife should have reported him missing. But the rescue party Alec had expected the night before hadn't come. Tuesday, that was the most challenging day because I didn't know what was going on.
34:40Alec Luhn:I knew that I had been missed, but the fact that nobody was coming meant that there was something wrong. And I thought, wow, you know, the weather is just so bad. Maybe they're just not able to reach me right now because the weather is so bad. That's when I really started to get worried. Like, maybe it's not just enough to wait here. Maybe that's not going to be enough. Maybe I'm not going to get out of this. I just started praying for my life, basically, and just saying, please, God, just let me live. Let me survive this. helped me survive this because at that point I was starting to lose hope.
35:14Alec Luhn:I knew I was in a pretty remote area, and it wasn't like somewhere that would be easy to get to, especially in the rain. I was planning to cover 30 miles during this hike, and I could have gone missing. I could have had an accident at any point in that 30 miles or so. So my wife knows my rough route that I'm going around this glacier, but you wouldn't know where along the route that I would have disappeared. So I'm thinking more and more about how difficult it is to find me, how I really am kind of a needle in the haystack at this point. Tuesday was super hard. Tuesday night was super hard. So wet, so cold.
35:55Alec Luhn:Anytime I tried to move, I would be in pain from my back, from my leg. You know, my leg was dangling like a sock full of quarters and my foot would just catch on stuff. And every time my foot would catch on something, it was just this jolt of searing pain. Until then, Alec had draped a sleeping bag over himself like a blanket. Because with his boots on, he just couldn't maneuver his way inside it. And bending down to untie his boots sent waves of pain shooting down his back and leg. So Alec let his boots poke out, uncovered. But now he was getting colder and colder and was willing to try anything to get inside his sleeping bag for a little more warmth.
36:38So he decided that no matter how difficult it was, he was going to take off his boots.
36:44Alec Luhn:And it was just so, so painful, but I just like knew that I needed to get this boot off. It just took forever. It was just agonizing. That was like the hardest thing I did that entire time. Alec was finally able to get his boots off and his whole body zipped up. I remember being in the sleeping bag with my boots off. My feet are just in these wet socks. And I remember, like, kind of scrunching my feet up and moving my feet in the sleeping bag, trying to, like, rub them against the sleeping bag, create a little bit of warmth in there, and just nothing. They're just so wet and so cold. I tried to warm them up a bit, and I just couldn't.
37:19Alec Luhn:And I was just so exhausted and just kind of drifted off again into sleep. woke up on Wednesday and popped my head out of the tent and it was still raining it wasn't great but then about mid-morning on Wednesday I remember looking to the south and this kind of hole was opening in the clouds and this white light starting to kind of burn through the clouds to the south where the sun was it was like when you see a shaft of light coming through the clouds It looks like a beam of light just coming down from the heavens. It looked hopeful. It was like, okay, that looks promising. A little bit of light coming through the clouds after so many days.
38:02The rays of sun offered a little hope. But Alec was in bad shape after six days stranded on the mountain. He was in nearly constant pain and barely able to eat. No matter how much rainwater he drank, he never felt hydrated. Alec started hearing voices and thought maybe a search party was coming to find him, but then the noise would fade away. Throughout his ordeal, Alec had heard occasional rumblings in the sky. When nothing materialized, he figured it was an airliner flying its usual route. But as the rain tapered off and the sky brightened on Wednesday afternoon, Alec heard a sound that was unmistakable.
38:51Alec Luhn:I heard this rumbling coming up the valley. And, you know, at first it's just sort of indistinct rumbling, but then it gets closer and closer. And then I'm like, I've heard that sound before. That's a helicopter. And it's just that wump, wump, wump, you know, really kind of rhythmic chopping of a helicopter coming up the valley. And then I see it come up out of the valley, and it's this orange and white helicopter. so I'm seeing it kind of across the ridge it's over by the glacier where I'd started my hike then I heard this heavenly music playing like a giant pipe organ just hitting this beautiful chord and that was just my relief at seeing this helicopter I could hear my own relief at seeing the rescue helicopter
39:48Alex relief was short-lived the problem was the helicopters over by the glacier
39:54Alec Luhn:just scanning the mountain several hundred yards away from where I am I'm yelling and waving but they're just too far away rescue was so close at hand my salvation was so close at hand and then they they turned around and flew away And that was heartbreaking. I mean, that was devastating. My heart was in my throat. I was like, no. Alec felt crushed. But as a journalist who traveled to far-flung places, he knew how often helicopters needed to refuel. He figured maybe they'd just gas up and fly right back to the ridge to resume the search. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, and they're not coming back.
40:40Alec Luhn:I was kind of detached at that point. I kind of realized people after they've been adrift at sea for so long or after they've been in some sort of situation for a long, you know, days and days and days, you start to see how they can just kind of give up. It's not that they're like, oh, I don't want to live anymore. That's it. I give up. It's like you are just so numb to everything because you've been through so much that you just can't care anymore if you live or die. And I was starting to feel a little bit of that at that point, you know, where it's like, I can't even care anymore what happens.
41:16Alec Luhn:It's just been going on for so long, this awful experience. About 45 minutes later, I hear that rumbling. It comes back up the ridge. And I'm like, yes, the helicopter's coming back. I cannot miss this chance. Alec threw off his gray outer layer to reveal a bright red puffer jacket. He quickly fashioned a makeshift flag with a red bandana and tentpole. Barely able to lift his arms, Alec began to wave the flag and cry out. And then I just started yelling and waving that little flag of a red bandana on a tentpole with all my might. and it just was agonizing it was minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes and they're just slowly scanning the mountain and they i just can't get their attention and finally finally i see the side door of the helicopter slides open and somebody waves back at me and that's when it all came together that was the hallelujah moment that was like yes i'm gonna get out of this they're gonna rescue me it's finally happening
42:25Moments later, two rescuers in orange jumpsuits rappelled down a rope to Alec's position on the mountain.
42:32Alec Luhn:One of the rescuers comes over to me and says, Hey, I'm Kristen. Are you Alec? And I said, Yes, I am. I'm so glad to see you guys. And she said, We're so glad to see you. Kristen and her partner Lasse bundled Alec into a sack for warmth. After another 30-minute wait for refueling, the helicopter returned to airlift Alec off the glacier to Bergen Hospital. I remember being in the helicopter on the way to life again, journeying back to life. Just thinking, my God, it's finally going to be over. At the hospital, Alec says he got the celebrity treatment. His wife had gotten a bad feeling when he hadn't touched base and called him in as missing early on Monday, even before his flight.
43:32Reports of a stranded American journalist made it to newspapers and TV. The rescue operation had involved the Bergen police, Norwegian military, and 50 Red Cross volunteers.
43:45Alec Luhn:There was just so much warmth and kindness, and it was the very best of the human spirit on display in all those people who were helping me. On Wednesday evening, the hospital staff reached Danika on the phone. Just hearing my wife's voice, you know, we were both crying. I mean, it was, I was just so happy to hear her voice. She said something like, I was so worried about you. I'm so glad they found you. don't ever do that again. I'm going to rip you a new one for going off like that and getting lost. But for now, I'm just super happy that you're safe. And she flew in right away to see me and my parents came in, my sister and her family came to visit me.
44:32Alec remembers the terrified look on his sister's face when she first saw him laid up in the hospital bed.
44:40Alec Luhn:And when I saw that look on her face, I just realized what a horrible ordeal I had put my loved ones through. And I realized how worried they had been and how terrible this had been for them as well. And I just broke out crying. And my sister broke out crying as well. That brought it all home to me. And I realized, wow, I almost died. I almost lost my family. And my family almost lost me. It was the most incredible feeling in the world, you know, being in this hospital room with my wife and my parents and my sister. It was super emotional, and I was just so grateful to be alive. It felt just every breath felt amazing.
45:25Alec Luhn:Every moment of just being alive was so incredible, and I just realized, you know, what a gift life is.
45:40In addition to a shattered femur, Alec broke three vertebrae in his back, which helped explain why he had so much trouble moving. His feet had lost all circulation and had turned completely white from frostbite. He spent five weeks recovering in the hospital before heading home to London.
46:03Alec says he's so grateful to everyone who helped save his life. More than six months after the fall, he's still raw with the physical and emotional trauma of the ordeal. His legs not fully healed. Two of his toes had to be surgically removed, and he still has trouble walking without crutches. Alec hopes to one day be able to sail and even hike again, but he knows nothing is guaranteed. Since his rescue, survivors of similar injuries have reached out to Alec to give him words of encouragement. Some are even training for the Paralympics. Alec says if they can persevere and pursue their dreams, he can do the same.
46:50Alec has some of his own advice for people seeking adventure in the mountains.
46:55Alec Luhn:Get out there and enjoy nature for sure, but make sure you have good equipment, spend the extra money on a new pair of hiking boots, buy a GPS tracker. Just bring it on every hike. I've used them before. I didn't think I needed it on this hike. And then when you least expect it, something goes wrong. And then let somebody know where you're going. That was the one thing I really did right was let my wife know loosely where I was going so that she was able to tell people, okay, well, this is, this is where you got to look because this is what he was going to try to do. I thought this was going to be an easy hike.
47:33Alec Luhn:You know, I've been way off the grid in Alaska. I can surely handle this hike in, you know, the middle of populated Norway, but, you know, mountains are mountains. They don't forgive errors very easily and stuff can go wrong really quickly. So just try to take smart risks and be prepared. Thanks so much to Alec Loon for sharing his story with us.
48:07Follow Against the Odds on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Against the Odds ad-free by joining Audible.
48:20From Audible Originals, this is Slipped Off a Glacier for Against the Odds. To hear more stories from survivors in their own words, check out our other episodes, stranded in Joshua Tree, shark attacked survivor, and trapped after a car crash. Produced by Audible. I'm your host, Cassie DePeckel. Peter Arconi wrote and produced this episode. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Engineered by Sergio Enriquez. Original theme music by Scott Velasquez and 2K for Fries on Sync. Series produced by Emily Frost. Managing producer, Desi Blaylock. Senior producers, Andy Herman and Austin Rackless. Executive Producer for Audible, Jenny Lara Beckman.
49:07Head of Audible Originals, North America, Marsha Louis. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Piazza. Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC.
From the publisher
In July of 2025, climate reporter Alec Luhn was in his element hiking around a glacier in Norway’s Folgefonna National Park. But when Alec slipped off a boulder and broke his leg, he found himself unable to move and trapped in a remote area with no one expecting him home for days. On this episode of In Their Own Words, Alec recounts the story of his fall, being caught in a storm, and doing everything he could to give himself a chance to see his family again.
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