Tyson Steele – 23 days in sub-zero temperatures

Tyson Steele has always loved the outdoors and decided he wanted to spend more time in the wild, so at the age of 30 he purchased a small cabin in the Susitna Valley, a very remote and hard to reach valley north-west of Anchorage, miles away from the nearest settlement. He moved in during September 2019 and lived there with his dog, a chocolate coloured Labrador called Phil.

(A picture of Tysons tent taken from the helicopter sent to rescue him)

The cabin was remote and essentially cut off during the winter, but Tyson was used to the weather and knew he had to be sensible if he was going to make this work, taking the time to properly stock the cabin with plenty of food and supplies.

Due to the relaxed nature of his life in the wilderness, he’s not quite sure exactly when the incident occurred, but he thinks it was either on the 17 or 18 of December. Just before he went to sleep, he decided to put a large piece of cardboard in the stove, which turned out to be a very bad idea. The smouldering ash from the cardboard quickly went up the chimney and landed on the roof of his hut, but Tyson didn’t realize this until he woke up to molten plastic dripping all over the room.

He ran outside in nothing but his boots and long johns to find the entire roof of his hut was ablaze. He went back inside and quickly grabbed some clothes and his rifle before heading back out to shovel snow onto his hut. The roof was already beyond saving before he even woke up, but he still spent a couple of hours frantically shovelling snow on to it.

All this time he thought that his dog had ran outside somewhere, but when the fire was too big to even get close to, he heard whimpering from his Labrador Phil, and realized he had been trapped inside. He later told police that he was hysterical at this point and just began screaming so much he said it felt like he damaged his lungs.

The fire ignited hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a small propane tank, forcing him to retreat to a safe distance until the flames had stopped. When he went back inside, he found everything was destroyed except for some tinned food and the wood burning stove that started the fire.

He gathered a few scraps of tarpaulin and put up a makeshift tent inside the remains of his hut, centred around the stove. Because of how remote the cabin was and the depth of the snow, there was no chance of walking to the nearest town, especially since most of his equipment was destroyed. Tyson knew that it would be a couple of weeks before anyone would realize he was missing, so he didn’t bother to make an S.O.S sign in the snow until around day 8

Fortunately he was able to salvage enough tins to last for a while, even though they had all been pre-cooked during the fire, something that Tyson said made them all taste like plastic.

Even though he was living remotely, he was still in contact with his family who became concerned they hadn’t heard from him in a while and notified the authorities. Because his family knew the location of the cabin, the search and rescue helicopter managed to find him right away and airlifted him to the nearest hospital.

Apart from suffering emotional trauma and having to live in a tent with a permanent draft for 3 weeks, he was otherwise in good condition. He was taken straight to the nearest hospital, but wasn’t suffering from any serious physical injuries and was quickly discharged. After it was all over, he said he was going to Utah where his family live to recover.