Every now and again, I’ll find a story that’s just really upsetting to me. Now, obviously a lot of the stories I cover are all quite distressing. But today’s story, which is about a missing hiker named Mike Turner – it just really upset me. It actually made it really hard to record this episode. So, consider this your warning that I personally believe this is a very upsetting story, but an important story that we would not be covering if there wasn’t some real weight behind it. And I think the moral of this story, ultimately, is you really need to treasure your family while they’re still around. Story name, preview & link to original YouTube video:#1 -- "Closer to God" -- A man's hiking trip turns into a nightmare (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3doPbW2VS3Q)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What upsetting story is discussed in this episode?
Every now and again, I'll find a story that's just really upsetting to me. Now, obviously, a lot of the stories I cover are all quite distressing. But today's story, which is about a missing hiker named Mike Turner, it just really upset me. It actually made it really hard to record this episode.
So consider this your warning that I personally believe this is a very upsetting story, but an important story that we would not be covering if there wasn't some real weight behind it. And I think the moral of this story, ultimately, is you really need to treasure your family while they're still around. And you'll see what I mean when you hear the rest of this story. It's heartbreaking.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, on the hottest day of the year, offer to give the Amazon Music Follow button a ride to work.
And when they get in your car, blast the heat on full and refuse to stop. Even though it hurts you, it hurts them too. Okay, let's get into today's story.
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On the afternoon of August 2nd, 1998, a 48-year-old six-foot, six-inch tall hiker named Mike Turner stopped for a moment and took his bottle out of his backpack and took a sip. Mike was standing in a cluster of trees on the side of this mountain about 11,000 feet up inside of an area in Wyoming called the Fitzpatrick Wilderness.
The Fitzpatrick Wilderness is easily one of the most visually striking places in the entire world. It's like all of the extremes of nature kind of collided together in this one place.
You have these massive, you know, 13,000 foot tall snow-covered mountain peaks, you have glaciers, and then right below them, right at the base of these huge mountains, are all these lush green fields full of tall grass and flowers and animals running around and little streams and lakes. I mean, it's absolutely picturesque. In fact, some of the pictures of this area, they look fake.
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Chapter 2: Who was Mike Turner and what was his hiking plan?
They're so ridiculous. But the real reason the Fitzpatrick Wilderness was known as this unbelievably beautiful place was because really it went kind of untouched by people because it was so hard to get to.
I mean, basically the only people who stepped foot in this very surreal landscape were really experienced outdoors people like Mike Turner, because it took a lot of know-how just to get to this area and to survive in this area. This is a very, very rugged place. But Mike Turner was not content just going to the Fitzpatrick Wilderness. He really wanted to experience the true nature of this area.
And so what he was doing while he was out there was hiking off trail. And so he's in this totally remote place, hiking around in an area that was not even marked on a map. Now, to anybody who has not done any compass and map navigating out in the wild, this might seem totally reckless, and to a degree it sort of is, but it's something that people totally have a knack for.
I can speak from my own experience. When I was in the military, we did a lot of compass and map navigating, like in the back country in Alaska and also in California, and I was terrible at it, but I can tell you some of my classmates definitely had sort of like an innate skill to understand where they were in relationship to terrain features.
And then if you combine that with proper training and experience, I mean, these guys got really good at just being able to navigate with a map and compass. And so Mike was one of those people that really was an excellent navigator. And so walking off trail like this in such a remote place was sort of routine for him. Now, Mike was not some full-time adventurer.
This was something he did that was sort of a passion for him. His job was he was a reverend at a Christian church in Idaho, and he had been for 10 years. And Mike loved being a reverend. He loved his congregation and his wife, Diane, and his three kids. He had two daughters and a son. They were all super involved in the church. I mean, it was a great thing.
But at the same time, being a reverend was a lot of work, a lot of responsibility, and a lot of stress. And a way that Mike had found to kind of cope with that growing stress of being a reverend was to go out hiking. He actually found, sort of ironically, that when he was out in nature hiking, he felt closer to God than when he was inside of his church preaching.
And it was because he sort of looked at the world as this grand gift from God. And imagine being in the Fitzpatrick Wilderness, looking at this unbelievable terrain. I mean, it looks like, you know, God made this. I mean, who else could? This is so strikingly beautiful.
And so with that as context, on this particular day that Mike had stopped to sip water 11,000 feet up on this mountainside, this was actually the fourth day of a nine-day pre-planned solo hike through this wilderness that Mike had been planning out for over a year.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Mike face during his hike?
And Mike felt confident, you know, seeing how much better his dog was already doing, that this was definitely the right decision. Taking the secondary route was definitely the way to go. But as Mike waited for his dog to finish drinking, Andy suddenly stopped and then lifted his head up with his ears perked up like he had sensed something.
And then before Mike could stop him, Andy just took off running into the trees and disappeared. Now, Andy was a playful dog that periodically kind of ran around on the hikes like this. But remember, Mike is out in the back country and he's deviated his path. He needs to be really sure of where he is. He can't afford to make mistakes here.
And if Andy just goes rogue and he has to go chase after him, the opportunity to get turned around or lost or maybe come in contact with some big predator that maybe Andy has sensed were pretty high. And so Mike grabbed the bowl and took off running into the trees after Andy.
And after going into those trees, he emerged on the other side, Mike did, and suddenly he was hit with this incredible view, kind of looking down towards this lake, and there was this huge clearing on this side of the mountain that was filled with these huge boulders, like boulders the size of small cars, and they were everywhere.
Basically, the mountain, as it eroded, chunks of rock were rolling down into this clearing that was sort of at a slant down towards this lake, and it just filled the entire clearing with boulders. to the point where you really couldn't actually walk on solid ground.
The only way to get from where Mike was and where Andy was, because at this point he could see his dog, his dog was making his way towards the lake, clearly that's what Andy had sensed, the lake, and he was going to get a drink or something. And so Mike knew to get to his dog, he would basically have to climb onto the boulders and jump from rock to rock all the way to his dog.
And so Mike tried calling for Andy one more time to stop and come back, but Andy was on his own program going towards the lake and so resigned to the situation. Mike climbed on top of the first boulder and began jumping boulder to boulder in the direction of his dog.
Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution.
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
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Chapter 4: What happened when Mike’s dog Andy ran off?
But five days later, so five days after the end of the official search, we're now at August 28th at this point, a couple of backpackers were hiking through an area in the Fitzpatrick Wilderness that was actually about 17 miles away from the last known sighting of Mike Turner. Now, that was not when he went through the trees and saw the boulders.
This was around the time Mike literally began the nine-day epic journey. Somebody had seen him in one area. And so where these two backpackers are is about 17 miles away from there.
And so these two backpackers, they were aware that Mike Turner was missing because there were flyers up all over the place around the outside of the Fitzpatrick wilderness at the beginning of all the trail heads and in town and all over the place. So they were aware of this, aware that Mike was missing and his dog was missing.
And as they're just sitting there taking a break, this totally emaciated, ragged looking black lab came out of the tree line whimpering and looking like it was on its last legs. It was Andy. And right away, these backpackers knew that's the missing dog. And so they lured the dog to them with granola bars and Andy came up and he ate, they gave him water.
And just so you know, Andy would survive and make a full recovery. And so after these backpackers have Andy in their possession, they immediately contacted authorities who then got in touch with Mike's family and said, hey, we found Andy. And so you can imagine the absolute rollercoaster of emotion Mike Turner's family is going through.
Now that they hear Andy is okay, Andy's come out of the forest, they're thinking, oh my goodness, maybe Mike is okay too. Maybe Andy can lead us back to where Mike is. Mike is this totally skilled survivalist. He's gotta be alive out there. And so after discovering Andy, a second search was launched using Andy as the guide dog.
They basically went to that spot where the backpackers found him and basically Andy's family and some other volunteers allowed Andy to lead them back into the wilderness, hoping it would lead them to Mike.
And so as this new search began with Andy leading the way, a separate backpacker, who we will call Brian just for the sake of the story, that's not his name, but we're gonna call him Brian, he was hiking through a section of the Fitzpatrick Wilderness not near where Andy was. This is a separate area.
And Brian, he was not involved in looking for Mike Turner, but he was aware that Mike was missing, because again, he had seen all the missing person flyers, he'd seen the news, and when he began his own hike into the wilderness, he had seen at the start of his own trailhead a big flyer with a picture of Mike Turner and his dog saying he was missing.
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Chapter 5: How did the search for Mike Turner unfold?
And so on the second day, Mike actually attempted to throw his water bottle, which he connected some rope to, to try to get it into the lake to capture some water and pull it back to him. But when he threw it, it was just short of the water. He could not get it into the water, so he couldn't scoop any water into his bottle.
And then when he tried to retrieve the bottle, as the bottle was being dragged towards him, it got wedged in some rocks. And again, he can't move, so he can't possibly fling it out of these rocks. And so he couldn't even get his water bottle back. And so by the end of that second day, Mike's tone in his journal began to change.
It wasn't totally negative yet, but he began talking about how, man, I wonder what's going to happen when I run out of water. I wonder what my urine will taste like if I mix it with crystal light. So it was kind of like he was joking about the fact that he was going to try to make his pee taste better, but it also showed he was beginning to realize just how serious the situation was.
Nobody knows where he is. He's completely off the beaten path. He has no idea if anybody even knows he's in trouble. And he's about to be out of water. The next day, so the third day of being trapped inside of these boulders, Mike would once again begin writing in his journal.
And his tone seemed a bit more optimistic, despite the fact that he has not solved, you know, this water crisis he's about to face. He's down to his literal last quart of water. But in his journal, he talked about how this whole trip he went on, this nine-day trip he had planned out, the whole point was to become closer to God. And he felt like, you know what?
I've really done that in the past couple of days. What I wanted to achieve, having a really spiritual event here, it's happened like times a hundred being trapped here. I mean, this is the closest I've ever felt to God. But you could just tell there was just an underlying sense that I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to learn from this experience. I'm not going to take stupid risks anymore.
I'm going to be a better father, be a better husband, be a better reverend. I'm going to make something of myself. I'm going to improve as a result of this suffering I'm going through right now. However, over the next few days that Mike continued to be trapped in these rocks with no help coming, his optimism clearly waned. He began to write that he was angry with God.
He wondered, you know, is this a punishment for something I've done? And he also thought, you know, maybe I failed God, and that's why I'm here. But it was just clear that Mike, who was this deeply spiritual person who absolutely believed in a higher power, how could he be in this terrible position and not be getting any sort of help from God? How could that be?
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Chapter 6: What was the outcome of the search for Mike and Andy?
Chapter 7: What lessons can be learned from Mike Turner's story?
Now Mike instantly would have known this is a really big issue because he can't move these 800 pound boulders. They are 800 pounds and he's by himself minus his dog who can't really help him with the boulders. And so Mike immediately just jumps into, oh my goodness, I have to find a way to somehow just move these boulders. Even just a millimeter, a centimeter would be enough to free his feet.
And so he pulled off his bag, and one by one he pulled off every piece of equipment he had, including his camera tripod and his stove and whatever he had, and he did everything he could to try to pry these stupid boulders off of him, but they would not budge. And so after two hours of trying in vain to free himself, it dawned on Michael that he was not going to be able to free himself.
The only way he was getting out of here is if somebody found him and rescued him. And so Mike, doing his best to stay calm, he pulled out his journal he had brought along for this trip in order to detail, you know, his closeness with God and, you know, what he was learning throughout this journey.
And he began documenting what happened to him to include, you know, why he was in this boulder field, what he was doing when he got stuck, you know, how he wound up in these sort of granite shackles, so to speak. He also very clearly in his writing was very much putting his faith in God to get him out of here.
He wrote in his journal on this first day, two hours into this predicament, And so after writing this initial entry, Mike turned his attention to survival. Like, not trying to push the boulders off, but trying to survive amidst the boulders as long as possible. And so he pulled out his blue sleeping bag and kind of wrapped it around himself to insulate himself.
He got out his stove and there was some snow in reach and he began putting snow in his stove and melting it to create water. And he also pulled his tent flap over the top of him. I mean, he was basically setting up camp inside of these boulders. And that first night must have been absolutely horrifying.
I mean, the temperatures dropped down to near freezing, even though during the day it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But that night he's in this horrible position, just trapped with his own thoughts, just hoping and praying that, you know, God was going to get him out of here. Hey guys, Mr. Ballin here. You know how I tell strange, dark, and mysterious stories?
Well, I've stumbled on some strange, dark, and mysterious medical stories that really are just as wild. Like there was a story about this woman who accidentally swallowed something that got lodged in her heart.
There was a story about a guy where a tree grew in his lung, or there was a story about this person who their skin turned bright blue, or this town, everybody started laughing uncontrollably that lasted for months. I mean, the list goes on. And these are not urban legends. These are real mysteries that we dive into that have left doctors and scientists baffled sometimes for years.
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