Back in March, we shared some video from Madjack Media, showing an uber-sketchy run along some Idaho single-track. In case you haven’t kept up with his channel’s adventures, he’s in the middle of posting up a series of videos of another dangerous run, where he and a buddy ended up stuck in the woods for 30 hours after a wrong turn.

Note that they expected things to be tough. They have a chainsaw for cutting downed logs off the trail, and indeed, they hit their first log across the trail only 10 minutes in. But things went from challenging-but-fun to outright dangerous, and they ended up having to sleep on the trail at nearly 8,000 feet elevation, with temperatures dropping below freezing.

This video isn’t posted to show how tough these riders are. According to the description:

The purpose of creating this mini series is not to glamorize this situation, but to show other single track riders how these situations happen. In terms of what could have gone wrong on this ride, it seems like we had a bit of everything. Lots of lessons to be learned.

So, watch and learn. As I wrote back in June (ironically, probably around the time this happened), it’s much easier to learn from someone else’s mistakes than it is to learn from making those mistakes yourself. One important lesson from Madjack Media, in the comments: Make sure you’ve got seasonal-appropriate survival gear, even if you don’t think you’ll need it.

I had my garmin in reach, garmin zumo gps, lighter, small med kit, and a lot of motorcycle repair gear. My bivy was at home, my life straw was at home, my jacket was at home, and my motorcycle jump starter was at home. Those were all things I very much needed. We were very lucky that the water sources we had were very fresh snowmelt and were at high altitudes where animals like beavers and such aren’t contaminating the water with giardia. A lot went in our favor considering the situation. The fact that we self rescued was really lucky.

You can see two follow-up videos in the series below. This is very tough going, and as the hero of our story says, these guys’ bodies were telling them to turn around, and they should have listened.

However. Regardless of what they should or shouldn’t have done, they survived, and now we can learn from their mistakes.