A man managed to survive for 9 days in the Canadian wilderness by drinking unclean pond water. He used all of his survival skills to stay alive and be rescued.
Fortunately, rescue crews eventually found Andrew Barber after he went missing near McLeese Lake. The 39-year-old spent nine days in the wilderness. He had made a shelter from mud and fallen wood and even wrote Help on rocks, hoping to be rescued.
"After over a week in the wilderness, our subject has been located alive during today's search from the air," Quesnel Search & Rescue, an area volunteer search and rescue group, wrote on Facebook. "This outcome is the result of countless hours on the ground and in the air, using every resource and piece of technology available to us."
Surviving Canadian Wilderness
Barber was in poor health but alive after staying in the Canadian wilderness.
"He sustained some injuries and was severely dehydrated, we found him at the right time," Williams Lake RCMP Staff Sgt. Brad McKinnon told Vancouver Island Free Daily "If we had not located him today, I don't know if we would have had the outcome that we have today."
"He was literally slurping unclean pond water to stay hydrated," he also added. "The human body can go a long time without food, but water is a different situation."
Barber revealed that he ate what he could find in the Canadian wilderness. He also stuffed his clothes with grass to protect his skin.
"He was having a hard time standing. I don't know that he would have made it another 24 hours without us recovering him," Quesnel SAR (Quesnel Search and Rescue) president and manager Bob Zimmerman said.
Fortunately, Barber will recover from his stint in the Canadian wilderness. However, it remains unknown exactly what he was doing in the remote area to begin with.
"I'll put it this way — had we not found him when we did, I would have had graver concerns than I currently do," he told the outlet. "We had been at this for nine days, and it was essentially like looking for a needle in a haystack."
