Done with dirt-biking after hellacious 24 hours in the bush By: Erik Pindera Posted: 4:57 PM CDT Monday, Jun. 12, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/06/2023 (1192 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The trail off Provincial Road 351, just west of Carberry, was torn up by dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles and the sand was loose when Randy Wood went out for a quick Sunday-afternoon ride from his rural property.

His dirt-bike ride, down a rural trail that begins near the Camp Hughes National Historic Site, wasn’t supposed to last more than a half hour on June 4.

Instead, it left him fighting for survival, stuck in the “big bush country” some 35 kilometres east of Brandon for more than 24 hours, until RCMP officers combing the trails found him.

It was shortly after 2 p.m. when his bike hit the loose patch of sand about 6 1/2 kilometres from his home, landing on his left leg, breaking the bone in his calf.

“Everything went south. The bike slipped from underneath and went down hard on my leg,” said Wood, 62, speaking with the Free Press by phone.

“I’m just glad to be alive.”

He was stranded and unable to walk, and didn’t have his cellphone with him, having forgotten it in another pair of pants he had changed out of while working in his garage earlier that day.

Wood, a disability support services worker, said that’s when he knew he was in trouble, stuck with no way to call for help — and no one looking for him.

“I had enough power to get my leg out, and I knew it was in bad shape,” he said.

He fashioned a splint from sticks and tore his shirt to make rope, before he began to crawl his way from the bush, beset by sand flies and mosquitoes, on his knees for hours.

“I knew I couldn’t lift the bike up, and I wouldn’t be able to shift it — my foot was finished — so I just started crawling out of there,” Wood said.

“I made good progress during the day, I got around three-quarters of a mile crawling. I stopped quite often for a rest… the sand flies were biting the pieces out of me, because I had no shirt, I was bare skin from the waist up.”

“I’m just glad to be alive.”–Randy Wood

In the evening, as he crawled on his knees, he encountered a black bear.

“He stopped and was just staring, eye-to-eye, and I had this stick that I was using as a cane… I just screamed at him and waved my stick, and, my God, that bear snorted like he was pissed off. I thought that was it, ‘I’m going to have to defend myself with this stick,’” Wood said.

The bear turned off the trail and Wood kept moving as fast as he could to distance himself from the animal before the sun went down.

“I was so worn out, I had to stop,” he said. “I needed rest, my knees were raw and bleeding.”

He passed out with his back against a pile of fallen trees, spending the night under brush to try to protect himself from the thousands of mosquitoes and flies.

Back home near Carberry, his wife, 59-year-old Leslee Verstraete, had recently undergone surgery and was heavily medicated, so she was not thinking clearly, Wood said. By nightfall Sunday, she knew something was wrong, but thought at first he might have just gone into Brandon or Winnipeg without telling her.

The next morning, she discovered Wood’s phone in the garage and called for RCMP, who sent out officers on all-terrain vehicles to search in the bush.

Mounties searched through more than 30 square kilometres until they found a tire track to follow.

Wood had gotten moving again in the early morning, but the sun began to beat down, and the severely dehydrated man worried he would die if he kept moving in the heat.

He found refuge from the sun under a pine tree’s canopy, peeling bark from green sticks and chewing on them to moisten his mouth.

Wood said he thinks he might have passed out from exhaustion, until he heard a motor whirring nearby at about 2:30 p.m.

“I heard the sound of an engine and I started to drag myself out onto the trail, and I saw the most beautiful sight — a white Polaris 650 special edition with a lady cop on it… she saved me,” he said, tearing up.

The RCMP officer told him he could wait for another vehicle to drive him out more comfortably, but the delirious man thought she was his last chance for survival.

“My mind was so shot at the time I was scared she was going to leave me for good. I clung to her,” he said.

The officer drove him on the ATV to a rural property near the entrance to the trail before he was rushed to Brandon’s hospital for surgery on his broken leg, where he remained for three days.

“The cop that picked me up… I said to my wife, ‘I love her’… I have so much respect for (RCMP). If it weren’t for them, I would be dead,” Wood said.

“One more night in there, I just don’t know.”

“One more night in there, I just don’t know.”–Randy Wood

Wood, who used to ride his dirt bike regularly, said he has sworn off the pastime for good after his traumatic brush with death.

But he warned anyone who rides in the bush to go in pairs — and ensure they have their phone before leaving.

erik.pindera@winnipegfreepress.com