The CRUX: True Survival Stories

When a routine training flight turned deadly, champion paraglider Ewa Wiśnierska was pulled unconscious into a thunderstorm and carried higher than Mount Everest. What her GPS recorded over the next 40 minutes defies medical explanation.

Twenty-three-year-old Balin Miller made history in 2025 with audacious solo climbs including the first solo ascent of Denali's Slovak Direct and the second-ever ascent of Canada's deadly Reality Bath route—but on October 1st, after successfully completing one of El Capitan's hardest routes, a single missing safety knot cost him his life. This is the story of the glitter-wearing climber known as "Orange Tent Guy," whose death was witnessed by hundreds on a livestream, and whose brief but brilliant career made him a legend in the climbing world.

On December 22nd, 1991, a 22-year-old medical student from Brisbane crawled under a rock overhang in the Nepalese Himalayas. The record for survival at that elevation in Himalayan winter was ten days. James Scott lasted forty-three. Kaycee McIntosh and Julie Henningsen tell the story — what went wrong on the Gosainkunda trail, what it cost him, and the two people who refused to stop looking long after everyone else had given up.

On May 5th, 1979, a small plane carrying four people from a small Canadian city went down in the mountains of central Idaho. What followed was nineteen days of survival that pushed two ordinary young people to the absolute edge of what a human being can endure — and beyond.

In this episode of the Crux podcast, hosts Kaycee McIntosh and Julie Henningsen recount the tragic story of technical diver Dave Shaw, who died attempting to recover the body of Deon Dreyer from the staggering depths of Bushman's Hole in South Africa. The episode explores the extreme physiological and equipment dangers of deep cave diving, the chain of events that led to Shaw's fatal dive, and the ethical questions surrounding his recovery mission. It's a sobering look at the limits of human endurance and the profound bonds that drive divers to risk everything for one another.