nature – Jacque Tietjen

On February 3rd 2026, I suffered a life threatening, very severe traumatic brain injury that nearly killed me.

If you are local to Utah, you may have heard a bit about it on the news… I even got reports from friends what it expanded outside of utah… colorado, idaho, national news with Yahoo, AOL, with People and Outside’s Backpacker Magazine, somehow even mens health journal, even worldwide.. A friend told me his parents in the UK saw it on BBC, and a friend of mine found an article out of Paris France. Believe me when I say I was shocked and surprised that such an accident made me momentarily world famous…. Still Dont exactly know how I feel about that.

The common issue with news stories, especially that get passed around to a wider audience, is they never the full story, they are only going off what bit of information was known at the time. My sister in law talked to the handful of local news stations that covered it, and they talked to the utah county sheriff’s department and Search and Rescue to get what information they had…which was only their experience and investigative theories based on what they saw when they found me and what they got from bystander witnesses.

So… months of healing and recovery later, here I am to tell you MY story. Because I think its important to share what happened to help people know the risks in the outdoors but also as a way to help me process through the trauma of it all: