Surviving 30 days in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains took every ounce of survival skills Laramy Sasquatch Miller possesses, something The Trail illustrates in brutal detail.
“I just chased a giant mountain lion all morning and walked about ten miles, so I’m kinda tired!” Laramy laughs of his morning before our chat. Typical Outsider itinerary, to be sure, and one that put him in a great place to sit down and talk The Trail.
“For my entire life I have always wondered, what would it have been like to be a mountain man in the early 1800s coming into the Rocky Mountains?” Laramy offers of his new Outdoors Channel show. “Obviously I’ll never be able to do exactly that, but The Trail was my chance to kind of go out there [and try]. It was nothing but me and my horse, a longbow, I had a couple of case knives and my hatchet and my sleeping bag,” he reveals.
Armed with the necessary tools, Laramy set out to survive 30 days out in the Rockies. And by his own words, “It was a lot more than I anticipated.”
‘Boy, I got into a few things that I did not expect’
“I’ve gone out and into the mountains with very little my entire life. And kind of honed my survival skills like the mountain men did. And boy, I got into a few things that I did not expect,” Laramy continues of his journey.
“I dealt with anything from wolves to grizzly bears to two foot of snow. My whole goal was I was traversing from Point A to Point B, essentially. Which, kind of like the mountain men, meant going from super high elevation down into the valley to make my winter camp.”
As for that grizzly encounter, things got “interesting” fast, Laramy recalls. “I did not expect to run into bears. That late in the year, you usually don’t have to deal with bear predators,” he cites of the Rockies. “But just coming right down the trail… There he is!”
Laramy’s instincts are that of a survivalist, however, and not a cameraman. Which is an excellent tradeoff when faced with a grizzly bear in full-on hyperphagia before hibernation. So instead of filming the encounter, Miller went into his own full-on survival mode, settling to capture the grizzly’s massive tracks on film, instead.
Laramy Sasquatch Miller Brings Mountain Man History to ‘The Trail’
The history of the American mountain men that made such treks is as fascinating as history comes, too, which is why Laramy (also an Executive Producer on The Trail) wanted to include as much as possible within the show. Context is king, after all.
“There’s a lot of history in the show. I’m a history buff when it comes to the old mountain men. That’s my favorite era. My entire career – that’s what I’ve done, you know? I was very fortunate being raised the way I was because I got to learn all the mountain man ways. The leatherworking, working with horses, being in the mountains from the time I was barely able to walk,” he smiles.
“The Trail is a culmination of all that. And dealing with all the different trials. I had horse issues, I had wolves come into camp. I ran into a grizzly bear on the trail. It snowed two feet on me, too, so I was just trying to survive through that to begin with,” Laramy recalls. “It’s neat, though, because you see the ups and downs. I struggled sometimes, but at the end of the day I came out better than I went in. I’ll say that.”
‘There were five days where I went without food…’
But there were days when Miller thought he might not survive to tell the tale. It was just him and his recording equipment out in the Rockies, after all. And one morning in particular came as close as any to claiming his life.
“I’ll be honest. There were five days where I went without food, and I was just like, hmm…” Laramy says with a cock of the head. “There’s two foot of snow. It never got above 20, it was negative 5 degrees the whole time. And one morning I woke up and my sleeping back was literally an icicle. I was sleeping inside an icicle. I woke up and was like, ‘What am I doing here?'” he laughs.
This was when the man we know as Laramy Sasquatch Miller thought to himself: “Man, I am in trouble. I gotta figure some things out.” And figure it out he did, or we wouldn’t have had the chance to chat all things The Trail.
Growing up the way he did, however, this near-death experience only served to further fuel his fire. The trials of The Trail were such a success, in fact, that Laramy and his team plan on doing a version of the survival show every year “from here on out.”
“It excites me to go test myself like that,” he smiles. “And you can practice all you want, but until you get thrown into that situation… Being able to problem solve quickly really helps.”
As Laramy and I agreed, “We’re prisoners of nature”; a positive for any other Outsider, as well, to be sure.
To watch the master at work, Laramy Sasquatch Miller’s The Trail is available now on Outdoors Channel with ten full episodes to come.
