Reality TV saves teenager’s life

Some good news to start 2011: Discovery’s Man vs. Wild and Survivorman were credited with saving a 14-year-old’s life. He spent nine hours in -17 degree temperatures and stayed warm by constructing a snow cave, and says he used strategies he learned from Bear Grylls and Les Stroud.

The teenager “stranded on an Oregon mountain while skiing on New Year’s Eve said he used skills learned from reality television to find his way out of the woods,” ABC News reports. Jake Denham told ABC’s Bend, Ore., affiliate, “It started getting dark, and I saw the stars. I saw Venus — it was red and bigger than the North Star. I dug a canal, and it went up a hill, so the wind would blow over it so the wind wouldn’t hit me. … I went down and then when I got lost, I got down on my hands and knees and followed the [ski] trail again. I walked down, and then I saw lights.”

The teenager said, “I learned all this from Man vs. Wild and Survivorman; I love those shows.”