(CNN) — Equipped with only 19 pounds of gear, 89-year-old Bing Olbum set off on what he intended to be a five–day hiking trip.

Instead, Olbum found himself stranded for nearly 10 days in over 4 million acres of Salmon-Challis National Forest. It’s home to some of the most rugged places in the country beyond Alaska, according to a local search and rescue coordinator.

Some of the peaks and saddles Olbum passed through reached over 8,000 feet as he cleared more than 20 miles while traversing the alpine forest.

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“The odds of anybody surviving that period of time out in the wilderness area is very unlikely,” said Custer County Search and Rescue Coordinator Lincoln Zollinger.

Searching by horseback, helicopter and drones

On Aug. 1, Olbum ventured from the Hunter Creek Trailhead in east-central Idaho on a backpacking trip. He was expected to arrive at his exit point in the McDonald Creek Area five days later, according to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office.

Olbum was reported as a missing person days later on Aug. 6, the sheriff’s office said.

The Custer County Search and Rescue team began searching for him by land and air. Ground teams scanned the forest for traces of Olbum, lasering in on possible trails on which he could be found.

The next morning, the Idaho National Guard and a private pilot lent their helicopters to help with the search, and the Idaho National Laboratory manned drones to sweep through the forested mountains for signs of Olbum.

Despite the extensive effort, the Custer County Search and Rescue team “had zero traces of him for the five days” they had been looking, Zollinger said.

Local residents of Custer County and the surrounding area made up the ground search teams.

Locals left their jobs and commitments to help with the search for Olbum, as the Custer County Search and Rescue team is entirely made up of volunteers, according to Zollinger.

“We’re still a really small community,” Zollinger said, adding that he and others have spent their whole lives here. “They say, ‘stay off the mountain,’ well we’re going anyways.”

And it was these community members who finally brought Olbum home.

Locals save the day

“We were getting ready to discontinue our search and turn it back over to the family to let them look for (him),” Zollinger said, adding that the chances of survivability were low after being out there for so long.

Olbum’s daughter, Jennifer Olbum, posted his photo and trail map on Facebook Thursday asking for information and help from hikers familiar with the area.

“For two days search and rescue have been unable to locate him which tells me he is hurt or worse and unable to lay out a tarp for the choppers to see,” she wrote.

Two days later, on the final evening of the search, a group of local rescuers discovered Olbum’s camp, according to the sheriff’s office.

After searching for Olbum in the surrounding areas, local residents on horseback found him safe in the early morning hours of Aug. 11.

According to Zollinger, Olbum was found virtually unscathed and was only mildly dehydrated and sore from the sheer distance he covered on foot.

CNN reached out to Olbum’s family, who confirmed he is doing well, but declined an interview.

The will to survive

That morning, the Custer County Sheriff’s Office praised Olbum, saying his “will to survive has resulted in an unbelievably good ending to this incident” in a post on Facebook.

Olbum had lightly packed for his backpacking trip. His only food for the excursion was beef jerky, salted nuts and iodine tablets to purify water, according to Zollinger. He also packed a one-man tent, a blanket and a pad to sleep on.

He did not have any tracking devices on him and only had a compass and a paper map for navigation.

Zollinger was amazed by Olbum’s will to survive, especially after learning he did so without making a fire. The temperatures in the forest fluctuate from the 40s at night to the 90s during the day.

“Just having so few supplies, five days worth of food, stretching it out that far is just amazing, in everybody’s eyes,” Zollinger said. “We dealt a lot with the Air Force rescue, and even they were amazed at the outcome of this.”

Zollinger spoke with Olbum this week a couple of days after he was found safe and asked him about what kept him going.

Olbum said he believed he could survive another three days out in the wild, which Zollinger described as “absolutely phenomenal.”

“The biggest thing I see in him is his mindset,” Zollinger said. “And he said, ‘Well it was mostly my mind to keep going, to keep setting goals and keep moving forward.’”

Wildfires have been burning across Idaho this summer, and their list of harmful impacts is long, from worsening health conditions because of smoke to challenges recovering millions in costs to fight them.

But a recent U.S. Geological Survey has added another bad side effect to the list: the rise of a toxic chemical.

The study, which took place between 2021 and 2022, sampled 57 streams at the beginning of river systems in Idaho, Oregon and Washington for mercury, a chemical that can damage the human nervous system at high concentrations. In both water and sediment from the streams, one-year post-fire, mercury concentrations were higher.

Concentrations of methylmercury, the most toxic form of mercury that’s made when microbes add carbon to mercury, were also 178% higher in water from burned streams. Insects that filtered stream water or ate debris also had higher levels. The compound becomes dangerous as it accumulates in animals over time and gets absorbed by tissues in the body, according to the World Health Organization.

“There hasn’t been a lot of work done on the effects of wildfire on mercury,” Austin Baldwin, a USGS research hydrologist who led the study, told the Idaho Statesman. “With wildfires increasing in both severity and frequency, there was interest with me and my co-authors on knowing what are the effects.”

Baldwin said that when wildfires come through an area, they burn vegetation, which loosens mercury-containing soil and causes erosion into streams and mercury contamination. More studies would need to be done to understand if mercury levels after wildfires are high enough to be a concern for humans, he added.

Mercury levels likely won’t stay high forever and will taper off with major rainfall or the first snow melt after the fire, Baldwin said.

While the best solution to keep mercury out of streams would be preventing wildfires, Baldwin thinks prescribed burns could help mitigate some of the effects. The USGS study found mercury concentrations went up more in areas where wildfires were worse.

Prescribed burns, which are small fires set intentionally, can reduce the future risk of high-intensity fires by 64%, according to a study by Columbia and Stanford universities.

“If you can lower burn severities, you can also lower mercury,” Baldwin said.

When people are exposed to methylmercury, it often happens through fish consumption.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Fish Consumption Advisory Project regularly tests fish in areas commonly contaminated with mercury. When mercury levels are too high in a species, the state agency issues advisories to avoid eating the species, said Drew Pendleton, the state toxicologist.

Many of the areas that cause fish advisories in Idaho are related to mining, and Pendleton is not “too concerned” about mercury increases from the wildfires. But the research could help inform the state on future sites for testing, he said.

Pendleton recommends visiting the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Welfare websites to check for advisories on mercury exposure and learn the best methods to stay safe.

2024 The Idaho Statesman. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

POCATELLO — A tornado warning was issued on Tuesday by the National Weather Service in Pocatello — but did one ever touch down?

The warning in eastern Idaho lasted for one hour, from 2 to 3 p.m., and affected Jefferson, Butte, Bonneville and Bingham counties. The Idaho National Laboratory area was a concern. 

NWS meteorologist Kurt Buffalo told EastIdahoNews.com that the agency never received any confirmation of one that actually touched down. 

However, the radar data supported the development of a tornado, as well as what people who were close to the storm saw. 

“They were seeing what we call a ‘wall cloud’ … and then we also had some reports of possible funnel clouds developing,” Buffalo said. 

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A wall cloud can rotate, but not all do. Rotating wall clouds usually develop before strong or violent tornadoes, according to a glossary from NWS. 

“A funnel cloud is basically the start of a tornado. So it’s the part that is extending downward from the cloud, and it’s rotating, but it never extends downward far enough to actually come in contact with the ground,” Buffalo explained. 

So, what’s the difference between a tornado warning and a tornado watch?

Buffalo said a tornado warning is when they see indications either on radar or reports from people on the field that a tornado is imminent or likely to develop. 

“There’s a high threat. We are seeing enough that there is a high threat for a tornado to develop. A warning is when we are actually seeing a thunderstorm that is showing characteristics that could produce a tornado very soon,” he said. 

On Tuesday, several severe thunderstorm warnings were issued, producing mainly hail, some the size of about a quarter, and strong wind gusts of around 60 miles an hour. 

“When one is issued, just head indoors and take cover in an interior room,” Buffalo said. 

He added that Tuesday was the first tornado warning issued this year for the region. 

“We usually do issue on average, I’d say, two to four per year for eastern Idaho,” he said. 

As for tornado watches, they are typically issued a few hours ahead of time but are rare.

“That’s saying that conditions are favorable for that storm to develop to potentially produce tornados. It’s kind of a heads up,” he said. “We virtually never see tornado watches here.”

The last tornado touchdown in eastern Idaho was near Grace last year on June 23. It was in an open field, and there was no damage, Buffalo told EastIdahoNews.com.