Survivor

GETTING PRIMITIVE – Phillip Liebel of Chico put his primitive survival skills to the test in September, working to survive for 30 days with nothing but the clothes on his back in the remote Canadian wilderness while filming the show, “Alone: The Beast” on the History Channel. Liebel’s episode will air Thursday night at 9 p.m. Messenger photo by Austin Jackson

Phillip Liebel arrived to the airport in a daze. His body and mind were jarred, in a lingering primitive state.

The Chico resident was still in predator mode, with ears tuned to the faintest cracking of leaves and his bloodshot eyes trained to total darkness. His instincts were tack sharp. His face, covered in a beard and long brown hair, was gaunt, atop a frame more than 25 pounds lighter than it was a month before. He missed home.

For 30 days, Liebel was disconnected from the world on the survivalist show “Alone: The Beast,” which premiered Jan. 30 on the History Channel.

His food consisted of lean game and what the woods and frozen lake could provide, whether it be hunted by his handmade bow or foraged from the earth.

Silence surrounded him for weeks living in the harsh conditions of Great Slave Lake in Canada. Then, all of the sudden, after pushing himself to his physical and mental brink in the untamed bogs and cliffs of a rugged landscape, he found himself in a crowded airport surrounded by Cinnabon sweets, obnoxious travelers and the stressful clamor of society.

It took weeks for Liebel to reboot.

“I hate airports in general, but man, it was rough,” Liebel said. “Just all the sounds and the noises and lights, all the stuff I wasn’t used to. The smells.

“If you’re out in the woods for a while, your primal mind opens up,” Liebel added. “We have all these instincts, naturally … We’re still animals. When you come back from being out there, it was crazy.”

Things that are routine and second nature, like glancing at his phone, seemed toxic. The artificial light, Liebel said, blinded him. Despite being surrounded by predators in the wild, with scarce food and brutal weather conditions, his nearest brush with death came from a food splurge days after completing the show.

“The closest I came to death was pizza,” Liebel said. “I got to Yellowknife, Canada, and got pizza, which they warned me about. All of a sudden, I started having heart palpitations, my ankles swelled up. I was like, ‘Oh my, God. I’m gonna die.’ But, yeah, that pizza was good.”

Liebel’s time in the wild changed him. It was both a test of his skills as a primitive survivalist and as a husband and father.

While he didn’t want to spoil specific details of the show, Liebel spoke about the experience of the September spent in Canada.

The show works like this: Three strangers attempt to make it through 30 days in a remote wilderness location with no tools or modern amenities. They arrive with the clothes on their backs and an untouched fallen animal. For the duration of the month, they work through punishing weather and fending off predators, while using the fallen animal as means to survive in the elements.

While Liebel has challenged himself in similar ways as a survivalist, he’s never attempted to live off the land for longer than 10 days. During those trips, he could always check in on life at home.

But that wasn’t the case during the show.

“The hardest part, hands down, was the psychological issues,” Liebel said. “From being out there and not being able to call. You have no idea what’s going on with your family. There’s no way to talk. I don’t know how my kids are doing or what was going on. I’ve never had depression, but I started battling it out there.

“I had no idea how difficult it would be and how much it affects you in other ways,” he added. “It affects your motivation. It’s a survival skill being psychologically tough. Mental fortitude is overlooked.”

Weeks after the show, Liebel would wake up in a panic. He would get up in the middle of the night, scurrying around his room searching for the fire he feared had been extinguished, even though he was safe at home.

“If our fire went out, we were screwed. It took forever to get it going again,” Liebel said. “I would go to sleep, and I would wake up, kind of like flashbacks in the military. I would have dreams like that for a week or two. Scared that a bear was coming into camp. I had to adapt to that.”

His subconscious, at that point, had yet to shake his survival instincts.

During his time in Canada, the dreams differed. He would dream of his family, or biting into freshly glazed donuts, only to wake up to a cold, gamey reality.

“I would go through the drive through, get an M&M donut and a Dr Pepper and then take bite,” Liebel said. “Then I would wake up.”

Phillip Liebel. Messenger photo by Austin Jackson

PRIMITIVE SURVIVAL

Liebel got into primitive survival, which is described as supporting oneself through the use of simple, early-stage technology, after looking into his roots.

Liebel’s grandmother is Cherokee, and he gained an interest in hunting with bows similar to those used by his ancestors. He crafted a bow from Orange Osage wood that he found on his property.

“Once I learned those skills, I went down the rabbit hole,” Liebel said. “I did it backwards. Most people start off survival with modern tools, then basic stuff and crawl, walk, run. I started with the basic stuff and went backwards.”

From there he got into trying to hunt with the bow. Once he got his first kill, he wanted to test himself more and more, learning to survive with what nature provides.

“Going out, taking everything from the woods, using primitive means,” Liebel said. “Going out and being able to kill an animal from that using only what I got from nature, it’s so rewarding. Pottery is, too. You’re taking something from the ground and making it into a tool. You’re taking wood and making a fire.”

After building a skill set for primitive survival, Liebel, all the while working a full-time job as a maintenance man for Wise Ready Mix, got into leading survival classes. He currently teaches survival classes at Bridgeport Endeavor OHV Park. They go out to the woods and learn survival skills, like making tools and starting your own fires. It was his role as an instructor that attracted the producers of the show.

Liebel was teaching a class in Arkansas last summer during an adventure race, which combines a traditional race with survival skills, like how to create a friction fire.

The producers came out to recruit the racers, but when they stumbled across Liebel, they tried to get him on the show “Alone,” which places 10 survivalists in a remote competition to see who can survive the longest without breaking.

Liebel declined because he and his wife were expecting a baby in November, and he didn’t want to start the contest then quit. Because if he had to choose between prize money and seeing his newborn, he would choose his family.

Two weeks later the producers from the History Channel contacted him again, asking him to be part of a new show called “Alone: The Beast,” which focuses more on primitive survival with a set time period that would wrap up well before November.

“I was like, ‘sign me up,'” Liebel said. “It was an adventure.”

With the support of his wife and his boss, Liebel took off toward the Northwest territories of Canada on a mission.

He faced some pressure. Go big or go back to the woods where he came from.

“My wife was like, ‘you have to go,'” Liebel said. “She told me if I came home early, I would have to sleep in the woods.”

At the start of September, the Chico survivalist ventured to Canada, meeting his three teammates. They were dropped in the woods with their freshly killed large game animal, which would be their sustenance and source from which tools were made.

Preserving and processing the animal was the first step, and that took several days. He discovered the boots he brought were in fact not waterproof. He learned the struggle and sheer, primal will it takes to live off nature, bogging through wetlands, hiking through cliffs, all the while constantly freezing.

Within 15 days, Liebel lost 25 pounds. There were mental breakdowns, challenges and thrills. The full details of the experience will play out on the screen at 9 p.m. Thursday on the History Channel.

Now Liebel is readjusted. He’s properly nourished, and his fantasies about M&M donuts and Dr Pepper don’t vanish at dawn.

In reflecting on the experience, Liebel said the show changed him. It helped him prioritize what’s important.

“Doing what I do, teaching the classes and working full time and then having a family, all the time I’m running around trying to find time. I always felt like I didn’t have enough time before the show. I couldn’t get out to the woods enough,” Liebel said. “Up there is where I really realized what is important to me. My family, if everything else went away, my family is the No. 1 thing that’s important. Not being able to talk to them was by far the hardest part. It wasn’t the physical; it wasn’t the starving to death. It was the psychological part and missing my family.”