When you’re in fifth or sixth grade you have a lot on your mind.
There’s that upcoming math test, what to say to the cute girl sitting next to you,
or that after school sports game you’ll be playing in.
Life can get a bit challenging at times even under normal circumstances.
But for Norman Ollestad Jr., he had an additional problem.
He had to figure out how to navigate an 8,600-foot tall mountain in freezing temperatures all
by himself.
Now, that is what you could call an unsettling situation.
So, you might be thinking a circumstance like that is absolutely insane for an 11-year-old
kid, and it is, without a doubt.
But what’s different about Normal from your regular middle schooler is that he had been
preparing for this moment all his life.
Unintentionally, of course.
But, because of his childhood upbringing there was pretty much no extreme challenge Norman
wouldn’t at least have a fighting chance to survive.
This was all thanks to his father, although at times Norman didn’t exactly feel gratitude.
His father, the senior Norman Ollestad was what you might call a daredevil.
Some would say he lived life to its fullest while others might see him as a bit crazy.
An actor, athlete, musician, lawyer, and at one point even an FBI agent, there was nothing
it seemed he wouldn’t or couldn’t do if he wanted to.
That included some extreme pastimes.
He lived in the prime of the California surfing culture and he embraced it with all he had,
as well as things like skiing the sheer slopes of exceptionally tall mountains.
And he brought his son into it as well, and from the time he was barely walking.
There is a picture of him with Norman Jr. as a one-year-old toddler strapped to his
back as he stands riding a wave in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
That’s the kind of environment Norman Jr. grew up in.
The kind where one wrong move could be your last one.
As he grew from a tot to a young boy in Malibu, California, his father threw him fully into
the sports of both skiing and surfing.
But not as a typical father would approach them.
Instead, Norman Jr. was skiing steep black-diamond type slopes as well as riding raging waves
along the Mexican coast.
He was dubbed a “Boy Wonder” because of all he had done under the strong insistence
of his father.
While it’s important to remember parenting wasn’t quite the same in the 70’s or 80’s
as it is today, this was still quite unusual even back then.
And, today, many of the things his father did may have landed him in jail.
Things have changed in this area.
But, while Norman Jr. did admit he’d rather have been out riding his bicycle or snacking
on cake from time to time, he also called his many adventures really beautiful.
And they made unforgettable memories he would cherish for the rest of his life.
More than that, the skills he learned gave him a chance at survival when he was later
stuck in the middle of nowhere 50 miles from Los Angeles.
On the top of the San Gabriel Mountains thousands of feet above ground in a blizzard in February.
But what was he doing on the mountain to begin with you might be wondering.
It all started at around 8 am on February 19th of 1979.
Norman Ollestad Jr., his father and his father’s girlfriend were flown via a single-engine
Cessna 172 through mountainous territory on route to the mountain town of Big Bear to
get a trophy he had won for a skiing competition.
Along the way the weather got unfriendly and suddenly everything turned grey.
Clouds appeared all around the windows of the plane, pressing in on them.
They could see nothing except an occasional object pop out here and there and then again
vanishing.
Too late, they realized what these were: the limbs of trees.
Soon the plane struck one and crashed along the mountainside, instantly killing the pilot
and Norman Jr.’s father and seriously wounding his father’s girlfriend.
Norman Jr. remembers three thuds as he made contact with the solid mountain; the third
knocked him out.
He doesn’t know exactly how long he was passed out, but he awoke in excruciatingly
cold temperatures.
To make matters worse, his hand was broken.
He found his dad and tried to get him to wake up, but he was unresponsive.
Afraid of freezing to death he and Sandra Cressman, his father’s 30-year-old girlfriend,
sat together under the wing of the plane in a desperate attempt to get warm.
They waited and waited for hours, until after seven had passed they became worried that
they could die before they were found.
So, then they did the only thing left to do: they attempted to navigate down the mountain.
The snow and ice were so deep that they reached Norman’s waist.
So, he grabbed a stick and slid down on his bottom, thrusting the stick in the snow when
he began to go move too fast for comfort.
With a long distance between him and safety, it was painfully slow going.
Unfortunately, Sandra was not as adept at icy travel.
She also had a deep cut on her forehead and a dislocated arm which definitely didn’t
help her situation.
Despite Norman’s attempts to help her down the mountain she ended up falling in a particularly
icy area.
She never got back up again.
As Norman described her, though she could open her eyes she seemed to be so badly hurt
she could no longer talk.
Her body was discovered later by a rescue team prone on the mountainside 100 yards from
the scene of the crash.
Norman kept going.
As he moved on, he heard a helicopter above him.
He stood up and waved at it and thought they had seen him, but he was wrong.
They flew on and left him alone, still stuck on the mountain.
However, he pushed on.
As his father had taught him throughout his youth, when the going gets tough you just
keep on going.
So that’s what he did.
Giving up was never an option.
He said he felt instinct take over and became an animal, similar to a wolf.
An animal fully at home in the treacherous wilderness.
Norman traveled two miles from the plane to safety on the ground by alternatingly stopping
and sliding.
He used the skills he had perfected through his extensive surfing and skiing experience
to know the right angle to turn and how best to glide.
He had complete control of his body and could pull off the moves necessary to get through
particularly dangerous areas.
He almost felt at home; as he put it, a 45-degree pitch in a blizzard with slippery ice was
nothing unlike what he had done for the last 8 years of his life.
He was much more than prepared.
Even when it came to scaling a vertical gulch of stone using only his fingers.
Still, it took him 9 hours to make it down.
He then walked along a creek to a ranch house.
A rescue party arrived on the mountain only after the clouds shrouding it had lifted.
There they saw the plane wreck and the three lifeless bodies resting on it.
Norman Jr. was the only one who survived, and though he had a broken hand and a swollen
face due to many cuts he sustained during the journey, he claimed to only be a little
sore.
In a wheelchair the day after the ordeal he explained what had happened while his mother
sat next to him.
His parents were divorced by that time and Norman had questionable thoughts about the
boyfriend she dated afterward, but he was beyond happy to be back with his remaining
family.
Later, Norman wrote a book about his experiences.
Many would say it was mostly a book about his father and their at times strained and
at other times magical relationship.
As Norman put it, both were inextricably linked.
He said that relationship was with him on that mountain despite the fact that his father
was already dead.
The book, titled “Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival” was a great success
and lauded by critics.
The picture on the book’s jacket is him as a small child strapped onto his father
back as he rides a wave in the middle of the ocean.
Norman Jr. wrote the epilogue to his own son, who he has raised responsibly yet in a way
that he still learns crucial lessons in life.
And the response from readers has been overwhelming.
Norman has received numerous letters and emails from his readers talking about their own experiences
with their mothers and fathers.
Many seem to feel something deep and personal through Norman’s story that resonates with
their own lives.
In the wake of a tragic disaster, many have come together to revisit their childhood.
Was there ever a time in your life when you felt a parent pushed you too hard or expected
too much of you?
Did you later appreciate what it taught you, or not?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video Do These Things To Survive If You Get Stranded
On an Island!
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